Who Learns from Collaborative Digital Projects? Cultivating Critical Consciousness and Metacognition to Democratize Digital Literacy Learning

Collaborative group work is common in writing classrooms, especially ones assigning digital projects. While a wealth of scholarship theorizes collaboration and advocates for specific collaborative pedagogies, writing studies has yet to address the ways in which privilege tied to race, gender, class, and other identity characteristics replicates itself within student groups by shaping the responsibilities individual group members assume, thereby affecting students\u27 opportunities for learning. Such concerns about equity are especially pressing where civically and professionally valuable twenty-first century digital literacies are concerned. This article uses theories of cultural capital and the participation gap to (1) analyze role uptake in case studies of diverse student groups and (2) suggest ways to expand writing studies\u27 current use of metacognition to address such inequities

Computer-mediated knowledge communication

New communication technologies enable an array of new working and learning scenarios in which knowledge is being communicated. This article deals with the question to what extent these technologies can impede or facilitate knowledge communication. First, the various computer-based communication technologies will be classified. Second, effects of the medium on knowledge communication will be discussed based on results of studies of the current special priority program "Net-based Knowledge Communication in Groups". Third and last, computer-based possibilities to facilitate computer-mediated knowledge communication will be reviewNeue Kommunikationstechnologien ermöglichen eine Reihe neuer Arbeits- und Lernszenarien in denen Wissen kommuniziert wird. Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich damit, inwiefern diese Technologien Wissenskommunikation einschränken oder fördern können. Dazu werden in einem ersten Schritt die verschiedenen computerbasierten Kommunikationstechnologien untergliedert. In einem zweiten Schritt werden Wirkungen des Mediums auf die Wissenskommunikation diskutiert. Dazu werden u. a. die Ergebnisse von Studien des aktuellen Forschungsschwerpunkts "Netzbasierte Wissenskommunikation in Gruppen" berichtet. In einem dritten und letzten Schritt werden computerbasierte Möglichkeiten zusammengefasst, computervermittelte Wissenskommunikation zu förd

Collaborative Authoring of Adaptive Educational Hypermedia by Enriching a Semantic Wiki’s Output

This research is concerned with harnessing collaborative approaches for the authoring of Adaptive Educational Hypermedia (AEH) systems. It involves the enhancement of Semantic Wikis with pedagogy aware features to this end. There are many challenges in understanding how communities of interest can efficiently collaborate for learning content authoring, in introducing pedagogy to the developed knowledge models and in specifying user models for efficient delivery of AEH systems. The contribution of this work will be the development of a model of collaborative authoring which includes domain specification, content elicitation, and definition of pedagogic approach. The proposed model will be implemented in a prototype AEH authoring system that will be tested and evaluated in a formal education context

THE "POWER" OF TEXT PRODUCTION ACTIVITY IN COLLABORATIVE MODELING : NINE RECOMMENDATIONS TO MAKE A COMPUTER SUPPORTED SITUATION WORK

Language is not a direct translation of a speaker’s or writer’s knowledge or intentions. Various complex processes and strategies are involved in serving the needs of the audience: planning the message, describing some features of a model and not others, organizing an argument, adapting to the knowledge of the reader, meeting linguistic constraints, etc. As a consequence, when communicating about a model, or about knowledge, there is a complex interaction between knowledge and language. In this contribution, we address the question of the role of language in modeling, in the specific case of collaboration over a distance, via electronic exchange of written textual information. What are the problems/dimensions a language user has to deal with when communicating a (mental) model? What is the relationship between the nature of the knowledge to be communicated and linguistic production? What is the relationship between representations and produced text? In what sense can interactive learning systems serve as mediators or as obstacles to these processes

Specifications and Development of Interoperability Solution dedicated to Multiple Expertise Collaboration in a Design Framework

This paper describes the specifications of an interoperability platform based on the PPO (Product Process Organization) model developed by the French community IPPOP in the context of collaborative and innovative design. By using PPO model as a reference, this work aims to connect together heterogonous tools used by experts easing data and information exchanges. After underlining the growing needs of collaborative design process, this paper focuses on interoperability concept by describing current solutions and their limits. Then a solution based on the flexibility of the PPO model adapted to the philosophy of interoperability is proposed. To illustrate these concepts, several examples are more particularly described (robustness analysis, CAD and Product Lifecycle Management systems connections)

Knowledge and perceptions in participatory policy processes: lessons from the delta-region in the Netherlands

