Introduction to Collaborative Knowledge Building

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Introduction to Collaborative Knowledge Building
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Our project homepage

• http//lcp.cite.hku.hkhttp//kf.cite.hku.hk8080/
  Reg no RTCCSCL

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Rundown of this session

• Teacher experience sharing
• Introduction to Knowledge Building
• Introduction to Knowledge Forum
• Hands on session with group discussion
• Some local designs and cases

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Class Discussion

• To your understanding, what is Computer supported
  collaborative learning??
• Are there any instances of using computer to
  mediate idea development among students in your
  school? Would you please share with us?
• How much do you think the students have gained
  after the learning activity? Why?

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What is collaborative knowledge building??

• Traditionally, schools are dominated by the
  teacher-led chalk-and-talk approach.
• Most of the time, there may not be enough time
  for students to discuss in class because of the
  tight teaching schedule and arrangement.

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• Through the discussion and mutual learning
  process, students are actually forming a
  knowledge-building community.
• And in this community, students have to produce,
  share and advance the knowledge of the
  collective.
• In this case, the roles of students have changed
  from that of clients to that of participants and
  workers in the community.

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• Hence, there is a shift from teacher-directed
  approach to a more student-centred learning.
• It helps trace out students own paths of
  constructing knowledge collaboratively with
  teachers guidance and monitoring.
• The collaborative knowledge-building approach is
  very important to students not only in the sense
  that it can help develop better thinking,
  analytical, enquiry and problem-solving skills,
  but it also paves the way for student to develop
  their life-long learning abilities and attitudes.

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• In this circumstance, Knowledge Forum (KF) can
  provide a room for students to have discussion
  and to develop their independent and critical
  thinking.

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The Tool Knowledge Forum
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Online collaborative knowledge building platform
Virtual Knowledge Domain
Interface
Interface
In other words, it mediates processing among
human mind.
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Knowledge Forum?
Virtual Knowledge Domain
Interface
Interface
Students cannot learn from Knowledge Forum.
They learn by interacting with knowledge through
Knowledge Forum
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Knowledge Forum (KF)

• KF is a problem-centered collaborative knowledge
  medium that operates over a computer network.
• KF includes knowledge building and management
  tools for
• Collaborative learning
• Providing scaffolding supports for building idea
  networks
• Providing graphic functionalities for developing
  concept maps
• Identifying knowledge gaps and advances
• Viewing database from multiple perspectives
• The functional design of KF is an embodiment of
  the knowledge building principles proposed by
  Carl Bereiter Marlene Scardamalia.

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We hope that KF can help students to develop
their

• Thinking skills
• Meta-cognitive skills in learning
• Abilities to collaborate with others
• Life long learning skills

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In order to become a knowledge builder

• Students need to learn to carry out by
  themselves
• Identifying frontiers of knowledge
• Judging what constitutes an advance in knowledge

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• Lets learn to use KF now!

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Advantages of KF over threaded discussion forums
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Views

• Students can create their own views and layout to
  represent their knowledge in novel ways, while
  very often the layout of the program for threaded
  discussion cannot be changed

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Knowledge Trees

• The web like representation of notes submitted on
  a view allows flexible ways of viewing the same
  discussion. It is not achievable by threaded
  discussion

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Rise Above Notes

• Rise-above notes are summary notes that work
  like a folder which collect relevant notes
  together and raise the knowledge within to a
  higher level.
• There are no comparable functions to realize the
  same process in threaded discussions

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Use of Scaffolds

• Scaffolds can prompt students to think along the
  line
• It also trains students to write logically
• No such function can be found in threaded
  discussions

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• Lets see some local KF database now

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Impact to local secondary school classroom
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Extension of classroom discussion

• Students can discuss after school or during
  weekends, whenever and wherever!
• The online environment is a place where less
  active students can speak out
• Students with different learning capabilities can
  be grouped together to form study group for more
  productive discussion

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Peer Tutoring

• Through presentation or group discussion,
  students can present their output from discussion
  to their classmates or schoolmates.
• It achieves the objective of peer tutoring, while
  also creates the drive for students to move on in
  their discussion for better achievement.

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Learning through real problems

• E.g. solar cooker or flight device

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Self-reflection through journals

• Students can reflect on their performance based
  on their reflection journals
• For example

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Better learning skills

• Students are more able to identify their
  weaknesses in their learning
• Students know how to ask questions
• Train students to look for solutions, which can
  always be added-onto or improved, rather than
  looking for merely answers, which stops the
  discussion.

