DISTRIBUTEDLEARNING · Effects of Joint and Multimodal Remembering on Collaborative Learning

Often remembering in learning activities is supported by the social and material environment in which the specific activities unfold. However, so far, little research has been done to integrate the ways in which joint remembering supports collaborative learning tasks in social interactions with other people by means of verbal resources (e.g. lexical and syntactic alignment) with the embodied (e.g. using hands to give directions) and distributed (e.g. relying on tools such as pencil and paper to solve mathematical operations) nature of these practices in relation to educational and work settings. Hence, by paying particular attention to role of joint remembering in multimodal interactions related to educational and work environment, the general aims of this project are: i) to examine how collaborative learning is grounded in successful joint remembering processes; and ii) to explore the central role that the integration of linguistic, embodied, social and material resources plays in collaborative learning activities, by transforming them into distributed practices across space and time. The results of this project will constitute a first step towards a more ecologically valid framework on collaborative remembering and distributed learning, which then could be tested by psychologists, and learning and communication scientists in natural as well as experimental settings.