Water resources management issues tend to affect a variety of uses and users. Therefore, they often exhibit complex and unstructured problems. The complex, unstructured nature of these problems originates from uncertain knowledge and from the existence of divergent perceptions among various actors. Consequently, dealing with these problems is not just a knowledge problem; it is a problem of ambiguity too. This paper focuses on a complex, unstructured water resources management issue, the sustainable development—for ecology, economy and society—of the Delta-region of the Netherlands. In several areas in this region the ecological quality decreased due to hydraulic constructions for storm water safety, the Delta Works. To improve the ecological quality, the Dutch government regards the re-establishment of estuarine dynamics in the area as the most important solution. However, re-establishment of estuarine dynamics will affect other uses and other users. Among the affected users are farmers in the surrounding areas, who use freshwater from a lake for agricultural purposes. This problem has been addressed in a participatory decision-making process, which is used as a case study in this paper. We investigate how the dynamics in actors’ perceptions and the knowledge base contribute to the development of agreed upon and valid knowledge about the problem–solution combination, using our conceptual framework for problem structuring. We found that different knowledge sources—expert and practical knowledge—should be integrated to create a context-specific knowledge base, which is scientifically valid and socially robust. Furthermore, we conclude that for the convergence of actors’ perceptions, it is essential that actors learn about the content of the process (cognitive learning) and about the network in which they are involved (strategic learning). Our findings form a plea for practitioners in water resources management to adopt a problem structuring approach in order to deal explicitly with uncertainty and ambiguity

Metadata enrichment for digital heritage: users as co-creators

This paper espouses the concept of metadata enrichment through an expert and user-focused approach to metadata creation and management. To this end, it is argued the Web 2.0 paradigm enables users to be proactive metadata creators. As Shirky (2008, p.47) argues Web 2.0’s social tools enable “action by loosely structured groups, operating without managerial direction and outside the profit motive”. Lagoze (2010, p. 37) advises, “the participatory nature of Web 2.0 should not be dismissed as just a popular phenomenon [or fad]”. Carletti (2016) proposes a participatory digital cultural heritage approach where Web 2.0 approaches such as crowdsourcing can be sued to enrich digital cultural objects. It is argued that “heritage crowdsourcing, community-centred projects or other forms of public participation”. On the other hand, the new collaborative approaches of Web 2.0 neither negate nor replace contemporary standards-based metadata approaches. Hence, this paper proposes a mixed metadata approach where user created metadata augments expert-created metadata and vice versa. The metadata creation process no longer remains to be the sole prerogative of the metadata expert. The Web 2.0 collaborative environment would now allow users to participate in both adding and re-using metadata. The case of expert-created (standards-based, top-down) and user-generated metadata (socially-constructed, bottom-up) approach to metadata are complementary rather than mutually-exclusive. The two approaches are often mistakenly considered as dichotomies, albeit incorrectly (Gruber, 2007; Wright, 2007) . This paper espouses the importance of enriching digital information objects with descriptions pertaining the about-ness of information objects. Such richness and diversity of description, it is argued, could chiefly be achieved by involving users in the metadata creation process. This paper presents the importance of the paradigm of metadata enriching and metadata filtering for the cultural heritage domain. Metadata enriching states that a priori metadata that is instantiated and granularly structured by metadata experts is continually enriched through socially-constructed (post-hoc) metadata, whereby users are pro-actively engaged in co-creating metadata. The principle also states that metadata that is enriched is also contextually and semantically linked and openly accessible. In addition, metadata filtering states that metadata resulting from implementing the principle of enriching should be displayed for users in line with their needs and convenience. In both enriching and filtering, users should be considered as prosumers, resulting in what is called collective metadata intelligence

Operationalizing the circular city model for naples' city-port: A hybrid development strategy

The city-port context involves a decisive reality for the economic development of territories and nations, capable of significantly influencing the conditions of well-being and quality of life, and of making the Circular City Model (CCM) operational, preserving and enhancing seas and marine resources in a sustainable way. This can be achieved through the construction of appropriate production and consumption models, with attention to relations with the urban and territorial system. This paper presents an adaptive decision-making process for Naples (Italy) commercial port's development strategies, aimed at re-establishing a sustainable city-port relationship and making Circular Economy (CE) principles operative. The approach has aimed at implementing a CCM by operationalizing European recommendations provided within both the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework-specifically focusing on goals 9, 11 and 12-and the Maritime Spatial Planning European Directive 2014/89, to face conflicts about the overlapping areas of the city-port through multidimensional evaluations' principles and tools. In this perspective, a four-step methodological framework has been structured applying a place-based approach with mixed evaluation methods, eliciting soft and hard knowledge domains, which have been expressed and assessed by a core set of Sustainability Indicators (SI), linked to SDGs. The contribution outcomes have been centred on the assessment of three design alternatives for the East Naples port and the development of a hybrid regeneration scenario consistent with CE and sustainability principles. The structured decision-making process has allowed us to test how an adaptive approach can expand the knowledge base underpinning policy design and decisions to achieve better outcomes and cultivate a broad civic and technical engagement, that can enhance the legitimacy and transparency of policies

People-Powered Music: Using User-Generated Tags and Structure in Recommendations

Music recommenders often rely on experts to classify song facets like genre and mood, but user-generated folksonomies hold some advantages over expert classifications—folksonomies can reflect the same real-world vocabularies and categorizations that end users employ. We present an approach for using crowd-sourced common sense knowledge to structure user-generated music tags into a folksonomy, and describe how to use this approach to make music recommendations. We then empirically evaluate our “people-powered” structured content recommender against a more traditional recommender. Our results show that participants slightly preferred the unstructured recommender, rating more of its recommendations as “perfect” than they did for our approach. An exploration of the reasons behind participants’ ratings revealed that users behaved differently when tagging songs than when evaluating recommendations, and we discuss the implications of our results for future tagging and recommendation approaches