VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF A MULTIDIMENSIONAL CODING SCHEME FOR UNDERSTANDING TECHNOLOGY-MEDIATED LEARNING ABOUT COMPLEX NATURAL SYSTEMS

Abstract

Understanding how people learn requires that we consider how moments fit together: the actions learners take, the conversations they engage in, and the representations that they use. The goal of this article is to describe a data visualization technique in the context of a specific research project involving a computer-supported complex system modeling environment. The goal of this project was to understand the relationship between the students’ epistemic practices of science inquiry, collaborative processes, and the content of what they were learning as indicated by their structure-behavior-function reasoning. To accomplish this research goal, we used the Chronologically-oriented Representation for Discourse and Tool-related activity (CORDTRA diagrams) technique to conduct a contrasting case analysis. The discourse of two groups was coded for collaborative activ- ity, epistemic practices, and the mention of structures, behaviors, and functions. These three coding schemes were juxtaposed on a single timeline in a CORDTRA diagram. The analysis of the CORDTRA diagrams provided some suggestions for how different patterns of activities may be more or less indicative of productive engagement. This case study provides an example of CORDTRA in use, but it can be used more generally to integrate across multiple sources of data and multiple coding schemes as well as allowing researchers to study sequential activity at both large and small grain sizes. We argue that, in comparison to other techniques, this kind of representation can be a powerful way of understanding complex technology-mediated learning environments.