Last semester, I took Info 2950: Mathematical Methods for Information Science. We had bi-weekly homework assignments that took a considerable amount of time to complete. Right after the second homework, I “joined” the study group for the class. Even though the group wasn’t completely defined, and maybe it wasn’t suppose to exist because the professor may have preferred the homework to be worked on individually, a study group formed anyway.
The cognitive system comprised of people in the study group. The number of people in the group varied from time to time depending on difficulty of the assignment and proximity of the due date. The goal of the cognitive system was to complete the homework assignment accurately. This goal was both a shared one and a desired state because all of us wanted a good grade on the homework assignment and we needed to complete the assignment.
Hutchins pointed out that the means for any cognitive system to reach its goal is through the transformation of representation states, which requires coordination and shared meaning for the group. The “tools” needed for the transformation were internal and external representations. The internal representations were each person’s own understanding of the material and any pervious knowledge of probability, graph theory, linear algebra, etc. External representations would be the teacher’s lecture notes, the calculator, the textbook (which wasn’t very useful) and any other external material and artifacts that helped with our internal processing of information.
Each person had their own “timeline” to completing the assignment, making our group loosely coupled. The transformation process occurred in stages of trying to figure things out on your own, asking someone else for clarification and going to office hours to attempt to understand the internal representation of the professor or the TA make it your own. This cycle varied slightly for each person. Also, a wide range of technology was used for collaboration in our group, from GChat, texting, phone conversation and FTF meetings before class. Texting was used for quick questions that would have short answers, so there was no ambiguity needed and efficiency was the main concern. FTF and phone messages were used to explain concepts to others. The reason in which we chose of mode of communication depended primary on efficiency, which is predicted by the Media Richness Theory.
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I think study groups like this are very useful, even when loosely coupled. The different timelines and skill sets make the group effective because each person brings a different input to the group. For example, I may be good at question 5 but you may be good at question 3, so we will work at our own pace then teach each other. If the group were tightly coupled there might be a tendency to work slowly as a group. Also, every member but one may understand a topic and move through that question quickly, leaving the person who needs help still needing help.
ReplyDeleteI wrote about a similar type of study group for my blog post. I agree with you that those kind of groups are generally loosely coupled. I said in my post that I thought it had to do a lot with the fact that group members are not interdependent on one another. My class, like yours, was one where the problem sets were very hard and group work wasn’t discouraged, but also not encouraged. In situations like that, I think groups almost have to be loosely coupled, otherwise it seems like you’re not doing the work individually enough.
ReplyDeleteI think you could limit the cognitive system to people in the study group, but if the goal is to complete the assignment correctly, it would be nice to include the lectures, notes, textbook and external representations in the cognitive system. What roles do these external representations play in the cognitive system? For example,do lecture notes and text book perform as long-term memories to refer to when completing the homework?
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