Investigating scaffolding during collaborative reading on the tabletop computer

Abstract

This study investigates the scaffolding process and student interaction, from a sociocultural perspective, in a tabletop assisted language learning environment for collaborative reading. The study furthers understanding of features of traditional conceptualizations of scaffolding as a learning construct in the context of technology-mediated social interaction. This scaffolding manifests when learners interact with one another in different user (verbal and non-verbal) modes, and with elements or attributes of tabletop technology during collaborative reading tasks. Tabletop technology is seen to add an extra dimension to the scaffolding metaphor, and this study is an attempt to explore features of this metaphor and how scaffolding is applied in this new learning platform. To achieve this, a design-based approach as adopted, resulting in a multi-touch tabletop application for digital collaborative strategic reading (DCSR). The DCSR application is designed to lead students through several digital reading stages: previewing, brainstorming, prediction, click and clunk, get the gist, and wrap-up. DCSR was trialled with four students of English as a second language (ESL) over five instruction sessions. The sessions were video-recorded, and at the end of the five sessions students were interviewed to provide self-reports of their experiences of the learning environment, the nature of assistance they received, and how they viewed their performance in this environment. Analysis of verbal, non-verbal, and system/technical modes of interaction provided an overview of the learning context for examining scaffolding processes and student interaction. Findings reveal a range of interactions (student–student, student–tabletop, and student–tabletop–student interactions). These were brought together under a taxonomy of functions employed to assist the students’ reading comprehension and demonstrate that the tabletop computer can provide scaffolding for reading comprehension via user (verbal and non-verbal) scaffolding strategies and system/technical scaffolding tools.