Advance the use of structural-configurational methods such as SNA and ENA toward empirically testable models¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

The article recommends that CSCL researchers employ social, temporal, and spatial configurational analysis methods, grounded graph-theoretically in a structuralist view that "[The] belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through the interrelations" captures. These methods should move from data description to explanatory purposes and theory/model testing. The article explicitly encourages researchers "so that they lead to empirically testable models."

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Researchers must treat SNA and ENA as part of a bigger conceptual framework, namely structuralism, rather than only formal techniques.
• An ontological shift from patterns in data structures to real mechanisms requires a corresponding epistemic move from data description to theory/model testing.

Constraints¶

Target Learners¶

• CSCL research community and learning designers

Target Learning Goals¶

• building and testing explanatory models of collaboration, learning, and development

Affordances¶

• Epistemic Network Analysis Temporal Patterns

Related Strategies¶

• Use SNA at the whole-network level to study all ties within a defined group
• Adopt an integrative methodological toolkit using machine learning and computational models to capture SR's multi-level, temporal, and social dynamics
• Future SNA e-learning studies should include a quantitative approach exploiting the statistical power of SNA to explain complex systems
• Design XRCL applications by building on fundamental CSCL pedagogy research, viewed through the lens of TICOL

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Peter Reimann. (2021). Socio-technical configurations for productive talk. Intern. J. Comput.-Support. Collab. Learn (2021) 16:301–306. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-021-09354-6