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Integrate learning activities with curriculum

• We have teachers who have integrated Knowledge
  Building into the following curriculums
• Form 1 Integrated Sciences
• Form 3 Design and Technology
• Form 4 Physics
• Form 4 Chemistry
• Form 4 Computer Studies
• Form 6 Liberal Studies, History
• And so on

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• Curriculum planning actual implementation in
  Knowledge Forum

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Learning Community Projects 2001-2004
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2001-2004 Learning Community Projects

• The aim of the project is to support and
  investigate the development of life-long learning
  abilities in group collaborative learning
  contexts using technology, focusing on finding
  the relationships between the development of
  enquiry and knowledge-building abilities and the
  changing group dynamics and interaction patterns
  of the learners.
• With the integration of a web discussion platform
  called Knowledge Forum (KF) into secondary
  school curriculum, this project hopes to develop
  better thinking, analytical and problem-solving
  skills of students, and to enhance their
  knowledge-building ability.

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2001-2004 Learning Community Projects

• About 20 schools have been involved at various
  points during the life of this project
• Subjects include
• Integrated Sciences
• Physics
• Chemistry
• Civic Education
• Liberal Studies, History
• Design and Technology

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2001-2004 Learning Community Projects

• Various learning schemes and learning projects
  organized
• Peer Tutoring Project (2002)
• Assessment for Better Learning Project (2003)
• Promoting Higher Order Thinking Through Knowledge
  Building Scheme (2003)
• Go Up Stay High Science Design Competition (2004)

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Knowledge Building Symposium and Workshops

• 18th 25th May 2002
• The activity served as a means to conduct interim
  review and disseminate good practice and the use
  of KF.
• The focus of the Symposium rested on the
  conceptual introduction and operational sharing
  of experience on knowledge building.
• The workshops were mainly catered for a smaller
  audience who were interested in integrating
  knowledge building supported by Knowledge Forum
  in the next year.

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Peer Tutoring Project

• June 2002 October 2002
• The partakers in this scheme were the secondary
  school students from approximately ten schools,
  ranged from Form 3 to Form 6.
• The students worked on the topics set by their
  teachers with their own schoolmates in groups
  during the summer.
• They were required to report on their progress in
  the form of peer tutoring to their schoolmates at
  the beginning of new semester.
• This was followed by a cognitive achievement test
  on the respective subjects to find out the depth
  of understanding attained by students.
• Students were also invited to do presentation and
  sharing in the award presentation ceremony in
  mid-October.

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Assessment for Better Learning

• May 2003 July 2003
• students are required to design a structured
  assessment item on their own subject area. This
  assessment item should adequately cover a topic
  in the curriculum of their subject and the time
  allocation for an individual student to finish
  the assessment item should be around 20 minutes.
• Along with the design of this item, students
  need to design a model/ guided answer and a
  marking scheme which is able to differentiate
  different levels of understanding to the
  assessment item
• Except from designing their own question and
  marking scheme, they also need to assess other
  groups proposed question.

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Promoting Higher-order Thinking Through Knowledge
Building

• September 2003 December 2003
• In this project we paid more attention in guiding
  and scaffolding students to develop their
  thinking and enquiry skills through the knowledge
  building process and to cultivate their epistemic
  agency as working in a learning community.
• In order to provide better induction and
  encouragement to participating students, there
  was an award scheme concomitant to the project.
  We turned the abstract idea of knowledge building
  into easy-to-understand guidelines and award
  mechanism for students to follow.
• It is hoped that students can be aware of the
  award selection criteria and then develop their
  thinking skills gradually.

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Go Up, Stay High! Science Design Competition

• February 2004 May 2004
• The students task is to employ their knowledge
  in Form 4 Physics to design a system whereby they
  can launch a device to go up into the air, stay
  there as long as possible before touching ground
  again
• It is an important goal for this competition to
  encourage students to exercise their creativity
  in applying what they learn to solve difficult
  practical technological challenges.
• They are encouraged to also read the notes
  written by other students from different schools
  and they are also encouraged to contribute to
  other groups' efforts by building on and
  responding to others' notes.

