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Addendum to
Research Proposal Terry King DISCA,
University of Portsmouth 2005-2007 1. Project Title: Evaluation of a knowledge building discourse A
practitioner-based enquiry into the effective implementation of knowledge
building in the curriculum of an online postgraduate course using a
computer-supported intentional learning environment. Is Knowledge Forum another VLE? Knowledge Forum is a specialist environment that
will help you to carry out discussions like a community of researchers; it is
not just another VLE. You should view it more like a research
noticeboard, where you will post your research ideas, opinions, theories,
justifications, findings, and criticisms. In fact, you will continue to work
in WebCT as well for just general discussions and certainly for online chat,
as there are no chat rooms in Knowledge Forum. (KF Guidelines 2005)
What do I do if I don’t agree with another
student’s entry? Then you will be able to disagree with them using a
range of supports, like “A different opinion”, “This theory cannot
explain..”. In fact, constructive critcism is key to moving research debates
forward, for that reason we have provided you with an entire scaffold giving
a range of different ways of disagreeing and being critical so that you will
find a support you are happy to use. (KF Guidelines 2005) Contents of Disagreement Scaffold:
Several supports are designed to soften the usual
range of critical supports provided
and it will be interesting to find out which (if any) of these the students
use and prefer.
Example: …Think of your group as a research ‘buddy’ group. What you will try to do is decide, either alone or with your buddy group, Knowledge Forum entries that move the research discussion forward and .. just post those carefully thought out notes to the Knowledge Forum software. For a small group, of maybe 3-4 students, if you can generate 12 carefully crafted notes each – say, 35–50 notes in total, over an 8-week period, you will be doing well. (KF Guidelines, 2005) 4. Specific Objectives of the Qualitative Research Some preliminary research was carried out in 2004, using qualitative techniques, (primarily conversation analysis) to investigate the mechanisms by which online discussions were conducted. (See the Appendix to this Addendum for full details of that exploratory research). It is proposed that this is extended in 2005-2007, with a full literature review and extensive research using collected data from online ‘chat’ sessions. 7. Intended Outcomes Recommendations for ‘best practice’ in the introduction of knowledge building in online courses in higher education. 8. Problems or Unintended Outcomes 8.1 Ethical issues. The ethical issues in a PBE of this type are considerable and have been dealt with at some length in the Ethical Approval Form and in the original Proposal.
Appendix: Exploratory (Pilot)
Study using Conversation Analysis July – Sept 2004
Contents Page
2. Research Question 4 3. Literature Review 4 4. Possible Research Methods 5 5. Ethical Considerations 8 6. Data Analysis 9 7. Problems Encountered 11 8. Discussion of Improvements 11 9. References 12 Appendix 1 - Literature Survey Prepared for Assessment 2 14
Research
Skills for Social Scientists. May 2004.
