‘Guys, guys, guys, do you think this is important?’: a case study of successful remote collaborative problem-solving in two primary schools using multitouch technology

ABSTRACT

This study explores the interactions of two groups of three pupils, based on primary schools two hundred miles apart in the United Kingdom, working on the same history problem. Using information on a multi-touch table and communicating via a video link, the groups worked together to solve the problem by reading, evaluating and sharing clues using a flick gesture to construct a shared explanation within a history-based activity. Audio and visual data were recorded in both schools capturing the dialogue, gestures and interactions by both groups. Findings suggest that pupils shared their ideas intra-group by resizing clues on the screen; they also shared ideas inter-group by flicking clues between the schools. The intra- and inter-group talk was analysed to explore the construction of knowledge within and between the groups. The affordances and constraints of the multi-touch table and flick gesture both scaffolded and shaped the construction of knowledge. Building on Hakkarainen’s trialogical approach to learning, we suggest a ‘quadralogical’ approach that builds on the existing model and highlights the potential for remote collaboration between geographically distanced classrooms.

KEYWORDS:

• Multi-touch
• collaboration
• CSCL
• primary
• problem-solving
• history

Introduction

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the potential of interactive technologies, notably multi-touch devices (Beauchamp et al. 2019; Joyce-Gibbons 2023), to support problem-solving activities in the primary school. The benefits of collaborative learning have a strong evidence base in research over the past four decades (e.g. Roschelle 1992; Webb 2014), but the promised benefits of technology to support collaborative learning have remained elusive. One of the key benefits of using technologies in this way is that it opens up the potential for synchronous (real-time) collaboration between children in different schools and geographical locations (Beauchamp et al. 2019). A central part of all problem-solving activities is the use of talk and more specifically dialogic talk (Bakker, Smit, and Wegerif 2015).

For collaborative group work to be effective with children, there should be a clear group goal and individual accountability within the group (Atwood, Turnbull, and Carpendale 2010; Bruner 1996). When teachers and students share a joint inquiry, understanding is achieved through discussion and collaboration (Bruner 1996). Allot and Waugh (2019) reinforced this idea, suggesting that when a group has a shared didactic purpose, the collaboration that followed is more productive. Alexander (2008) suggested that a shared common goal within a group can contribute to dialogic forms of talk, as opposed to monologic talk in which only one voice is heard. Indeed, a shared intention with learners working towards the same goal can foster an environment in which they are more likely to actively comment and build on each other’s ideas and construct shared interpretations and ‘common knowledge’ (Edwards and Mercer 1987).

Group talk, however, is more than just talk (Cazden 2001; O’Connor and Michaels 2007). Mortimer and Scott (2003) suggested that group dialogue is central to the meaning-making process and thus central to learning, but they agreed that many children are unaware of how to talk in a group. For talk to be productive for learning in group work, there must be a focus on the sharing and evaluation of ideas, building ideas collectively, reasoning, providing justifications and elaborations, and employing evidence to support arguments; dialogue is intended to enable an understanding of one another’s knowledge and perspectives (Beauchamp and Kennewell 2010; Michaels and O’Connor 2012). In this project, the shared goal was to solve a historical mystery, validated in the original SynergyNet research (Leat and Higgins 2002; Mercier and Higgins 2014), using the clues provided, which were shared equally between the two groups of children in different geographical settings. As the clues were shared, it was not possible to solve the problem without sharing and discussing these clues.

Previous research on problem-solving with multi-touch tables has moved from large multi-touch tables, networked with cables in one room (local) in laboratory conditions (Higgins et al. 2012), by moving these large tables to different locations using internet connections, allowing schools in different parts of the country (distant) to collaborate (Beauchamp et al. 2019) via the internet, through to smaller mobile devices being used by primary pupils in different areas of the country via the internet in a single classroom in a school setting (Young 2021). In these latter collaborations, remotely located groups of primary pupils worked concurrently on a single problem. This paper explores a new phase in the iterative development of the SynergyNet collaborative software¹ (now renamed ‘Haymay’), for integrating multi-touch software in classrooms for collaborative problem-solving.

