Deictic roles of external representations in face-to-face and online collaboration

This research explores how shared, learner-constructed representations serve as resources for conversation in face-to-face and online situations. An important role of shared representations in collaborative learning is to facilitate the ease of reference to previously introduced ideas. Complex ideas are more easily expressed when their component ideas can be indicated with simple gestures. Yet gesture does not have the same immediacy in typical online learning environments. We examined the extent to which gestural deixis is inhibited online, and how shared representations serve as conversational resources in other ways. Results show that gesture was almost never used online, and was partially replaced with verbal deixis and direct manipulation of the shared representation. Verbal deixis almost always referenced ideas already in the focus of attention, posing a potential problem for reflection on prior information. These results suggest the importance of better integration between communicative tools and shared representations and the inclusion of prompts for reflection.