Provided
as background. Appendix 2 – Draft Coding Sheet for Textual Analysis 18 Appendix 3 – Student Informed Consent Form 19
Pilot Study This pilot study concerns research work in progress as part of an educational practitioner-based enquiry that seeks to establish a successful implementation model for the creation of a Knowledge Building Community (KBC) by student groups working in online mode. King (2004a) laid the ground work for this study, and the literature review setting out the basis for the next iteration of research in the action-research cycle can be found in Appendix 1. 1. Basis for the Research Question The initial research results were derived from an online post-graduate unit taught as part of the MSc in Information Systems in 2002. The teaching approach was constructivist in style, comprising a set of student collaborative activities, which embodied the principles of the pedagogical KBC model developed by Bereiter (2002) and were offered technological affordance through software called Knowledge Forumä (KFä). A realist approach was used to find the underlying mechanisms which would lead to the successful development of a KBC by such students. One mechanism was termed ‘virtual space conceptualisation’ (King, 2004a, 43). This relates to the three phases in the implementation model (King, 2004a, 53) as shown below, in Figure 1. Figure 1: Three-phase implementation model for online KBC (King, 2004b)
The intention is to move the students from being a Community of Scholars - demonstrating knowledge, understanding, and debate – to a Community of Researchers engaged in the investigation of research questions in a scientific mode. The central phase therefore requires that the students identify appropriate research questions and through group negotiation and consensus decide a single issue to take into the final phase. In 2002, the students were encouraged to do all this work in KFä. As KFä is a purely asynchronous environment and synchronous chat is best for reaching consensus (see Appendix 1) then the middle phase was made more difficult and when the students moved to working in the final phase they had lost sense of the highly specialist environment offered by KFä. Evaluation showed that the students in 2002 found the central negotiation phase the most difficult (King, 2004a, 47) and that one effect of this was the relatively high proportion of ‘process’ (rather than ‘content’) notes in the KFä database; notes discussing such details of when the students would hold meetings and timetabling suitable dates, which was not research work. Analysis showed that 19% of sampled notes were such ‘process’ notes (King, 2004a, 32). One aspect of this pilot study was to attempt to alter the way that the students worked in virtual space so that the proportion of ‘process’ notes were reduced. The model adopted for the pilot is shown in Figure 2 below: Figure 2: Revised three-phase implementation model for online KBC (King, 2004b)
The key feature of this revised approach was the introduction of ‘Break Out’ Sessions in the central phase. These were time-tabled, synchronous, tutor-facilitated sessions, held weekly where the students could get help to move through the central phase more successfully. 2. Research Question The essential research question to be answered was, were the ‘Break Out’ sessions successful in terms of:
3. Literature Review The previous literature review established the essential advantage of using synchronous discussion in phase 2 (see Appendix 1). Because KFä was designed as a repository for the result of student discussion carried out face-to-face (f2f), and even the later versions of the software regarded as ‘web-based’ communities actually have a high proportion of f2f contact and would be regarded as KBC work within a blended learning context, no published literature exists on the subject of implementing an online KBC or resolving the problems of online facilitation of the selection of an appropriate research topic in a KBC. However there is literature which considers the challenges of online moderation and facilitation that could provide pointers to the type of themes or indicators that could form the basis of a data analysis investigating the quality of the facilitation of the student discussion and negotiation towards their research theme. Sherry, Tavalin and Billig (2001) regarded as most relevant the evidence of tutors avoiding the dangers of misinterpretation of textual entries and the assisting student to avoid these and effecting successful methods of repair; assisting the students to become more aware of their own thinking and reasoning; being sensitive to and respecting and valuing multiple perspectives; helping participants to maintain a common goal or purpose; and appropriate feedback. The final point was supported by Cacciamani (2003) who found that e-tutors who both gave theoretical information and formulated questions to stimulate the application of the theory to practical situations were most successful working with groups in the KF database. Benfield (2000) raises the very need for effectively dealing with significant pauses and silences. Collison, Erlbaum, Haavind, and Tinker (2000) suggest that effective techniques for responding to achieve particular outcomes, ie. ‘finding the right voice’ are key, and not dominating or stifling discussion but allowing students to discover their own potential for group learning. Ambrose (2001) looks for the tutor to encourage the participants to take responsibility for their own progression, and the appropriate attention to the social aspects of learning, particularly providing a safe, non-threatening environment. Berge (1995), Paulsen (1995), and Holstein (2002), all propose models of facilitation where an e-moderator can take up different roles during the moderation process and that the moderators own awareness of these roles, or even explicating their preferred roles, are important to the success of the process. Russell (2003) considered the interactive nature of the knowledge building (KB) process and suggested that how emergent conceptual artefacts (such as suggestions, ideas, issues or plans) could be fed back into the activity system as ‘objects or mediating artefacts’, and this would result in improved KB. While the subject this paper is research is on asynchronous aspects of KB, it may be possible that the effective use of this technique could improve the e-moderation of synchronous work. Application of these themes to the data analysis and the problems and issues arising will be dealt with in the next section. 4. Possible Research Methods 4.1 Sources of data Broadly there are three sources of data that will be available from this study:
Figure 3: Illustrative
portion from chat room log in WebCT (anonymised).
