Challenges and Opportunities Facing Educational Discourse Researchers

The scholarly investigation of discourse in teaching and learning is multi-disciplinary, theoretically rich, and highly technical. Researchers with backgrounds in education, cognitive psychology, computer science, and the social sciences apply a diverse set of techniques to understand how student discussions affect learning. Aided by big data coming from learning content management and massive open online course systems, these researchers have an unparalleled opportunity for insight into the teaching and learning process. In this paper we summarize some of the challenges and opportunities arising out of three workshops on Educational Discourse. These workshops convened both expert and emerging scholars to discuss the (i) ethical, (ii) technical, and (iii) infrastructure barriers to building a research community focused on computer-mediated educational discourse. Of particular note is that while computational infrastructure exists for storing and manipulating educational discourse, there is a need for a sociotechnical infrastructure upon which community members can come together to engage in joint work.