While the problem of intersubjectivity has motivated a great deal of sociological research, there has been little consideration of the relationship between intersubjectivity-sustaining practices and the physical environment in which these are enacted. The Museum of Jurassic Technology (MJT) is a strategic site for exploring this relationship. With its labyrinthine layout and bewildering exhibit...

With the emergence of technologies designed to support social activities online, it is beneficial to explore their potential in novel application areas. These studies, in the research tradition of Bowers et al. (1996), can be used to evaluate and develop technologies while providing the opportunity to study the social practices that develop around their use. We examine the use of online seminar...

Network analysis, an area of mathematical sociology and anthropology crucial to the linking of theory and observation, developed dramatically in recent decades. Methodological developments are recounted that make possible a theoretical synthesis of social network theory in relation to understanding of social dynamics. The past 35 years saw a massive development of tools for network analysis, sp...

As a still-emerging interdisciplinary field of research and practice, CSCL has an opportunity to incorporate the full power of ethnographic analysis into its understanding and scaffolding of collaborative learning. By challenging common sense understandings and revealing cultural assumptions embedded in system designs, the work of Diana Forsythe exemplifies the promise and peril of critical eth...

Many believe that ubiquitous computing will succeed when it has faded into the background of everyday life and work—that is, when it has become mundane. This paper examines the potential for technology to enhance users’ experience of their environments through the improvement of the unremarkable activities that comprise everyday experience. Based on a 6-month longitudinal study, we describe how...

Recent moves to more explicitly account for the relationship between the social and the material in the Information Systems discipline, under the banner of socio-materiality, also imply the need for a closer examination of practice. Using John Law’s (2004) exposition of “method assemblage” as foregrounding and backgrounding, a re-reading of Jonathan Grudin’s (1990) account of the various deline...

Most textbooks in HCI and CSCW do not offer a coherent and over–arching understanding of social and technological issues. They present a variety of techniques and technologies, and outline a little history, but offer little in terms of theory that addresses the complexity of collaborative systems’ structure and use. The majority of practitioners and researchers do not see theory as one of the t...

Synchronous communication using text chat—often combined with a shared whiteboard—is increasingly used in CSCL. This form of interaction and learning in small online groups of students presents novel challenges, both for the participating students and for researchers studying their work. Chats differ from talk-in-interaction since the composition, posting and visual inspection of text and graph...

More than we realize it, knowledge is often constructed through interactions among people in small groups. The Internet, by allowing people to communicate globally in limitless combinations, has opened enormous opportunities for the creation of knowledge and understanding. A major barrier today is the poverty of adequate groupware. To design more powerful software that can facilitate the buildi...

More than we realize it, knowledge is often constructed through interactions among people in small groups. The Internet, by allowing people to communicate globally in limitless combinations, has opened enormous opportunities for the creation of knowledge and understanding. A major barrier today is the poverty of adequate groupware. To design more powerful software that can facilitate the buildi...