Polyphonic Interanimation in Collaborative Problem Solving Chats

1
Polyphonic Inter-animation in Collaborative
Problem Solving Chats

• Stefan Trausan-Matu
• Gerry Stahl
• Alan Zemel
• Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA

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Contents

• Chat analysis in VMT
• Why Bakhtin?
• Polyphonic inter-animation
• Conclusions

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VMT research activities

• Observe students in math classrooms in
  Philadelphia public schools working
  collaboratively on math problems analyzing
  their collaborative learning process with an eye
  to creating Virtual Math Teams.
• Design mechanisms to bring together compatible
  online teams. Experiment on optimal groupings
  based on math skills, interests and backgrounds.
• Develop math problems structured for discussion,
  exploration and solution by small groups of
  students.
• Design, implement and evaluate online support for
  small groups of students to collaborate on math
  problems.
• Study the online collaborative learning process
  among student groups solving math problems.
• Scale up the online service for use in
  Philadelphia public schools and globally.

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Analysis perspectives in VMT

• Quantitative
• Coding schema
• Statistics
• Segmentation
• Speech acts identification
• Qualitative
• Ethnographic
• Conversation Analysis (Ethnomethodologic)

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Problems in POW chats for a NLP perspective

• More than two speakers
• Abbreviations
• Idiom
• Spelling errors
• Multiple threads
• Actual discourse theories are not sufficient

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Why Bakhtin?

• Alternative to structuralism and cognitivism
• Does not go to the extremist view of
  deconstructivism
• Theory of social meaning making through dialogism
• Indexicality of utterances

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Bakhtins ideas

• Dialogism
• Multiple voices
• Polyphony
• Unmergeness
• a plurality of independent and unmerged voices
  and consciousnesses
• Speech genres

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Polyphony

• The deconstructivist attack () according to
  which only the difference between difference and
  unity as an emphatic difference (and not as a
  return to unity) can act as the basis of a
  differential theory (which dialectic merely
  claims to be) is the methodical point of
  departure for the distinction between polyphony
  and non-polyphony.

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Polyphony

• When there is more than one independent melodic
  line happening at the same time in a piece of
  music, we say that the music is contrapuntal. The
  independent melodic lines are called
  counterpoint. The music that is made up of
  counterpoint can also be called polyphony, or one
  can say that the music is polyphonic or speak of
  the polyphonic texture of the music. (Polyphony
  2005).

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Polyphony

• Unity
• Difference
• Melody longitudinal
• Harmony transversal, vertical

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Unity in chats

• Collaborative utterances
• Repetitions
• Socialization
• Jokes

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Difference in chats

• Comtemplating others ideas
• Critique

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Conclusions

• Stimulate inter-animation not only through
  longitudinal supporting tools (e.g. threading)
• Stimulate difference making through
• abstraction
• summarization

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Future activities

• Graduation thesys
• 1. Development of an ontology for mathematics at
  MathForum from
• - DrMath
• - Library
• - MathTools
• 2. Message filtering at Dr.Math
• 3. Recommendation system for chat users
• 4. Chat summarizer
• 5. Chat pattern identifier
• 6. Semantic analysis of chats

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Future activities

• Research
• 1. Study of polyphonic inter-animation in chats
  for collaborative math problem solving.
  Difference-unity making
• 2. Chat analysis and summarization
• 3. Narratives in chats