Do members converge to similar reasoning styles in teamwork? A study of shared rationales in small team activities

Xiao, Lu

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/39618 Copy

Description

Title

Do members converge to similar reasoning styles in teamwork? A study of shared rationales in small team activities

Author(s)

Xiao, Lu

Issue Date

2013-02

Keyword(s)

• reasoning style
• group activity
• Rhetorical Structure Theory
• shared rationales
• information behavior
• qualitative data analysis

Abstract

Seeking better understanding of the group impact on the members’ reasoning styles, we have been using Rhetorical Structure Theory to analyze rationale statements collected from group activities. Our early analysis showed that in the studied activity context the participants all focused on subject matter relations with three most common techniques: providing contextual information of the main point (circumstance relation), offering additional details of the main point (elaboration relation), and evaluation of the main point (evaluation relation). The results also suggest that group is an influencing factor on members’ reasoning styles in terms of the rhetoric of the rationales, and the use of circumstance and elaboration techniques.

Publisher

iSchools

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/39618

DOI

https://doi.org/10.9776/13269

Sponsor(s)/Grant Number(s)

Internal Research Grant of Faculty of Information & Media Studies, University of Western Ontario

Copyright and License Information

Copyright © 2013 is held by the authors. Copyright permissions, when appropriate, must be obtained directly from the authors.

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