Student-directed assessment of knowledge building using electronic portfolios

Despite emphasis and progress in developing collaborative inquiry in computer-supported collaborative learning research, little attention has been given to examining how collective learning can be assessed in computer-supported collaborative learning classrooms, and how students can have agency in assessing their own collaborative process. We propose that assessments should capture both individual and collective aspects of learning and be designed in ways that foster collaboration. We describe the design of student-directed electronic portfolio assessments to characterize and "scaffold" collaborative inquiry using Knowledge Forum™. Our design involved asking students to identify exemplary notes in the computer discourse depicting knowledge building episodes using four knowledge building principles as criteria. We report three studies that examined the designs and roles of knowledge building portfolios with graduate and Grade 12 students in Hong Kong and Canada. The findings suggest that knowledge building portfolios help to characterize collective knowledge advances and foster domain understanding. We discuss lessons learned regarding how knowledge building may be fostered and provide principles for designing assessments that can be used to evaluate and foster deep inquiry in asynchronous online discussion environments. Copyright © 2007, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.published_or_final_versio

Sustaining Knowledge Building as a Principle-Based Innovation at an Elementary School

This study explores Knowledge Building as a principle-based innovation at an elementary school and makes a case for a principle- versus procedure-based approach to educational innovation, supported by new knowledge media. Thirty-nine Knowledge Building initiatives, each focused on a curriculum theme and facilitated by nine teachers over eight years, were analyzed using measures of student discourse in a Knowledge Building environment--Knowledge Forum. Results were analyzed from the perspective of student, teacher, and principal engagement to identify conditions for Knowledge Building as a school-wide innovation. Analyses of student discourse showed interactive and complementary contributions to a community knowledge space, conceptual content of growing scope and depth, and collective responsibility for knowledge advancement. Analyses of teacher and principal engagement showed supportive conditions such as shared vision; trust in student competencies to the point of enabling transfer of agency for knowledge advancement to students; ever-deepening understanding of Knowledge Building principles; knowledge emergent through collective responsibility; a coherent systems perspective; teacher professional Knowledge Building communities; and leadership supportive of innovation at all levels. More substantial advances for students were related to years of teachers’ experience in this progressive knowledge-advancing enterprise

Enhancing Free-text Interactions in a Communication Skills Learning Environment

Learning environments frequently use gamification to enhance user interactions.Virtual characters with whom players engage in simulated conversations often employ prescripted dialogues; however, free user inputs enable deeper immersion and higher-order cognition. In our learning environment, experts developed a scripted scenario as a sequence of potential actions, and we explore possibilities for enhancing interactions by enabling users to type free inputs that are matched to the pre-scripted statements using Natural Language Processing techniques. In this paper, we introduce a clustering mechanism that provides recommendations for fine-tuning the pre-scripted answers in order to better match user inputs

Agency to Transform: How Did a Grade 5 Community Co-Configure Dynamic Knowledge Building Practices in a Yearlong Science Inquiry?

This study explores emergent reflective structuration as a new form of shared regulation. The purpose is to support students in taking on high-level epistemic agency as they co-configure dynamic inquiry pathways that unfold over long periods of time. With the teacher’s support, students not only regulate their inquiry and collaboration following pre-scripted structures, but they also co-construct shared inquiry pathways to frame and reframe their community practices in response to progress and needs that emerge over time. Our data analysis investigates the temporal and interactional processes by which members of a Grade 5 classroom co-configured their knowledge building pathways in a yearlong science inquiry focusing on the human body systems. As a co-constructed structure, students co-formulated an evolving chart of “big questions” that signified shared inquiry directions with the teacher’s support. The inquiry process was supported by Knowledge Form and Idea Thread Mapper, which visualizes the online knowledge building discourse based on temporal streams of inquiry focusing on the “big questions.” Qualitative analysis of classroom observation notes, videos, student artifacts, online discourse, and student interviews documented nine “big questions” co-formulated by the community over time. Further analysis revealed students’ agentic moves to expand, deepen, and reframe the knowledge building work of their community. Analyses of online discourse and a pre-and post-test showed productive idea contributions, interactions, and knowledge outcomes. Conceptual and practical implications are discussed

Technology-supported learning innovation in cultural contexts

Many reform initiatives adopt a reductionist, proceduralized approach to cultural change, assuming that deep changes can be realized by introducing new classroom activities, textbooks, and technological tools. This article elaborates a complex system perspective of learning culture: A learning culture as a complex system involves macro-level properties (e.g., epistemological beliefs, social values, power structures) and micro-level features (e.g., technology, classroom activities). Deep changes in macro-level properties cannot be reduced to any component. This complex system perspective is applied to examining technology-supported educational change in East Asia and analyzing how teachers sustain the knowledge building innovation in different contexts. Working with the macro-micro dynamics in a learning culture requires a principle-based approach to learning innovation that specifies macro-level changes using principle-based instead of procedure-based terms and engages teachers’ deep reflection and creative engagement at both the macro- and the micro-level

Development of a Reading Material Recommender System Based On Design Science Research Approach

Using design science research (DSR), we outline the construction and evaluation of a recommender system incorporated into an existing computer-supported collaborative learning environment. Drawing from Clark’s communication theory and a user-centered design methodology, the proposed design aims to prevent users from having to develop their own conversational overload coping strategies detrimental to learning within large discussions. Two experiments were carried out to investigate the merits of three collaborative filtering recommender systems. Findings from the first experiment show that the constrained Pearson Correlation Coefficient (PCC) similarity metric produced the most accurate recommendations. Consistently, users reported that constrained PCC based recommendations served best to their needs, which prompted users to read more posts. Results from the second experiment strikingly suggest that constrained PCC based recommendations simplified users’ navigation in large discussions by acting as implicit indicators of common ground, freeing users from having to develop their own coping strategies