Literature review

Multi-touch technology

Multi-touch technology enables a surface (a touchpad or touch screen) to recognise the presence of more than one point of contact with the surface at the same time. The users’ inputs are captured through the position of their fingers, and the system output is displayed on the tabletop surface screen (Dillenbourg and Evans 2011). The affordance of enabling users to have access to more than one input on the same screen has raised expectations within education as groups can work synchronously to collaborate on the same device. This contrasts with the technology used in historical computer and collaborative learning studies, which used single input technology (such as a mouse), and, as a result, ‘when working in a group around a multi-touch surface, there is no longer the need to negotiate who has access to the content through a single interaction point’ (Mercier, Vourloumi, and Higgins 2017, 164). Multi-touch surfaces have, therefore, reduced the need to articulate thinking and reasoning to the group where physical demonstration may suffice (Marshall et al. 2008). 

Multi-touch technology has been explored in a variety of studies across the field of education from pre-school (Ward et al. 2016) through to higher education (Martinez-Maldonado, Yacef and Kay 2015) as well as informal settings such as museums (Zaharias, Machael, and Chrysanthou 2013). Evidence also suggests that multi-touch technology can be applied effectively across the curriculum in subjects such as mathematics (Ladel and Kortenkamp 2013) and English as a second language (Lin and Lee 2016). These studies highlight the potential of multi-touch technology specifically with group work, collaboration and collective problem-solving (Mercier and Higgins 2014).

Talk and collaboration

Technology on its own, however, does not guarantee effective use but can be combined with spoken language, or talk, which is a distinctively human tool for communicating and creating understanding (Mercer 2000). This combination has the potential to play an important role within education as ‘talk is both a medium of learning and a tool for learning’ (Myhill, Jones, and Hopper 2006, 7). Indeed, Allot and Waugh (2019) asserted that talk is not only central to learning but also builds and maintains relationships, communicates emotions and ideas, and allows the exchange of information. Within the elements of classroom interactions, talk is described as ‘central to the meaning-making process and thus central to learning’ (Mortimer and Scott 2003, 3).

There is growing evidence of the value of increasing the amount of talk during whole-class, group and individual activity (Kennewell et al. 2007; Laurillard 2002; Mercer and Littleton 2007; Mercer and Sams 2006; Slavin 2009; Wegerif 2004). However, Littleton and Mercer (2013) suggested that productive collaboration does not appear naturally in all groups when individuals are combined to work as a group. Group work is commonly witnessed in contemporary classrooms, but Littleton and Mercer (2013, 15) asserted that ‘when group work in the classroom is good it is good, it is very, very, very good; but when it is bad it is horrid’. To make it very good, research suggests that dialogic talk is most effective (Alexander 2000). Dialogic talk promotes criticality and encourages higher-order thinking skills, where group members play an active role and work to explore and accept differences. To help identify dialogic talk, Mercer (1995, 2000) and Littleton and Mercer (2013) categorised talk into three different types: exploratory talk, or the joint negotiation of ideas; cumulative talk, or the uncritical addition of knowledge claims; and disputational talk, or the competitive negotiation of knowledge claims.

Exploratory talk

The term ‘exploratory talk’ was first used by Barnes (1976) who defined a particular type of talk observed between peers in classrooms that were essentially different from the type of language used in interactions with the teacher. Mercer (1995) later argued that learning in group situations is based on children having to explain and justify their decisions to each other and described exploratory talk as exhibiting these features. In exploratory talk, opinions are explored, warranted and respectfully challenged (Atwood, Turnbull, and Carpendale 2010), and talk may be ‘hesitant as half-formed ideas or particular points are taken up and elaborated in some detail’ (Mercer and Hodgkinson 2008, 16).

Cumulative talk

Cumulative talk occurs when participants ‘build a shared understanding and body of knowledge from the accumulation of uncritically agreed upon pieces of knowledge’ (Atwood, Turnbull, and Carpendale 2010). It is described as the development of knowledge by mutual agreement in groups (Mercer 2000). In cumulative talk, power is shared across the group and views are valued but not challenged. In situations where a learning task does not require explicit reasoning, cumulative dialogue offers many advantages because learners may carry out coordination, negotiation and collaboration through this medium (Rojas-Drummond et al. 2006). In other situations, cumulative dialogue has the potential to develop into exploratory dialogue because the use of open questions such as ‘What?’ or ‘Why?’ provokes a shift towards a more exploratory attitude (Wegerif 2008).

