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Prompting collaborative and exploratory discourse: An epistemic network analysis study

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International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

By encouraging elementary students to work collaboratively, they can gain essential skills such as perspective taking, conflict negotiation, and asking for and receiving assistance. Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA) is an analytic technique that provides an alternative to more typical approaches to analyzing and synthesizing coded dialogue. This study used an easy-to-implement prompting intervention in the context of collaborative (pair) programming with upper elementary students to demonstrate the potential of ENA to understand the impact of the intervention. We found that intervention students—those given empirically-derived prompts in support of collaborative and exploratory talk—asked questions, justified their thinking, and offered alternative ideas in ways that were both qualitatively and quantitatively different from control students.

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Notes

  1. See Shaffer et al., (2016) for a more detailed explanation of the mathematical models utilized in this analytic approach; see Arastoopour Irgens et al. (2015) and Sullivan et al. (2018) for examples of this kind of analysis

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Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No DRL-1721160. Additionally, this work was funded in part by the National Science Foundation (DRL-1661036, DRL-1713110), the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The opinions, findings, and conclusions do not reflect the views of the funding agencies, cooperating institutions, or other individuals.

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Correspondence to Jessica Vandenberg.

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Vandenberg, J., Zakaria, Z., Tsan, J. et al. Prompting collaborative and exploratory discourse: An epistemic network analysis study. Intern. J. Comput.-Support. Collab. Learn 16, 339–366 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-021-09349-3

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