Elementary Students' Perceptions of Social Networks: Development, Experience, and Equity in Collaborative Software Design Activities

摘要

More recently, the analysis of social networks in computer-supported collaborative learning environments has received more attention. Less attention has been given to how the participants themselves see collaborative patterns and trends. Towards that end, we interviewed 131 fourth and fifth-grade elementary students at the end of four different ten week-long collaborative software design projects and asked them to describe the type of help they had either given to or received from team members and other students in their class. Technical help with programming problems was by far the most prominent type of help given or received. The frequency of helping interactions not only increased over the course of two design projects but also became more varied. Distribution of helping interactions became only more equitable in a second design project. The discussion addresses methodological issues in using students' perceptions of helping interactions in social network analysis, the nature of students' social resources, the impact of experience, and issues of gender equity in computer-supported collaborative learning.