In C. Chinn, G. Erkens, & S. Puntambekar (Eds.), Proceedings of the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) Conference (Vol. 8, Part 1, pp. 264 – 266). NJ: Rutgers University. CD ROM
We are engaged in the on-going development of a computer-supported collaborative learning environment within a virtual world and use it as a setting for studies exploring relationships between student mathematical cognition, computational literacy, and identity. Our design research is informed by the work of Gee (video games), diSessa (computational literacy), Cole (mediated collaboration), Abrahamson (embodied design for mathematics learning), and Lee (cultural modeling). Within the constructed virtual ecology, we are conducting an ethnographic study of a technologically enabled learning environment with real students bearing virtual identities. The participants are physically remote but embody characters with personae of their own making in playful activities that foster intrinsic motivation and bear mathematical and computational integrity that transcends the medium. Collecting both real and virtual data of a group of at-risk urban high-school students working in Teen Second Life, we examine for changes in participants’ cognitive–affective dispositions toward mathematical practice and identity.