Examining online discourse using the knowledge connection analyzer framework and collaborative tools in knowledge building

This study examines the problem of the fragmentation of asynchronous online discourse by using the Knowledge Connection Analyzer (KCA) framework and tools and explores how students could use the KCA data in classroom reflections to deepen their knowledge building (KB) inquiry. We applied the KCA to nine Knowledge Forum® (KF) databases to examine the framework, identify issues with online discourse that may inform further development, and provide data on how the tools work. Our comparisons of the KCA data showed that the databases with more sophisticated teacher–researcher co-design had higher KCA indices than those with regular KF use, validating the framework. Analysis of KF discourse using the KCA helped identify several issues including limited collaboration among peers, underdeveloped practices of synthesizing and rising above of collective ideas, less analysis of conceptual development of discussion threads, and limited collaborative reflection on individual contribution and promising inquiry direction. These issues that open opportunities for further development cannot be identified by other present analytics tools. The exploratory use of the KCA in real classroom revealed that the KCA can support students’ productive reflective assessment and KB. This study discusses the implications for examining and scaffolding online discussions using the KCA assessment framework, with a focus on collective perspectives regarding community knowledge, synthesis, idea improvement, and contribution to community understanding

The use of happiness research for public policy

Research on happiness tends to follow a "benevolent dictator" approach where politicians pursue people's happiness. This paper takes an antithetic approach based on the insights of public choice theory. First, we inquire how the results of happiness research may be used to improve the choice of institutions. Second, we show that the policy approach matters for the choice of research questions and the kind of knowledge happiness research aims to provide. Third, we emphasize that there is no shortcut to an optimal policy maximizing some happiness indicator or social welfare function since governments have an incentive to manipulate this indicator

Understanding Idea Creation in Collaborative Discourse through Networks: The Joint Attention-Interaction-Creation (AIC) Framework

In Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, ideas generated through collaborative discourse are informative indicators of students' learning and collaboration. Idea creation is a product of emergent and interactive socio-cognitive endeavors. Therefore, analyzing ideas requires capturing contextual information in addition to the ideas themselves. In this paper, we propose the Joint Attention-Interaction-Creation (AIC) framework, which captures important dynamics in collaborative discourse, from attention and interaction to creation. The framework was developed from the networked lens, informed by natural language processing techniques, and inspired by socio-semantic network analysis. A case study was included to exemplify the framework's application in classrooms and to illustrate its potential in broader contexts

Managing dialogic use of exemplars

The analysis of exemplars is a potentially powerful way of acquainting students with academic standards and supporting their capacities to make informed academic judgements. This paper investigates the role of dialogue in supporting students to develop their appreciation of the nature of quality work. The research derives from a project involving nine teachers in a Faculty of Education, and uses data from a single case to analyse the dialogic use of exemplars. The findings illustrate how the teacher prioritised student talk and withheld his own evaluative judgements in the management of the discussion. A related dilemma lies in the balance between the student voice in constructing their views on the nature of quality and explicit teacher guidance. The main significance of the paper lies in its description of how exemplars dialogue can be orchestrated, and a discussion of some of the main features of the dialogue.postprin

Outcomes for youth work : coming of age or master’s bidding?

Abstract Providing evidence in youth work is a current and important debate. Modern youth work has, at least to some degree, recognised the need to produce practice information, through its various guises, with limited success as requirements and terminology have continually changed. In Scotland, the current demands for youth work to “prove” itself are through a performance management system that promotes outcome-based practice. There are some difficulties with this position because outcome-based practice lacks methodological rigour, is aligned with national governmental commitments and does not adequately capture the impact of youth work practice. This paper argues that youth workers need to develop both a theoretical and methodological approach to data collection and management,which is in keeping with practice values, captures the voice of the young person and enhances youth work practice. Youth work should not be used as a mechanism to deliver the government’s policies but be liberated from centralist control to become a “free practice” so that some of the perennial problems, such as democratic disillusionment, partly caused by this “performance management industry”, can be effectively dealt with. The generation of evidence for youth work should enable it to freely investigate and capture its impact, within the practice, based on the learning that has taken place, the articulation of the learners’ voice with the most appropriate form of data presentation

Developing and Comparing Indices to Evaluate Community Knowledge Building in an Educational Research Course

This paper implements a novel approach to analyzing the degree of Collective Cognitive Responsibility (CCR) in a Knowledge Building community, based on socioeconomic and scientometric measures. After engaging in Knowledge Forum (KF) discussions for one semester, 36 students identified impactful ideas in their portfolios, which were then used to develop their impact scores. These scores were then transformed and plotted along the Lorenz Curve and the Gini coefficient to visualize the degree of equidistribution of recognition in the community and, by extension, the degree of collective responsibility shared by members of the community. Additionally, students were classified into member roles based on the impact of their contributions, and we explored the flow of member roles across several discussion topics, based on Price’s model of scientific production. Our results show convergence between peers’ and teachers’ ratings of impactful contributions, which both point to medium levels of collective responsibility in the community. In short, on the one hand, this procedure shows its sensitivity to detect communities that could not comply with the CCR principle. On the other hand, we discuss the necessity of reflective evaluation to address the pedagogical challenge of fostering collective responsibility for knowledge advancement and empowering novel students to take charge of their knowledge work at the highest levels.Ministry of Science and Innovation-State Research Agency PID 2020-116872-RA-10