Disputational talk

Disputational talk is described as a highly constraining, competitive form of social interaction characterised by an ‘unwillingness to take on the other person’s point of view, and the consistent reassertion of one’s own’ (Mercer 2000, 97). Talk within this category is oriented to making views heard, rather than understood. It is defensive and oppositional talk and is often considered a barrier to language, collaboration and learning (Mercer 1996). Littleton and Mercer (2013, 17) even suggested that ‘there is little good to be said for disputational talk’. Disputational talk is characterised by an initiation followed by a challenge that lacks any form of resolution, or a resolution is suggested, but it is not supported by the other members of the group. It is ‘effectively unproductive disagreement’ (Littleton et al. 2005, 168).

Unique affordances of technology to enhance group talk

Digital technology offers a range of unique affordances that can facilitate effective talk and be exploited within dialogue. A key affordance of digital technology is the ability to externalise thinking (Mercer, Warwick, and Ahmed 2017). For instance, technology enables ideas to be visualised by other group members in the form of posting text to a screen (Mercer et al. 2003), and pupils can share ideas visually with peers on a shared screen, allowing ideas to be traced and dialogues sustained and built upon over time (Kerawalla 2015). With connected devices, such dialogues can take place at any distance if the connection allows. The provisionality (Kennewell and Beauchamp 2007) of digital technology enables pupils the ability to move backwards and forwards through a task (Kershner et al. 2010), which can help pupils to verbalise, rehearse and share their thought processes to others in the group. Also, the multimodal nature of digital technologies enables ideas to be presented to the group in diverse ways such as annotating, drawing, sorting and manipulating images and objects (Beauchamp 2017). Ideas represented through digital content can be easily shared, which, in turn, can support classroom dialogue (Falloon and Khoo 2016).

Digital technology also has the potential to extend conventional conceptions of dialogue to include semiotic-mediated activity (Wells 1999; Twiner et al. 2010). Looi, Chen, and Ng (2010) noted that along with the ability to present ideas by non-verbal means, technology also affords additional avenues for a talk in the form of text messages, recorded video or images. The visual affordances of digital technology enabled non-verbal communication in Beauchamp et al.’s (2019) study in which local peers resized and repositioned text boxes that housed the activity’s clues on their shared screen to demonstrate their thinking. These text boxes were reduced in size or enlarged by group members and positioned on the screen to demonstrate their regarded importance as group members visually demonstrated their agreed cognition to the whole group. Hennessy (2020, 114) suggested that such digital representations may ‘embody knowledge as it gets developed, transformed and manipulated by teachers and learners through a dynamic process of shared, dialogic inquiry’. A key feature of most technologies is that this shared thinking process, or as Littleton and Mercer (2013) describe, ‘interthinking’, can be conducted across a group and increasingly across and between digital devices, both local and distant.

Environment

Warwick et al. (2010) suggested that digital technology can provide both a tool and an environment to share dialogue. Similarly, Wegerif (2007, 2010) suggested that digital technology can provide a ‘dialogic space’ in which differing perspectives and understandings can be collectively explored, with the material being able to be modified to record the development of ideas. By opening up a ‘dialogic space’, ideas can be put forward, respected, scrutinised and challenged in a supportive discursive environment (Kerawalla, Petrou, and Scanlon 2013). Although a dialogic space can be created without technology, Nikolaidou (2012) proposed that technology enables pupils to work synchronously and deploy joint action when working on tasks in a way that is not possible in a non-digital condition. Monaghan (2005) proposed that although computers (like teachers) prompt, respond and frame the dialogues with the students, their infinite patience, non-judgmental (inter)face and absence of expectations of the students can create a discussion to become a powerful space in which students can talk and think their way to a solution of the problem they face.

Despite all this potential, however, Hakkarainen (2009) warned against the naive assumption that technology-enhanced learning environments somehow, by themselves, transform educational practice. He noteed that for learning environments to be conducive in promoting dialogue and for pupils to collaborate, the environment must be inclusive, with all group members contributing and learners must have increased autonomy and be motivated to contribute. If successful, however, Looi, Chen, and Ng (2010) suggested that with appropriate pedagogy in place and with the support of digital technology, pupils may take increased ownership and responsibility for their learning and pupils demonstrated examples of sharing decision-making rather than the authority to rest solely with the teacher.

