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Troubles of Understanding in Virtual Math Teams

Troubles of Understanding in Virtual Math Teams Nan Zhou Gerry Stahl, Advisor When groups engage in math problem solving in an online environment like the VMT (Virtual Math Teams) service, they can face significant challenges from troubles of individual and group understanding that emerge in their problem-solving process. We are interested in how shared understanding is interactionally constructed and accomplished in a collectivity engaged in mathematical reasoning and problem solving in the VMT environment when understanding troubles or differences of understanding between members arise. From our analyses of chat interactions of such collectivities, we have come to see that it is by attending to, managing, and resolving troubles of understanding that shared understanding is achieved. This dissertation investigates the practices by which participants introduce and present such troubles of understanding and how these problems are managed and dealt with by members of the collectivity. In particular, by analyzing the episodes of interaction of VMT groups, we document the interactional methods employed by participants to initiate and constitute their troubles as such and we explicate the procedures involved by which those troubles are addressed.