Social lunch -- Dr. Nia Dowell (University of California, Irvine).

In the current globalized world, innovation in science and technology are vital for economic competitiveness, quality of life, and national security. This trend is accelerating the increasing reliance on virtual teams and their collaborative effort to solve complex environmental, social and public health problems. To contend with these dynamic conditions, communication, and collaborative problem-solving (CPS) competencies have taken a principal role in educational policy, research, and technology. Adaptive educational technologies provide a platform to deliver personalized training to improve learners’ CPS skills. However, for these systems to optimally tailor instruction, they must have key insights into learners’ interaction dynamics and team behaviors. We have been exploring these properties by employing Group Communication Analysis (GCA), a computational linguistics methodology for quantifying and characterizing the socio-cognitive processes between learners in online interactions. This talk will focus on recent studies where we have used GCA to gain a deeper understanding of role ecologies, learning and problem-solving, and issues of inclusivity in digitally-mediated group interactions. The scalability of GCA opens the door for future research efforts directed towards improving collaborative competencies and creating more inclusive online interactions.