Remote connection, an interactive portal to distant voices

Contemporary technologies can now allow dialogue between people who would otherwise have been geographically separated. Pupils can now communicate with others in separate locations, simultaneously sending and sharing multimedia information. Technology opens the potential audiences beyond those immediately involved and beyond the confines of the classroom. Beauchamp et al. (2019) described how local groups (in the same school) worked with a distant group (in another school) as a team, connected by digital technology and quickly built rapport quickly by exploring common interests and by their fascination with each other’s regional accents. Digital technology can now enable learning beyond the classroom borders, which can be productive for dialogic activity due to exposure to alternative perspectives (Littleton and Mercer 2013; Major, Warwick, and Rasmussen 2018) from what would otherwise be distant voices. In addition, Singleton (2016) highlighted how technology enabled students with limited background knowledge to tap into a pool of others’ perspectives.

Research focus

The scope of this paper is to explore and analyse the emergent collaborative practices that pupils evolve when working with the Haymay technology. More specifically, it examines that the role gesture-based sharing through technology plays in the types of talk, within and between the groups, and how it facilitates talk, leading to collaborative, team (that is, the two separate groups together) problem-solving. Previous research (Beauchamp et al. 2019; Higgins et al. 2012) has focused only on the first minute of interactions. This paper provides new knowledge as it moves to analyse the whole problem-solving sequence, using a case study of two groups in two separate schools who successfully solved a history mystery (examining the cause(s) of the Great Fire of London), working collaboratively with distant groups using technology.

Ethics

Ethical approval was gained through university ethics processes, and informed consent was gained from pupils and parents using age-appropriate explanatory letters and consent forms. As the data contained protected categories of information (voice and visual data), it was stored securely, and access was only provided to the research staff associated with the project. As the project involved two universities, a data management plan was drawn up as part of the ethical approval process to ensure compliance with relevant statutory legislation (Data Protection Act 2018) and BERA (2024) guidelines. Informed consent was also gained from all school partners.

Task

One local group of pupils (n = 3, in the same school) in each setting worked on a mobile multi-touch device and could see and hear the other distant group (over 200 miles away, n = 3, but in the same school) using video technology to provide a problem-solving environment. The set-up is summarised in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Set-up within and between schools.

At the start of the activity, each group had half the clues to solve the problem in the middle of the multi-touch device (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Example of clues on one table at start of activity.

Each group was able to move and manipulate (e.g. turn or resize) their clues on their device (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Example of clues during activity (moved and resized by pupils).

Each clue could also be ‘flicked’ (McNaughton et al. 2017) between locations through the use of gesture – Figure 4 – using the mobile multi-touch surfaces. A clue is transferred to a screen in another location by ‘flicking’ it towards the top of the screen. It disappears from one screen and immediately reappears on its twin in the other classroom.

Figure 4. Flick gesture.

This ability to quickly share (predefined) content in either direction was a key feature of stimulating and sustaining the verbal interactions facilitated by the video feeds.

A teacher was present with each group but only to set the task and support any technical issues. In total, four schools (in pairs) took part in the project, but this paper uses a case study of one group of Year 6 (ages 10–11 years) from two schools (Case study C and D – CSC and CSD) with three pupils in Northern England (3 females) in School C and three pupils in South Wales (3 females) in School D who successfully suggested a solution to the shared problem. Each group was randomly allocated by the class teacher in each school. Data collection took place in schools. Audio and visual data were recorded in both locations capturing the dialogue, gesture and interactions by both groups. The audio and visual data were transcribed, noting the pupils’ verbal and physical interactions for the whole activity. In accordance with ethical practice, all data were anonymised, e.g. C1 (school C pupil 1) and D2.

Data analysis

In analysing the sequence of activities, it became apparent that there was a need for a unit of analysis (UoA) (Hennessy 2023) of sufficient granularity to identify key uses of technology and how this facilitated or supported talk, leading to successful problem-solving. An important feature of the analysis was to identify the different forms of contribution (e.g. verbal, non-verbal, gesture, spatial positioning of clues) and what preceded and followed. However, it was not always obvious how or why the pupils had used gestures (e.g. to resize and move clues) without some form of conjecture. To minimise this, the flick gesture provided an unambiguous, identifiable action that could form the focus of the unit of analysis, which also included immediately preceding and follow-up talk and actions, that provided the context for the analysis. The flick gesture was quickly adopted by both groups and used in a range of ways to communicate, share clues, initiate and sustain ideas with their distanced peers. The flick was used so readily between these two groups that it became part of the dialogic process towards the end of the activity, which we will return to below.

