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college-admissions test. These problems had unique correct answers. While these
provided a good starting point for our research, they were not well suited for col-
laborative knowledge building. Discourse around them was often confined to seeing
who thought they knew the answer and then checking for correctness. For the VMT
Spring Fests in 2005, 2006 and 2007, we moved to more involved math topics that
could inspire several hours of joint inquiry.
Even with straightforward geometry problems, it became clear that students
needed the ability to create, share and modify drawings within the VMT envi-
ronment. We determined that we needed an object-oriented draw program, where
geometric objects could be manipulated (unlike a pixel-based paint program). We
contracted with the developers of ConcertChat to use and extend their text chat
and shared whiteboard system, which is now available in Open Source. This system
included a graphical referencing tool as well as social awareness and history features
(Mühlpfordt & Stahl, 2007). In order to help students find desirable chat rooms and
to preserve team findings for all to see, we developed the VMT Lobby and integrated
a Wiki with the Lobby and chat rooms (Stahl, 2008). Gradually, the technology and
the math topics became much more complicated in response to the needs that were
revealed when we analyzed the trials of the earlier versions of the VMT service. As
the system matured, other research groups began to use it for their own trials, with
their own math topics, procedures, analytic methods or even new technical features.
These groups included researchers from Singapore, Rutgers, Hawai'i, Romania and
Carnegie-Mellon (Stahl, 2009).
The Nature of the New Science
The approach to chat interaction analysis that emerged in the VMT Project will now
be discussed in terms of a number of issues (which correspond to general issues of
most research methodologies, as indicated in parentheses):
Group Cognition in a Virtual Math Team (Research Question)
Learning—whether in a classroom, a workplace or a research lab—is not a sim-
plistic memorization or storage of facts or propositions, as traditional folk theories
had it. The term
learning
is a gloss for a broad range of phenomena, including the
development of tacit skills, the ability to see things differently, access to resources
for problem solving, the discursive facility to articulate in a new vocabulary, the
power to explain, being able to produce arguments or the making of new connections
among prior understandings (Stahl & Herrmann, 1999). We can distinguish these
phenomena as taking place within individual minds, small-group interactions or
communities of practice. The analysis of learning phenomena at these various levels
of analysis requires different research methodologies, appropriate to corresponding
