GROUP COGNITION COMPUTER SUPP

Innovative uses of global and local networks of linked computers make newways of collaborative working, learning, and acting possible. In Group CognitionGerry Stahl explores the technological and social reconfigurations that are neededto achieve computer-supported collaborative knowledge building--group cognition thattranscends the limits of individual cognition. Computers can provide active mediafor social group cognition where ideas grow through the interactions within groupsof people; software functionality can manage group discourse that results in sharedunderstandings, new meanings, and collaborative learning. Stahl offers softwaredesign prototypes, analyzes empirical instances of collaboration, and elaborates atheory of collaboration that takes the group, rather than the individual, as theunit of analysis.Stahl's design studies concentrate on mechanisms to support groupformation, multiple interpretive perspectives, and the negotiation of groupknowledge in applications as varied as collaborative curriculum development byteachers, writing summaries by students, and designing space voyages by NASAengineers. His empirical analysis shows how, in small-group collaborations, thegroup constructs intersubjective knowledge that emerges from and appears in thediscourse itself. This discovery of group meaning becomes the springboard forStahl's outline of a social theory of collaborative knowing. Stahl also discussessuch related issues as the distinction between meaning making at the group level andinterpretation at the individual level, appropriate research methodology, philosophical directions for group cognition theory, and suggestions for furtherempirical work.