Gerry Stahl's eLibrary Series

This volume considers the two most important philosophers of the modern age. Today, the philosophies of Marx and Heidegger are still extremely relevant—provided one adapts them to the current socio-historical context and adjusts each to the implicit criticisms of the other—as indicated in this book. In particular, Marx countered the ideology of individualism by analyzing social structures and interpersonal interactions at different units of analysis than the individual person. Heidegger also questioned the traditional ontology of natural objects with innate attributes by proposing dynamic interactive processes of beings in their ecological context. When the author attended Northwestern University, it had the only American department of philosophy that encouraged the study of European philosophy. He also conducted the research for this doctoral dissertation during three years in Germany: at Heidelberg, where Heidegger's work was continued, and at Frankfurt, where critical theory extended Marx' thinking. Recently, the author returned to the confrontation of Marx and Heidegger, illustrated with the explorations of electronic music. This brief essay is appended to the book to show how its themes have persisted and matured over 50 years. During his intervening academic career, the author applied conceptual and methodological perspectives from Marx and Heidegger to the theory of CSCL (computer-supported collaborative learning), developing a theory of group cognition.

The idea of personalizable software is fashionable today. I explored it in a number of software prototypes a decade or two earlier. The perspectives mechanism in Hermes, my dissertation software system, was an initial major initiative in this direction, allowing specialists to personalize their views of designs and associated design rationale. WebNet was a follow-up system to integrate the perspective mechanism into discussion-forum collaboration software. Subsequent systems explored personalization mechanisms in systems for work and for learning, including TCA for teachers developing and sharing curriculum and systems for automated critics in design systems or reviewers of journal articles. In each case, the mechanisms were intended to support users to view and discuss materials from their personal perspectives and to share those views with others to encourage building group perspectives. The volume is organized in terms of essays on (a) structured hypermedia, (b) personalizable software, (c) software perspectives and (d) applications to health care, education and publishing.

Here is a diverse collection of writings, starting with my undergraduate thesis on Nietzsche. As an undergraduate, I realized that I did not know how to write and I began by experimenting with assembling quotes from the materials I was discussing. After studying German philosophy from Hegel and Marx to Heidegger and Adorno, my writing became excessively complex, trying to capture German syntax in English sentences. Then, during my community organizing days, I learned to write more clearly. This volume reflects those stylistic changes as well as playing with some ideas that are later woven into more academic presentations. This volume includes a wide-ranging diversity of writings on philosophy, aesthetics, politics, technology and history.

"Essays in CSCL" reports on the author's research in computer-supported collaborative learning, covering a broad range of topics. It begins with general reflections on the importance of CSCL as a research field, situating Stahl's work on the Virtual Math Teams Project and his theory of group cognition within the field of CSCL. It describes the VMT research project, including its research approach, technology, pedagogy and analysis methods. Mostly, it discusses in some detail the findings that have emerged from the VMT Project about the nature of online interaction in that type of CSCL setting. The volume concludes with reports of current work in the project and future directions that are underway. In this way, it elaborates, deepens and extends the presentation in Stahl's two major publications, "Group Cognition" (2006, MIT Press) and "Studying Virtual Math Teams" (2009, Springer) and prepares the broader background for the companion volume, "Essays in Group Cognition" (2011, Lulu).

Versions of "Computer-supported collaborative learning: An historical perspective" by Gerry Stahl, Timothy Koschmann and Daniel D. Suthers for a global audience: in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Romanian and German. An introduction to the educational research field of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning from an interactional perspective.

As Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning from its founding in 2006 to my retirement from that position at the end of 2015, I drafted an editorial introduction to each quarterly issue. This provided a venue for me to comment on the importance of each published article (from my perspective) and sometimes to offer my ideas or reflections on the field of CSCL or one of its central issues. The 39 introductions included here provide a glimpse into the evolution of the CSCL field during a key decade of its history, as it became internationally established with conferences around the world and with this journal.

This volume presents the narrative sections from grant proposals by Gerry Stahl to NSF and other funding sources. Included are proposals that won grants that supported his research at the University of Colorado and Drexel University. They propose multi-year research projects in computer-supported collaborative learning and related domains. Even those that were not funded provide visionary ideas.