Sustaining Online Collaborative Problem Solving with Math Proposals

Learning takes place over long periods of time that are hard to study directly. Even the learning experience involved in solving a challenging math problem in a collaborative online setting can be spread across hundreds of utterances during an hour or more. Such long-term interactions are constructed out of utterance-level interactions, such as the strategic proposing of a next step. This paper identifies a pattern of exchange of utterances that it terms math proposal adjacency pair, and describes its characteristics. Drawing on the methodology of conversation analysis, the paper adapts this approach to mathematical problem-solving communication and to the computer-mediated circumstances of online chat. In particular, a failed proposal is contrasted with successful proposals in the log of an actual chat. Math proposal adjacency pairs constitute the collaborative group as a working group, give direction to their problem solving and help to sustain their interaction.