If the flick provided the trigger to identify the unit of analysis, an immediate problem was where one unit of analysis ended and another began. For instance, some were short:

D2 – they must have had a lot of money with a maid, they would have had a big building and loads of buildings around

C2– I will send you this one it says about the buildings (flicks the clue to school D)

D3 – (the flicked clue is read) nearly 90 parish churches surrounded the area where the fire started, that is a lot of people.

Others led to extended talk and flick sequences, all part of the same discussion. These often involved language that built, sustained or reinforced the talk about the flicked clue and/or a line of reasoning, such as ‘we have this one as well’ (school C) or ‘we will send this one back’ (School D).

In view of this, the analysis focused on UoAs beginning with talk (normally intra-group – within the local group), included a flick, and was followed by more talk, normally a mixture of intra- and inter-groups (between local and distant groups). If the follow-up talk included a new flick, it was included in the same unit of analysis.

The analysis focused on the orchestration of the setting, as an ecology of resources including human, physical (e.g. books) and digital (in this case the multi-touch tablet). In this context, orchestration, or teacher’s ‘shaping’ of modes and resources (Twiner et al. 2010, 220), is regarded as ‘carrying out tasks in such a way as to optimise the potential for learning’ (Beauchamp and Kennewell 2013, 181). Furthermore, Trouche and Drijvers (2014, 196) suggested that orchestration applies ‘not only to the episodes of discussions … [but also] the management of both space and time of a learning environment, according to the different stages of the task to be carried out’. This distinction is helpful in the discussion of the role talk and technical interactions that follow. Although discussing interactive whiteboards, Beauchamp and Kennewell (2013, 180) asserted that ‘the board is not merely one of the resources to be orchestrated, but it has features that afford the act of orchestration itself’ can equally be applied to the multi-touch surface in this context.

The recent existing literature on orchestration in an educational context has focused on teacher’s pedagogic orchestration of the setting (e.g. Kim, Choi, and Lee 2019; Song 2021). The current study heeds Kennewell et al.’s (2008, 66) reminder that ‘It is not only teachers who orchestrate features in the classroom, however; learners also may actively seek and evaluate resources to help them achieve their goals’. In the same way that teachers use talk (e.g. posing questions and seeking responses) as part of the orchestration of the features of the setting (Kennewell et al. 2007), pupil talk can also serve the same purpose.

The way tasks are carried out will depend on how learners (in this case) perceive, use and are guided by the affordances and constraints in the setting. Affordances, originating in the work of Gibson (1986), are both human and technical and provide a ‘theoretical lens’ (Hugo and Blewett 2016, 56) for education research. Affordances include talk as the key medium for the pupils in the continual negotiation between each other and resources highlighted by Greeno (1998). Gaver (1991, 79) suggested that affordances are ‘fundamental objects of perception’, where ‘people perceive the environment directly in terms of its potentials for action’. It is important to note the plural use of potentials, as affordances can be perceived in different ways, in different contexts and by different people (Ostern and Rosemann 2021). Kennewell (2001) asserted that affordances are ‘attributes of the setting which provide potential for action’, such as a door handle that can be turned to gain entry to a room.

Constraints ‘are the conditions or limitations on action imposed by features of the environment; … [and] "may provide structure for their actions in a positive form (guidance) or a negative form (obstacle to be overcome)" (Kennewell et al. 2008, 65). They ‘may be imposed intentionally to structure activity for learning’ (Beauchamp and Kennewell 2013, 181). In this study, the fixed nature of the text in the clues (i.e. cannot be edited) and the fact that each group only had half of the clues acted as positive constraints to structure the learning activity.

The role of affordances and constraints is explained by Greeno (1998) who stresses that:

attunements to affordances and constraints of activity systems support individuals’ participation in activity systems but do not determine them. Activity is a continual negotiation of people with each other and with the resources of their environments.

Talk is a central feature of such negotiation and forms an important part of any analysis of classroom activity. Therefore, the talk within each UoA was analysed using the three types of talk (disputational, cumulative and exploratory) to explore how technology initiated and sustained talk leading to problem-solving.

Findings

The shared problem was solved by the pupils in this case study, who demonstrated a range of collaborative practices, as they orchestrated the environment. The orchestration involved technical and verbal orchestration, which are presented in turn below, leading to the presentation of a conceptual model showing their inter-relationship.

