# GroupScribbles and pedagogical patterns


One of the presentations that impressed me at the recent GCCCE 2011 was
by [[Chen Wenli]] on using [[GroupScribbles]] for language learning. To
be honest, I was more fascinated by the tool, than by the exact way in
which she had used it.

This is a good example of how you the way you read an article changes
dependent on your existing knowledge - a constructivist epistemology. My
history professor in high school used to say that a historian read the
first or second history book about a topic to find out "what happened",
and he/she reads more history books to find out "how are people
describing what happened.

As I began looking up this tool, which was first developed by
[SRI](http://www.sri.com/), and later taken over by the [Learning
Sciences Lab](http://lsl.nie.edu.sg) at Singapore's National Institute
of Education, I found that a number of articles had been written about
it. Reading the first article, I was very interested in the specific
design of the tool, but on reading more articles, I already knew that,
and could skip those parts (checking if there was anything new), and go
to the way they had used it.

![](http://reganmian.net/wiki/_media/skim:chen2009integrating0.png)The
tool itself is quite simple - there is an upper and a lower frame. In
the lower frame is an inexhaustible supply of "post-it notes", which can
be written on, drawn upon, etc. By dragging a note up to the upper pane,
the note automatically becomes public and shared with everyone else (in
the group or in the classroom).

The entire upper pane is shared, so anyone can drag notes around, and
even take a note written by someone else down to their personal space
(it then disappears from the public view), and for example attach a
note, before they drag it back.

[[ref:digiano2006learning|DiGiano, Tatar and Kireyev (2006)]] describe
the advantages of physical post-it notes for meeting coordination:

-   representationally neutral
-   capture diagrams and drawings, as well as text
-   different sizes affords different kinds of activities
-   informal - better suited to quick sketches than highly finished
  ideas
-   meta-informatic (can annotate other representations, including other
  post-its)
-   rearrangable, position and reposition to convey meaning
-   unique - can only be one place at one time
-   shareable - many can interact with it

However, there are also problems with physical post-it notes:

-   size is static - can't zoom in, view from distance
-   unique - can't have in two different places
-   doesn't scale - too many people, etc
-   hard to archive/publish result of post-it activity

![](http://reganmian.net/wiki/_media/ideas:visual010.png)GroupScribbles
was designed to preserve most of the good features, while alleviating
many of the problems.

I was very excited to see a CSCL tool whose design explicitly referenced
how we conduct workshops, because I have myself written about this
previously, thinking that there were strong similarities and overlaps
between these two domains, in [[Grappling with ideas]].

Here I will discuss a few of the "affordances" of GroupScribbles, and
post-it notes, more in detail.

**Informal**

Above, it was listed that post-it notes were informal, and were more
suited to quick sketches than to detailed designs.
[[ref:roschelle2007ink|Roschelle et. al (2007)]] refer to Socrates'
drawing a sketch in the sand, and list the following advantages of
informal sketching:

-   more expressive of key concepts than a neat, chiseled presentation
-   informal sketch better invites participation of student in active
  reasoning, compare to formal diagram
-   act of drawing, gesturing and speaking in close synchrony let's him
  focus student's attention of meaning
-   by asking probing questions, learns about student's state of
  knowledge, adaptability of instruction

**Low tool specificity**

As [[ref:digiano2006learning|DiGiano, Tatar and Kireyev (2006)]] points
out, in choosing tools to support individual and collective
intelligence, there are two different choices. The first is to think
carefully about how to design the tool so that it can provide support
for explicit group processes. This is what Dan Suthers and others have
analyzed as "representational guidance" (see [my blog post about
this](http://reganmian.net/blog/2011/05/26/conceptually-explicit-representations-for-group-learning-and-representational-guidance/)).
This is a very powerful idea, that I find very attractive. However,
another approach is to use "light-weight tools that support
multi-faceted interactions with emergent conventions".

From what I understand, that's what David Jonassen argues in his book
about mind tools (which I have not read yet). These sticky notes are
also an example of this - of course, there are some clear attributes, as
seen above, and they clearly favor one kind of notes (sketchy, brief
sentences) over another (formalized, long narratives, elaborate
illustrations and designs). However, you can write what you want to,
place them where you want, you do not need to choose a certain size of
post-it for a certain kind of idea, or label explicit links between them
etc. You just write what comes to mind, moves them around till a pattern
emerges. There is something powerful and liberating to this as well.

**Coordination**

[[ref:roschelle2007ink|Roschelle et. al (2007)]] emphasizes the
important role GroupScribbles can play in coordinating collaborative
activity. They compare it to existing student response systems (a new
category to me), such as clickers, or [[Classroom Presenter]], which
also uses tablet PCs, but do not enable the students to take any active
role in coordination - it is all centrally coordinated by the teacher.
In contrast, GroupScribbles, because of the ability of students to take
notes into their private space, move them together in the collective
space, etc, allows quite sophisticated social learning scripts, while
freeing the teacher from spending too much time coordinating. This can
be seen from the [[ref:roschelle2007ink\#teaching\_patterns|scripts
listed in Roschelle]], and
[[ref:debarger2010teaching\#scripts|Debarger]]****

**Others**

Other things that were mentioned were playfulness and fun (without the
problem with coordination, as mentioned above). [Monica
wrote](http://reganmian.net/monica/csclintro/groupscribbles-for-quick-and-anonymous-knowledge-building/)
about an article I didn't read, and mentioned anonymity as a big thing -
this is a very interesting concept to think about.
[[:ref:debarger2010teaching|Debarger, et al.]] have also done very
interesting work on learning patterns, adaptible teaching, and formative
assessment.

**Conclusion**

A very interesting tool, and some very insightful articles. It was quite
interesting reading a number of articles about the same tool, but from
very different perspectives – and then reading a blog post by Monica
about another article I hadn't read. I would love to play with it (but
it seems to only be for Windows), or at least see it in use (I didn't
find any videos of it).

Stian