"Okay, yes it's true" - Doing discovering work in a tangible-user-interface-mediated joint problem solving physics activity

This paper is a single case analysis of an occurrence of discovery work accomplished by two university students who are jointly engaged in a tangible-user-interface-mediated physics problem solving activity. The latter is a computer simulation of a biker’s applied force and work done to the bike in a changeable landscape. Participants are asked to solve several tasks to eventually find out which factors influence the dependent variables “Force on Pedal” and “Work”. By relying on an ethnomethodological conversation analytic framework to conduct a moment-by-moment video based analysis, we highlight how two students accomplish the interactional work of discovering that a specific factor influences one of the target variables. Also, our analysis points to the need of adapting the described activity to support the triggering of episodes in which participants engage in joint reflections and discoveries.