Technical orchestration

Moving and resizing

Both groups from schools C and D followed similar patterns of moving and resizing clues observed in previous Synergynet studies (Higgins et al. 2012; Joyce-Gibbons 2023). At the start of the activity, pupils in both groups ordered and often resized clues, normally reading silently to themselves. Both groups initially worked within their local group before sharing with the distant groups. ‘Resize’ and ‘move’ gestures were observed frequently during this initial period of the activity as pupils repositioned the clues to be able to read through the digital stack of clues. As these clues were read by pupils, the ‘resize’ and ‘move’ gestures were utilised as a method to gain the attention of the distant group. For example, pupil C3 resized a clue she was reading and moved this clue to a more central position on the screen to indicate that this may be important to her local peers, these group members read and then discussed the clue. Joint attention was also gained verbally by pupils reading clues aloud and by pointing to clues on the screen.

The centre of the screen was used by both groups as an area to focus joint attention on clues for local peers. This was demonstrated by pupil D3 as she read a clue aloud and then moved it to the middle of the screen, whilst enlarging it and moving it rapidly from side to side to gain the attention of her local peers, who then both read this clue.

Screen used as an interface to order the group thinking for local peers

The technology enabled pupils to explicitly demonstrate their thinking to their local peers who shared the same screen. This was seen in both groups. For instance, school C arranged the clues on their screen into what they deemed and agreed as ‘relevant’ and ‘not relevant’. School D began to arrange clues into what they ‘had read’ and what ‘they needed to read’. After further discussion, the strategy was adopted by group C and evolved to group D, also ordering the clues into what they deemed as ‘important’ to the left-hand side of the screen and the ‘not important’ to the right-hand side of the screen. The linear order of clues interchanged (flicked) on the screen as the activity went on was influenced by group discussions and collective decision making. For example, C3 asked ‘do we think this clue is important?’ (moving a clue to the centre of the screen). Pupil C1 read the clue and moved this clue to the top of the listed clues on the left-hand side of the screen. The decision to order the clues on the screen was led by the pupils in both groups.

Flick gesture

As discovered with previous Synergynet studies (Beauchamp et al. 2019; McNaughton et al. 2017), the novelty and immediacy of the flick gesture retained engagement and motivation within the task. Pupils were visibly excited when they sent and received flicked clues. An example of this was seen with Pupil C1 who watched in awe as she flicked a clue to school D and this clue was returned via the flick gesture at the start of the activity:

C1: (when a clue was flicked back to them) Oh wow, it's back. Cool!

Pupils visibly enjoyed using the flick gesture, which offered immediate means of communication with their distanced group. However, the flick soon lost novelty value and became an integrated part of the orchestration of the setting to initiate and sustain the discussion of ideas. This fluency of use, and sustained seamless integration of the flick with talk, was different from previous studies and will be returned to later.

Flick to initiate the talk.

The flick was used to share and initiate talk with distant peers to develop group cognition about a particular subject. The flick was used by groups openly to share ideas, which initiated talk and engagement from the distant group. For example:

C1, C2 and C3: Guys, Guys, Guys do you think this is important? (Calling to the video conferencing screen)

C1: We are sending it to you now. (S1 flicks the clue)

   D3 on Wednesday night the wind hushed and the fire burned gently. (Reads the flicked clue in loud voice)

Groups initially began to announce when they were sending clues via the flick gesture, but, as time went on in the activity, this stopped as groups became increasingly more confident in working with one another. Pupil C1, for example, at the start of the activity announced just before she flicked a clue to the distant group: ‘guys do you think this is important? We are sending it you now’. Towards the end of the activity, the clues were flicked without announcement. Instead, reasoning was provided for why a clue was shared, as seen by pupil C1 who stated, ‘I am sending you this. It’s about oil and you mentioned oil earlier’.

Flick gestures used to sustain talk.

Individual pupils were able to offer their opinions using intra-group (within the local group) talk, but the flick initiated inter-group (between two distant groups) talk to construct knowledge together in sustained talk. For example,

C3 – Wait they were saying about pudding lane, should we send this one to them?

   D3 yeah that’s probable … houses were pulled down to stop the fire spreading

C1, C2 and C3 – Guys we have something about pudding lane.

C2: Should we send it to you?

(C2: Flicks)

    D3 pudding lane … oh yeah, we have something about pudding lane.