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• Video clips of students reflection on how KF/KB
  helped them to learn will be played at this point

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Curriculum planning actual implementation

• Form level of students involved
• Subjects that students will work on
• Topics that students will work on Set seed
  questions and stages for discussion
• Timeline for work Start-off date, weekly summary
  and reflection journal, culminating event, any
  pre-and post-test
• Grouping of students and selection of group
  leaders

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Curriculum planning actual implementation

• 6. Technical set-up and support installation of
  KF, checking of firewall
• 7. Students workshop on usage of KF
• 8. Leaders workshop on organization of views
• 9. Facilitation method
• 10. Culminating event Oral presentation, written
  report, other tangible deliverables
• 11. Assessment and evaluation (Cognitive) tests,
  written report, (metacognitve) self and peer
  evaluation

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• Task design sustainability

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Task design sustainability

• Different stages for students to transfer from
  easier questions to tougher problems
• Open-ended questions VS close-ended questions
• Stage-guided discussion VS unstructured
  discussion

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Knowledge Building Principles
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Knowledge Building Principles(M. Scardamalia)

• Real Ideas, Authentic Problems
• Improvable Ideas
• Idea Diversity
• Rise Above
• Epistemic Agency
• Community Knowledge, Collective Responsibility

• Democratizing Knowledge
• Symmetric Knowledge Advancement
• Pervasive Knowledge Building
• Constructive Uses of Authoritative Sources
• Knowledge Building Discourse
• Embedded and Transformative Assessment

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Four Categories

• Collective responsibility for advancing knowledge
• Epistemic agency for collective knowledge
  advancement
• Rise above for continuous knowledge advancement
  and embedded and transformative assessment
• Pervasive and symmetric knowledge building for
  authentic problems

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collective responsibility for advancing knowledge

• 1.1 community knowledge, collective
  responsibility
• 1.2 democratizing knowledge
• 1.3 idea diversity

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epistemic agency for collective knowledge
advancement

• 2.1 improvable ideas
• 2.2 knowledge building discourse
• 2.3 epistemic agency
• 2.4 constructive use of authoritative sources

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rise above for continuous knowledge advancement
and embedded and transformative assessment

• 3.1 rise above
• 3.2 embedded and transformative assessment

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pervasive and symmetric knowledge building for
authentic problems

• 4.1 real ideas, authentic problems
• 4.2 pervasive knowledge building
• 4.3 symmetric knowledge advancement

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• Teachers Facilitation

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Facilitation

• Provide a good framework for students to work on
  (e.g. curriculum planning and actual
  implementation)
• Read students notes regularly on weekly basis
• Respond students notes appropriately when
  necessary
• Stimulate discussion by writing thought-provoking
  notes
• Encourage (pushing with coercion) students to
  work hard on platform
• Liaise with group leaders
• Answer questions related to the tasks offline
• Different facilitation style

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• Teachers may use the example curriculum design
  form to design their own KB activity.

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• Evaluation of learning outcome Learning impact
  on students

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Evaluation of learning outcome

• (Cognitive) Traditional paper-and-pencil test and
  its problem
• (Cognitive) Misconception test
• (Cognitive) Knowledge building discourse on KF
• (Cognitive) Oral presentation
• (Cognitive) Wrapping-up written report
• (Metacognitive) Instruments on knowledge building
  principles developed by IKIT and CITE
• (Metacognitive) Self and peer evaluation
• Individual Vs Group assessment
• Exploration of more authentic assessments

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An example on evaluating outcomes of KB
activitiesGeneral Awards
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An example on evaluating outcomes of KB
activitiesDesign Awards
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Through the use of award systems

• Students are encouraged to work towards the KB
  principles embedded within the awards
• Students are encouraged to read, review and
  criticize notes written by their peers, and hence
  to encourage idea interflow
• Students are encouraged to write reflection
  journals of their learning progress in order to
  develop learning to learn ability

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Social aspects ofknowledge building
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Student Community

• Through the discussion and mutual learning
  process, students are actually forming a
  knowledge-building community.
• And in this community, students have to produce,
  share and advance the knowledge of the
  collective.
• In this case, the roles of students have changed
  from that of clients to that of participants and
  workers in the community.
• Hence, there is a shift from teacher-directed
  approach to a more student-centred learning.

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Teacher Community

• In our experience, KB always start small with one
  teacher who is very keen and active in organizing
  KB activities for the students in his school.
• Gradually, more and more teachers in the same
  school get acquainted with KB after seeing the
  outcome of the learning activity. Then they will
  be more likely to try KB on their own subjects
• As a result, a teacher KB community is formed in
  a school. It is more likely that KB can take root
  in a school in this way.