Abstract
This case study explores the communicative practices that occur within student teams in a team-based learning (TBL) classroom. Symbolic interactionism serves as the theoretical framework to explain human social activities occurring on a global level while activity theory is introduced to provide a more microscopic examination of human interactivity on a local level. The intricacies of human interactivity invite an analysis of students’ situated learning, within the TBL community of practice, using dialogue as distributed cognition and the primary tool for helping students learn within small teams. A qualitative analysis of dialogue, using communicative projects (CPs), from a student team enrolled in a TBL-driven humanities and religious studies course provides insight for how dialogue functions with the development of CPs to help negotiate shared meaning among students. Results from this study can further inform the development of student assignments that function to guide meaning-making in the learning process.