Deconstructing orchestration load: comparing teacher support through mirroring and guiding

Ishari Amarasinghe,Davinia Hernández-Leo,H Ulrich Hoppe

doi:10.1007/s11412-021-09351-9

Abstract

Under the notion of “CSCL scripts”, different pedagogical models for structuring and supporting collaboration in the classroom have been proposed. We report on a practical experience with scripts based on the Pyramid collaborative learning flow pattern supported by a specific classroom tool and a teacher-facing dashboard that implements mirroring and guiding support. The input data of our analysis stems from recordings of classroom interactions guided by several teachers using the PyramidApp with different levels of teaching support. For the analysis, we introduce a specific coding scheme enabling a quantitative comparison and deeper analysis using epistemic network analysis. The results show that the guiding support enabled teachers to perform more orchestration actions, more targeted interactions and to make more announcements to the class (regarding time, phase transitions, and students’ activity participation) when compared to the mirroring support. Teachers’ actionable differences observed under the mirroring and guiding support directed us to deconstruct the notion of orchestration load into different facets and to discuss how different support provisions correspond to the different facets of orchestration load.

Highlights

Teachers have a central and decisive role in the context of classroom collaborative learning
The notion of orchestration load is an important construct that needs to be given attention when designing tools and technologies to support orchestration. This notion is not sufficiently elaborated and differentiated in the existing literature as an important factor to be considered within the design decisions for teacher support tools
We investigated how different support provisions, i.e., mirroring and guiding, influence teachers’ orchestration actions and how the presence and absence of certain orchestration actions under different support conditions can be explained by taking into account the notion of orchestration load

Summary

Introduction

Teachers have a central and decisive role in the context of classroom collaborative learning. The execution of such learning activities may not always unfold according to the original plan as extraneous activities that were not predicted during the activity design time may create deviations Such unpredicted yet unavoidable incidents that occur during activity enactment demand teachers to make adequate design decisions in real-time and to adapt the learning design on-the-fly to attain fruitful learning outcomes, and to meet students’ expectations (Roschelle et al, 2013). In the context of collaborative learning, the notion of orchestration has been put forward to describe how teachers productively coordinate and manage classroom activities at different scales, e.g., individual, small group, and class-wide activities, under multiple constraints in real-time (Dillenbourg et al, 2009). Orchestration of collaboration is known to be a demanding task for the teachers as it requires effort to balance epistemic and social aspects of collaboration while taking into account other constraints, e.g., time, space, discipline, all of which emerge within classroom spaces (Cuendet et al, 2013)

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