Finnish upper secondary students’ collaborative processes in learning statistics in a CSCL environment

Abstract

This design-based research project focuses on documenting statistical learning among 16-17-year-old Finnish upper secondary school students (N = 78) in a computersupported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment. One novel value of this study is in reporting the shift from teacher-led mathematical teaching to autonomous small-group learning in statistics. The main aim of this study is to examine how student collaboration occurs in learning statistics in a CSCL environment. The data include material from videotaped classroom observations and the researcher's notes. In this paper, the intersubjective phenomena of students' interactions in a CSCL environment are analysed by using a contact summary sheet (CSS). The development of the multi-dimensional coding procedure of the CSS instrument is presented. Aptly selected video episodes were transcribed and coded in terms of conversational acts, which were divided into non-task-related and task-related categories to depict students' levels of collaboration. The results show that collaborative learning (CL) can facilitate cohesion and responsibility and reduce students' feelings of detachment in our classless, periodic school system. The interactive .pdf material and collaboration in small groups enable statistical learning. It is concluded that CSCL is one possible method of promoting statistical teaching. CL using interactive materials seems to foster and facilitate statistical learning processes.

Students’ collaboration in technology-enhanced reciprocal peer tutoring as an approach towards learning mathematics

“…The CSS-instrument (Oikarinen et al, 2014) is a tool for analysing the nature and quantity of students' utterances while they are peer tutoring digital skills during VerDi-lessons (See Appendix Table 7). Chronological representations of discourse "so first forty-three minus six" Tutor Instruction TK Comments about various technologies and their features.…”

“…It seems, that students' active learning via a think-aloud strategy, can promote young students' persistent learning gains and strengthen their engagement when performing cognitively demanding tasks (Ramachandran et al, 2018). Students' externalisation of individual mental representations is based on collaborative conversational acts (Oikarinen et al, 2014;Veerman & Veldhuis-Diermanse, 2001).…”