Fostering Interdisciplinary Knowledge Construction in Computer-Assisted Collaborative Concept Mapping

Research on individual and group cognition has argued that the way learning activities are sequenced over different social levels has an effect on learning effectiveness. This study investigates the effect of embedding an individual preparation phase prior to collaborative concept mapping (CCM) on the epistemic and social dimension of the CCM process. Using a quasi-experimental design, a multi-disciplinary group of 24 3rd year bachelor students attending a minor entrepreneurship are put into two different conditions: one with individual preparation phase (WIP) and one without individual preparation phase (WOIP). The students worked on a collaborative assignment about macro trends analysis using computer-assisted CCM. For the epistemic dimension, students in the WIP condition showed more occurrences of utterances seeking clarification and positioning one’s perspectives. In the social mode of knowledge construction, students in the WIP condition displayed more conflict-oriented and integrated consensus building statements to negotiate shared knowledge. We discussed these findings against the background of literature on negotiating common grounds and converging at shared knowledge with a focus on the epistemic dimension and social modes of knowledge co-construction in computer-assisted collaborative learning

Want to Improve Undergraduate Thesis Writing? Engage Students and Their Faculty Readers in Scientific Peer Review

One of the best opportunities that undergraduates have to learn to write like a scientist is to write a thesis after participating in faculty-mentored undergraduate research. But developing writing skills doesn't happen automatically, and there are significant challenges associated with offering writing courses and with individualized mentoring. We present a hybrid model in which students have the structural support of a course plus the personalized benefits of working one-on-one with faculty. To optimize these one-on-one interactions, the course uses BioTAP, the Biology Thesis Assessment Protocol, to structure engagement in scientific peer review. By assessing theses written by students who took this course and comparable students who did not, we found that our approach not only improved student writing but also helped faculty members across the department—not only those teaching the course—to work more effectively and efficiently with student writers. Students who enrolled in this course were more likely to earn highest honors than students who only worked one-on-one with faculty. Further, students in the course scored significantly better on all higher-order writing and critical-thinking skills assessed