2. THE MECHANISMS OF COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

2.5 Appropriation

Internalization is a rather vague and somewhat mysterious process. Some more concrete mechanisms have been identified. Appropriation is one of them. It results from to the opportunistic feature of collaboration. Let us consider two agents A and B such as B is more skilled on the task to be performed. When one agent A has performed some action, his or her partner B attempts to integrate A's action into his own plan, i.e. to appropriate A's action. Learning occurs when A reinterprets his actions with respect to how B appropriated it [11]. Agent A learns progressively how to assemble the elementary piece of actions that he is able to perform into a coherent problem strategy.

While the socio-cultural paid primary attention to adult-child interaction, the appropriation mechanism is interesting because it also concerns adult-adult interaction, the most frequent one the Internet. This mechanism is central to the apprenticeship method. This method focuses on how one learns from watching and working with a more skilled partner [12,13]. Another interesting aspect of this mechanism is that it also concerns non-verbal interactions, such as gestures in manual work or in sport, although this does not really concern most distance education technologies.

ICCAI 95 article - 08 FEB 95

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