The document discusses the role of discourse in learning, emphasizing the importance of context and the dynamic nature of knowledge construction through dialogue. It highlights the need for domain general analytics in analyzing peer interactions to enhance educational outcomes. The authors advocate for a cautious approach in developing tools for discourse analysis, acknowledging the complexities of language use in learning contexts.

1. Discourse,
Computation and
Context – Sociocultural
DCLA Revisited
Simon Knight @sjgknight
http://people.kmi.open.ac.uk/knight/
Karen Littleton
http://www.open.ac.uk/education-and-
languages/main/people/k.s.littleton
CC-BY-NC http://xkcd.com/1085/

2. Acknowledgements/References
This talk is based on:
Knight, S, and Littleton, K. “Discourse, Computation
and Context – Sociocultural DCLA Revisited.” In 1st
International Workshop on Discourse-Centric
Learning Analytics. Leuven, Belgium, 2013.
http://oro.open.ac.uk/36640/
Thanks to the anonymous reviewers, my
supervisors Simon and Karen, Yulan He and Rebecca
Ferguson for helpful comments and conversations.

3. Context in context
1. Research around discourse for learning
2. Particular emphasis on context
3. Current work in DCLA
4. Remaining challenge
5. Moving forward

4. Discourse for learning
supporting individuals’ subject Track subject language
learning
supporting psychological Track argument behaviours,
development – the development structures, and language
of oral language and reasoning
skills
promoting whole class and small Track social interaction
group understanding or
commonality
enabling sharing of ideas that can Track co-constructive artefact
be improved together (both whole development
class and small group)…

5. Context in learning discourse
Common Knowledge
• Shared Perspective
• Built through discourse and joint action
• It both constitutes a context, and is a dynamic
facet of context

6. Temporal Context
Mercer, Neil (2008) “The Seeds of Time: Why Classroom
Dialogue Needs a Temporal Analysis.”
• Education is not a series of discrete events
• Dialogue mediates this long term process
• Yet this aspect is not well theorised or
empirically studied

7. Common Knowledge
Background Dynamic
Historic Fluid
Based in communities of Built on co-construction
practice within groups
• Dialogue as a representation of context
• Dialogue as a dynamic co-constructed context

8. Context in learning discourse
Exploratory Talk and
Accountable Talk
• Critical constructive
engagement
• Justifications given
• Active participation
• Reasoning is visible, and
talk is accountable –
participants Interthink

9. E.g. of exploratory talk
A: OK (reads) so is she a good role model, and why?
A: Yeah I think she is
B: Wait though, we have to say why, why is she a
good role model?
A: Hm, she’s a good role model because she helped
people…
B: ….she helped them to get better
A: Yeah, and she helped them in like, a new way?
B: Right, she started a new method

10. DCLA
supporting individuals’ subject learning Subject
vocabulary use
supporting psychological development – the Rhetorical
development of oral language and reasoning marker use
skills
promoting whole class and small group Social Network
understanding or commonality Analysis
enabling sharing of ideas that can be improved Temporally
together (both whole class and small group)… driven discourse
analysis

11. What do we want?
• Domain general analytics
• For peer talk rather than peer/teacher or
peer/conversation agent
• With a focus on common knowledge, and
exploratory talk – related to positive outcomes

12. Combining DCLA
Education is interested in progress – getting from
here to there. Methods can be combined to:
1. identify the apt-concepts for any particular
discourse (row 1)
2. understand the network of intercolutors and
their contributions – conceptual & rhetorical
interthinking resources (rows 2 and 3)
3. and understanding how these discourses are
related across time and location (row 4)

13. The Challenge for context…
• Moving beyond understanding where
someone else is
• To understanding how they got there too (and
who they travelled with)
• And the (joint) artefacts they created, left
behind, and plan to create
What is happening v. what is being done

14. E.g. of exploratory talk
A: OK (reads) so is she a good role model, and why?
A: Yeah I think she is
B: Wait though, we have to say why, why is she a
good role model?
A: Hm, she’s a good role model because she helped
people…
B: ….she helped them to get better
A: Yeah, and she helped them in like, a new way?
B: Right, she started a new method

15. Disambiguation - A ‘basic’
challenge in DCLA

16. Example problems in DCLA & Education
• “Context is a problem, isn’t it?” Rhetoric and anaphora
are linguistic problems (as are speech acts such as ‘can
you pass the salt?’)
• “Stop that!” “is that right?” spoken by a child or
teacher is rather different
• “What were the key medical developments?” Asked at
start/end of lesson, or of different students
• “The wiglywoo” Words (or non-words) take on new
meanings through on going dialogue
• “should think about x” Can be an imperative, a
hypothesis, a question/suggestion, etc.

17. Documents v. Conversations
• Documents – relatively stable snapshots of
distribution of topics
• Conversations unfold, and topics are renegotiated
Thus Introne and Drescher:
• Analyse sequences of replies to understand word
clusters, changes, merges, splits to model co-
occurrence as opposed to modelling based on
dictionaries or other corpora

18. Methods as Context
The data we train on, and the processes we use have an
impact on classifications and how we can treat them
• Training sets require human coders – their methods are
an aspect of context
• Document splitting which treats each turn as a
document may gloss temporal aspects of context
• Smoothing across turns may rectify this (cf current
evidence)
• Other methods for temporal analysis

19. Methods as Context
• Topic modelling for knowledge flow (and
cohesive ties) (domain, and possibly social
network specific) – Transactivity
• Plus exploratory talk markers (domain-
general)

20. Discourse as Context
Discourse:
1. exists within a particular context and
mediates it, and
2. creates context, as a dynamic, collaborative,
discursive property.

21. You Are Here
Your Route/
landscape
Going forward
(with…)

22. Parallels in Pragmatic Web?
Move from:
1. syntax (logical forms and symbolic structures)
2. semantics (meaning of symbols) – preoccupation with
standardisation based on ontologies
3. pragmatics address the evolving contexts and
practices of creating, using, and developing epistemic
artifacts.
Language in action: The shift “from…language as a tool of
representing the world to its view as a means of
interacting with the world.” *22:39+
Context, language in action, community networks

23. A note of caution
• DCLA has novel potential for new assessment
practices
• However, we should tread cautiously…“in
developing tools with limited – but perhaps
unstated – views on the nature of language
use for learning”
• Once we can detect – how do we support?
(offline work)

24. Thank you for listening
@sjgknight
sjgknight@gmail.com
http://people.kmi.open.ac.uk/knight/