Task, Tool and Quality

Petter Karlstrom, presented research carried out together with his colleagues Ola Knutsson and Eva Lundin. The perspective taken on learning is the socio-cultural (language is the tool for learning). For more literature on second language learning from this perspective, see e.g. Thorne and Lantolf. For an interest in human computer interaction, see the works of Viktor Kaptelinin. (agree with you Petter, quite interesting works here). Theoretical concepts of relevance for analysis of the continued research and development with the environment GRIM, were "activity" (not to be understood as equivalent to task), "mediation" and "ZPD" (Zone of Proximal Development). The GRIM environment is a multipurpose linguistic tool which can be downloaded from http://skrutten.nada.kth.se/grim/install-en.html

The main research questions were to investigate how the environment was used, how students interacted with the environment, and what role GRIM plays in the students' writing. Research data was generated from video recordings, screen recordings, transcriptions, student essays and questionnaire.