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Liminality in multitasking: Where talk and task collide in computer collaborations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2012

Mike Levy  and
Rod Gardner
Mike Levy
Affiliation:
The University of Queensland, School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, [email protected]
Rod Gardner
Affiliation:
Griffith Institute for Educational Research, Griffith University, 176 Messines Ridge Road, Mt. Gravatt, QLD 4122, [email protected]
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Abstract

This article investigates the effect of computer activity on talk during collaboration at the computer by two pairs of high school students during a web-based task. The work is located in relation to research in the wider world of the workplace and informal settings where multitasking involving talk and the operation of artifacts is known to occur. The current study focuses on how, when two students are working at the computer, talk continues or is disrupted during multitasking. Five examples are described in detail, beginning with a relatively straightforward case of serial multitasking and leading up to an example of complex simultaneous multitasking. Overwhelmingly in our data, only routine on-screen actions accompany talk, whereas complex actions occur with hitches or restarts in the talk, and true simultaneous multitasking happens on just three occasions in the data set. (Collaborative activity, computers, Conversation Analysis, interaction, language and technology, multimodality, multitasking)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 41 , Issue 5 , November 2012 , pp. 557 - 587
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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