   D1 We have loads

   D3 yeah we do, we have two

C2 and C3 – did you get it?

   D1 and D3 um hundreds of rats lived in pudding lane

C – Is that useful?

   D3 – Oh yeah, because it’s made of pudding

C1 – Laughs

Verbal orchestration

Types of talk

No incidences of disputational talk were demonstrated by any of the pupils across the two groups. Most of the talk was productive, presented without judgement and was listened to by all parties, which is characterised as ‘cumulative talk’ by Littleton et al. (2005), which adds uncritically to what has gone before (Littleton and Mercer 2013). Cumulative talk was observed frequently in and across both groups as pupils were patient and listened to one another’s ideas, and dialogue was used to build collective group knowledge through an accumulation of ideas. Patient and purposeful listening were demonstrated within this type of talk, not only with local peers but also with their distant peers.

Groups welcomed ideas from their distant peers and invited responses via direct questioning as demonstrated by pupil C3 who stated that ‘We know where and when this took place, do we know why it happened?’. A common cumulative pattern that emerged between the two groups was when groups read the order of what they deemed to be the important clues they had in front of them. Groups listened intently without interruption as they shared ideas.

Exploratory talk

The flick was also used by groups to support and sustain exploratory talk as seen in the following extract:

D3 – Yeah, So which. Which one is right, people tried to put up a fire with water and buckets of water? But what if they did it when it was too late?

D2 – Yeah that would..

(D2 flicks a clue)

D3 – It would have been too late then

  C1 – Oh! We have got something about the buckets here saying that the buckets were made of wood and leather.

  C2 – Yeah. Is that right? (reads and resizes the clue)

  C1 – So maybe the buckets would have set on fire (C1 flicks a clue)

(D3 and D1 Start resizing and rotating a new clue)

D1 – The buckets … 

D3 – The buckets were made of wood and leather

D1 – They set on fire yeah.

D3 – If the..

D2 – If someone has left it, it would take worst

D1 – Yeah

D2 – Yeah, so were asleep so that is how it set fire

D1 – The maid came down to stop the fire from spreading

  C2 – The People tried to. Yeah. Oh wait yeah, the buckets.

  C2 – So those two. Put this over here. (Points at two clues and moves them to the right of the screen)

  C3 – So they set on fire because the baker dropped the embers.

  C1 – (read clue) left the embers on but the people tried to pull it out with the buckets people who are awake but the buckets made of wood. (C1 flicks this clue)

Besides the talk, what is striking here, and in other examples, is how the flick gesture has become an integral part of the dialogue, rather than a technical novelty.

Exploratory talk was demonstrated by both groups throughout this collaborative problem-solving activity. This is interesting as these distant pupils had never worked together before, and as Mercer and Littleton (2013) noted, exploratory talk is not guaranteed when pupils are grouped together. Additionally, Littleton et al. (2005) suggested the active joint engagement of children with one another’s ideas is usually scarce and usually requires additional training. Nevertheless, in this study, pupils in the distant groups actively listened to one another, contributed and built on each other’s ideas and built knowledge together. For instance, they discussed a clue about the baker’s maid:

       D3: Yeah because his maid was the first to go. So, because his maid was the first to go then.. (interrupted by Group C).

C1: She might have tried to put out the fire

C2: She was the first one who … who was killed

     D3: Yeah, she was the first one who noticed it.

     D1: Maybe she went to the bakery and saw it.

C3: You know the 16 (who were killed) have to go down

     D3: Oh yeah maybe they walked in and she just saw the fire and couldn’t get out

     D1: Yeah she tried to put it out

     D2: I think the problem is … 

     D3: I think they died when they were asleep

C1: So the maid … 

     D2: The problem is, if the maid was in the bakery and she died that day, then she wouldn’t have had the time to tell anybody that there was a fire spreading.

     D1: Yeah

C1: Yeah

C2: Yeah

This provides an example in which knowledge is made more publicly accountable, and reasoning is more visible in the talk.