Developing and Comparing Indices to Evaluate Community Knowledge Building in an Educational Research Course

This paper implements a novel approach to analyzing the degree of Collective Cognitive Responsibility (CCR) in a Knowledge Building community, based on socioeconomic and scientometric measures. After engaging in Knowledge Forum (KF) discussions for one semester, 36 students identified impactful ideas in their portfolios, which were then used to develop their impact scores. These scores were then transformed and plotted along the Lorenz Curve and the Gini coefficient to visualize the degree of equidistribution of recognition in the community and, by extension, the degree of collective responsibility shared by members of the community. Additionally, students were classified into member roles based on the impact of their contributions, and we explored the flow of member roles across several discussion topics, based on Price's model of scientific production. Our results show convergence between peers' and teachers' ratings of impactful contributions, which both point to medium levels of collective responsibility in the community. In short, on the one hand, this procedure shows its sensitivity to detect communities that could not comply with the CCR principle. On the other hand, we discuss the necessity of reflective evaluation to address the pedagogical challenge of fostering collective responsibility for knowledge advancement and empowering novel students to take charge of their knowledge work at the highest levels

An Analytical Dashboard of Collaborative Activities for the Knowledge Building

"Published articles in TKL are made available to institutions and individuals who subscribe to Technology, Knowledge and Learning" (Tomado de la página web de la revista). Este es la caso de la Universidad de Granada. En cualquier caso el manuscrito alojado es un borrador (con permiso editorial) que no ha recibido ninguna revisión aún. Para citación consultar la revista Technology, Knowledge and Learning.Knowledge Building (KB) is an educatioanl theory framework that shows interest in the benefits that the technology offers to teaching and evaluation. In this study, a dashboard that facilitates the reflective assessment of KB communities supported by the Knowlege Forum (KF) platform was evaluated. The deisgn-based research study was conducted with 128 undergraduate students enrolled in an educational research course at the University of (name, country). Using a survey methodology, data was collected on the students' perception regarding epistemic collective agency, research skills, and dashboard assessment. The conclusions about the value of the dashboard are broken down into two axes. On the one hand, the students state that they are satisfied with the dashboard, although they indicate that there is room for improvement. On the other hand, according to the KB reflective assessment, the dahsboard provided students with educational experiences that have empowered them in the collaborative construction of knowledge and promoted the development of their specific educational research skills. Future technological improvements and implementations of the KB are discussed.Ministry of Science and Innovation - State Research Agency (Spanish) (PID 2020-116872-RA-100

Learning from the knowledge builders: Student perspectives on the challenges of classroom Knowledge Building communities

How do students make sense of the change process from more traditional learning environments to a Knowledge Building Community classroom (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006)? What challenges do they identify in their own participation and the development of the collective as a knowledge building community? This research followed a team of middle school students and teachers over the course of two years. Student interviews focused on the community s knowledge work in Knowledge Forum and their development as knowledge builders. Students identified structures that both supported and challenged student socialization into knowledge building communities. The research also examines how students experiences can inform design researchers and teachers about enacting knowledge building classrooms. © 2023 Progedit. All rights reserved

Retrieving the State for Radical Politics - A Conceptual and Playful Challenge

Whether states can ever contribute to progressive social transformation has long divided the left. But is this division dependent on a particular state conception? If the state can be meaningfully conceptualised in multiple ways, are there ways of conceptualising that might bridge this political divide, granting the state a constructive part within radical left politics? This essay adopts a utopian conceptual methodology to consider more politically hopeful ways for reimagining what it means to be a state. It challenges an anti-state left perspective on four grounds: to avoid the reification of a bounded state; to avoid romanticising civil society as the state’s antithesis; to pay attention to dissident intra-state actions; and to recognise the importance of different governing scales. But if the state concept should be retrieved, what can statehood mean? Does local government offer a more progressive paradigm than the nation-state with its radically different relationship to space and governing? And what then follows? What does imagining progressive states do since they cannot be practiced in any simple sense? If reimagining the state is not to be hopeless, are modes of take-up available that can prefigure the state without relying on its material actualisation? This essay explores the possibilities 'play' offers for representing what states and institutional systems could be like. Taking pop-up republics, crowd-sourced constitutions, fictive feminist legal judgments, and local currencies as contemporary examples, it considers play as a register for experimenting with other modes of political government. The essay closes by addressing two questions: if counter-representational forms of play involve performing institutional activities differently, are there good reasons to articulate these together into reimagined states, using play to experiment with new forms of assemblage? Second, what can playing at other kinds of states or institutions accomplish politically