Knowledge Building in Online Mode: Insights and Reflections

International Education Studies, 2011

This paper examines the Knowledge Age and how economic factors are causing educators to rethink and reinvent education. Two key factors in education in the Knowledge Age will be education for an economy of innovation, and the increasing virtualization of education. We present knowledge building pedagogy as a model for education in the Knowledge Age and discuss Knowledge Forum, online knowledge building environment designed to facilitate and support the knowledge building process. Built into Knowledge Forum is a suit of online tools that track the interactions that students have with Knowledge Forum. We focus on the social network tool that allows us to examine communication patterns among the students when working online. Using the data obtained, we examine the growth and development of online community formation during the first week of class for a group of naïve users in a third-year university class. Examining the note reading and response networks, we see that the note reading network develops more rapidly than the responding network, and that it is more symmetric than the responding network. However, by mid-term, a highly connected network has developed for both note-reading and responding.

This paper presents the design of Idea Thread Mapper (ITM), a timeline-based collective knowledge-mapping tool that interoperates with Knowledge Forum and potentially other learning platforms. Using ITM, students engage in collaborative, metacognitive conversations to identify "juicy" topics that have emerged from their knowledge-building discourse, as their communal focuses, and review ideas addressing each focus as a line of inquiry-an idea thread. A study was conducted in a grade 3 classroom to foster sustained knowledge building through ITM-aided collaborative reflection. Analyses of online discourse, classroom videos, ITM data, and student interviews elaborate the processes and benefits of ITM-aided reflection to foster student awareness of their collective knowledge and collaborative, sustained efforts to advance it.

International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 2020

Following asynchronous online discussion activities as a complex communication process is a demanding task for teachers. In this paper, the authors have explored the potential in supporting such activity through learning analytics. From the beginning, the authors acknowledged the limitations of technology to support the complexities of a pedagogical activity. Therefore, the methodology used was participatory design-based research (DBR) divided into two main stages. The first design phase dealt with the engagement of teachers and pedagogical experts in defining the data and metrics to be used to support the pedagogical concepts. The second consisted of an implementation phase including pilots with students and with crucial engagement of teachers in commenting their understanding over students’ learning processes and the feedback the teachers could offer to them. Overall, the students shown improvements in their performance as monitored through the learning analytics group in contrast...

2010

Although the pedagogic potential of structured online discussions in higher education has been realised, the promise of rapidly developing wiki technology and synchronous audio and video technology in teaching and learning needs to be examined. A better understanding of the affordances of these tools and a clearer articulation of the kinds of interactions needed for knowledge creation in networked learning is required. This study aims to explore the ways in which knowledge can be jointly created among geographically dispersed communities of developing researchers through combined web-based tools both synchronous and asynchronous enabled though networked technology. We focus on the role online discussion spaces, wikis and synchronous discussions can play in collaborative creation of knowledge by looking at participation processes as they occur online and collaboratively. The study is conceived in the broader context of socio-constructivist approach using concepts around the notion of...

Journal of Learning Analytics, 2015

ABSTRACT: This paper describes theory-led design as a way of developing novel tools for learning analytics (LA). It focuses upon the domain of automated discourse analysis (ADA) of group learning activities to help an instructor to orchestrate online groups in real-time. The paper outlines the literature on the development of LA tools within the domain of ADA, and poses an argument for conducting tool development based upon first-principles. It describes first principles as being drawn from theory and that these principles can subsequently inform the structure and behaviour of tools. It presents a framework for this process of theory-led design. The framework is substantiated through the example of developing a new tool for assisting instructors with the orchestration of online groups. A description of the tool is given and examples of results from use with real-world data are presented. The paper concludes with a call for intent on the part of designers to connect the design process explicitly to theory on the basis that this has the potential to yield innovation when developing tools as well as the prospect of outcomes from tools connecting back to theory.

Instructional Science, 2013

Tertiary education has seen a shift toward pedagogies that make use of social interaction. As part of the shift, teachers have considered re-framing their role in the teaching process, and giving more attention to ways in which knowledge construction amongst students can be supported. While many online technologies are well positioned to support interactivity between students, the use of these tools does not necessarily ensure that the social interaction is of a type that guarantees learning will take place. This paper employs an ''ecology of resources'' perspective (Luckin 10.1016(Luckin 10. /j.compedu.2007(Luckin 10. .09.018, 2008 to explore the experiences of teachers and selected students from three tertiary-level contexts as they engaged with interactive learning tasks mediated by asynchronous online technologies. The data presented in the study were generated primarily from accounts and semi-structured interviews, and presented teachers' beliefs about how the learners could operate as knowledge resources for each other, while they themselves were somewhat 'epistemically distant'. In contrast, the data suggest that the experiences of students and tutors were vastly different. The students represented themselves and others as inadequate resources, perceiving that the expertise to construct knowledge was not present in the student group. These observations highlight the importance of building resource-rich learning environments, enabling access to expert performances through blended settings, and nurturing a perception of capability between students.

2019

Communities in New Media started in 1998 as a workshop series at TU Dresden, and since then has annually dealt with online communities at the interface between several disciplines such as education and economics, computer science, social and communication sciences, and more. (See Köhler, Kahnwald & Schoop, 2015). The workshop is traditionally a forum for interdisciplinary dialogue between science and business and serves to share experiences and knowledge among participants from different disciplines, organisations, and institutions. In addition to the core themes of knowledge management and communities (in the chapters of the same name), the main focus of the conference is also on the support of knowledge and learning processes in the field of (media-assisted) higher education. This is complemented by an informational perspective when it comes to more functional and methodological approaches - use cases, workflows, and automation in knowledge management. In addition, systems and app...

ALT-J, 2006

Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Computer supported collaborative learning - CSCL'09, 2009

This paper presents a design-based study of a graduate level course that uses CSCL methods to establish a unique pedagogical form of knowledge community. This interdisciplinary seminar is divided into a set of knowledge media themes, with a different group of students leading each theme. With each new offering of the course, students inherit a course wiki that aggregates the content and pedagogical knowledge from prior offerings. For each theme, the student leaders work closely with the instructor to design pedagogical approaches that engage the class in specific knowledge practices that are pertinent to the theme. This study considers the theme of "immersive environments", and analyzes instructor and student actions through three iterations of the course in terms of pedagogical designs and use of technologies.

Computers & Education, 2006

Does collaborative learning in asynchronous discussion groups result in enhancing academic discourse and knowledge construction? This general research question has been researched in a study involving 300 students, working during six months in 38 electronic discussion groups. The transcripts of the discussions were coded and analysed to test hypotheses related to the impact on knowledge construction. Coding of the units of analysis was based on the models of Fahy, P. Institute, University of Maastricht. The results confirm that students in the discussion groups are very task-oriented and that higher proportions of high phases of knowledge construction are observed. Significant increases in the cognitive interaction, task-orientation and higher phases of knowledge construction are detected. Group size is a significant interaction variable. Discussion in smaller groups reflects larger proportions of higher levels of knowledge construction. The results point at the critical impact of structure in the task environment. In the discussion section, methodological issues are presented. The article concludes with directions for future research and some implications for instructional practice.