Discussion

The results show that the flick gesture was the primary technical tool for orchestrating problem-solving, utilising the affordances of the tablets to support collaboration and encourage talk. The flick, in fact, became an integral part of the talk and became seamlessly integrated into the process of orchestration of the setting, including technology and people. As such the combination of technical and verbal orchestration,

Although the use of technology in itself did not transform the learning environment, it does suggest that it is part of a ‘reciprocally creative process in which tools evolve to better facilitate intended practices and novel practices are created in order to make better use of novel possibilities provided by technologies’ (Hakkarainen 2009, 2124). As such, the children perceived the potential for actions (Gaver 1991) of the multi-touch screen, the video technology between settings, talk within and between groups, and the flick gesture, both singly and in combinations. As such, the collaborative technologies, the social practices of the children (including talk) and the available intellectual resources (both technical and human) are ‘fully … fused’ (Hakkarainen 2009, 214) to enable a problem-solving, collaborative learning environment.

This environment began with the existing knowledge from individuals (monological), which was supplemented by the use of dialogic talk (Bakker, Smit, and Wegerif 2015), predominantly exploratory, which was instrumental in solving the problem (the cause(s) of the Great Fire of London) posed at the start of the challenge. This also accords with another interpretation of dialogic interaction posited by Hakkarainen (2009, 216) with the ‘social appropriation of community knowledge’ (Hakkarainen 2009, 216) within and between the community of learners in both settings. When combined with technology, the data suggest a move from a dialogic to a trialogic model of learning, proposed by Hakkarainen (2009), and later built on by others (e.g. Paavola and Hakkarainen 2014), which foregrounds ‘interaction between individuals, communities, and shared knowledge-laden artefacts being developed’ (Hakkarainen 2009, 216). In Hakkarainen’s (2009, 216) model, a trialogic approach involves the development of ‘shared knowledge-laden artefacts’, which are ‘shared within and useful for the community’ (Sansone et al. 2021, 591). Our work suggests that not all such artefacts are knowledge-laden in themselves, not intended to be shared beyond the two groups involved in the activity – although this could perhaps strictly be regarded as a community.

In the current study, we argue that the artefacts being developed in practical terms are the sorted clues on the multi-touch devices, but we propose, however, that the interactions themselves (both technical and talk) represent an additional dimension, facilitated by the flicking of clues sometimes as stimuli and sometimes as responses. The physical sorted clues (the artefact) are only a manifestation of the interactions. They are not laden with any ‘knowledge’ on their own, nor intended to be useful to, or shared with, others.

The successful orchestration of the technical features of the setting (in this case, the video link, flick gesture and multi-touch devices) through effective intra – and inter-group exploratory talk potentially becomes a fourth, quadralogic, dimension. Without this dimension, the ‘artefacts’ of the final organisation of clues on the multi-touch tablets would be of no use in this case as they represent an external and temporal representation of the end result of the activity. In fact, this fourth dimension represents a process, rather than a product, in which the product is internal to the pupils, unless articulated to explain their solution to the problem. Nonetheless, although this internalised solution exists outside of the trialogic end-product, the co-creation (Pifarré 2019) of the ‘product’ is an essential part of the proposed quadralogic process. In the same way that trialogic approaches to learning integrate the monologic and the dialogic (Sansone et al. 2021); the quadralogic approach to learning also integrates the trialogic one.

It is important to note, however, that all of these dimensions (and hence an integral part of the suggested quadralogic approach) and interactions took place within the intentionally imposed structures, or constraints, set by the teachers in advance, namely the non-editable clues, split between groups, which could be manipulated through the multi-touch screen. The importance of pedagogic design is an over-riding contextual element of the use of collaborative interactive technologies in learning (Sansone et al. 2021).

Limitations

We recognise that this study focuses (deliberately) on only two groups of pupils in two schools, who were successful in solving a collaborative problem-solving task using technologies. While we are not making wider claims for other pupils, we suggest that our analysis of how these groups successfully collaborated at a distance highlights the potential of such technologies, when combined with exploratory talk, to allow children to succeed in problem-solving through verbal and technical orchestration.

Conclusion

The affordances and constraints of multi-touch technology, combined with video allowing intra- and inter-group exploratory talk, offer a novel and powerful form of collaboration, which extends beyond the use of physical tablets in the classroom. This case study suggests the emergence of a novel quadriological approach to learning, reflecting the successful synergy of these factors to enable collaborative problem-solving between geographically distant classrooms – in this case within the UK, but also potentially anywhere with an internet connection – independent of the teacher. At the same time, it is important for activities to be framed by good pedagogic design to enable meaningful collaboration.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Association for the Study of Primary Education (ASPE).

Notes

1 The original SynergyNet software adapted for the Haymay project is freely available – https://github.com/synergynet.