4.2 Consideration of research methods With this data, several research methods are possible: 4.2.1 Numerical statistics. This might be relevant for:
4.2.2 Textual Analysis. There are several sources of text, viz. evaluation comments, learning journals and transcripts. The first two, evaluation comments and learning journals could be used to gauge student attitudes. These documents could be studied to detect themes, which might reoccur, and it would be possible to judge attitudes for the cohort of 9 students. The use of selected quotes from the documents would support discovered themes. The transcripts could be subjected to data analysis by taking the facilitation issue themes appearing the sources in the literature survey, and coding the text according to these. Other themes may also emerge. There are 8 individual transcripts covering 18 pages of word processed text and this approach would seem to be realistic. Some issues make this worth reconsidering. Firstly the themes appearing are definitely slanted towards the tutors role and do not give much guidance on themes for student experience. Secondly, this literature is for general online discussions and neither focused on synchronous discussion nor the type of discussion that might be pertinent to KB. As this is a new area of research, relying on old themes to focus the work might lead to new findings being missed. Finally, the transcripts are conversations and there is no descriptive content; it is all interactional process. That may make the more traditional textual analysis more difficult. However there is enough textual data and this method cannot be dismissed. 4.2.3 Conversation Analysis Under this section I shall include both Conversation Analysis (CA) and Membership Categorisation Discourse Analysis (MCD) as these are closely related. There is a precedent for using CA and MCD in analysing chat room talk. Vallis (2002) analysed 2000 hours Computer Mediated Conversation (CMC), mainly Internet Relay Chat (IRC), using these methods and established that “chat room members do organise their local interaction by accomplishing the relevance of related but different MCDs are interpretive frameworks for elaborating sequences”. The analysis of turn-taking and sequences in the Break Out Session transcripts could reveal,
Such conclusions could reveal findings about the nature of student ‘roles’ as much as tutor ontologies, which would complement the roles modelling discussed earlier. However, two considerations must be made. Firstly CA methods started with the analysis of a huge sample of short, similar passages in order that the findings are generalisable (Silverman, 2001, 169). However from more recent examples in Hutchby and Wooffitt (2003), particulary Chapter 6 describing talk in institutional settings, and studies such as Housley (1999) where a small number of professional meetings were used, it is apparent that such analysis might be usefully attempted on the Break Out Session transcripts. Also relevant to this is that the next-turn proof procedure in CA (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 2003, 15) that gives CA analysis an essential validity. Secondly, in CA, the exact timings of the turn taking are normally considered very important because gaps and pauses can reveal a great deal about underlying intentions (Hutchby & Wooffitt, 2003, 81). WebCT Chat Logs do not contain exact timings. However Vallis (2001, 54), although having timings recorded by IRC, dismissed the use of timings in CA for CMC because of an individual’s different connection speed to the server causing variable delays and often turns taken out of sequence. She however was guided by the participants comments about ‘lags’ and it remains to be seen if such comments appear in the Break Out Session transcripts. In conclusion it was decided to use CA and MCD analysis on the transcripts, complemented by a textual analysis using themes from the literature review. All students in this study were asked to give informed consent for use of all these documents in this research study. A copy of the informed consent form can be found at http://www.btinternet.com/~trking/icf2005.htm. (see Appendix 3). All data will be anonymised, particulary the transcripts where tutor names, and student names and numbers will be altered. 6. Data Analysis 6.1 ‘Process Notes’ in KFä database A representative sample from the views from 2 groups comprising 44 initial notes and build-ons and 17 annotations, 61 notes in all, were studied for type of note, either ‘content’ or ‘process’. Just one annotation was found to be a ‘process’ note. This is 1.6% of the sample, and compares with 19.0% of a similar sample in the 2002 study, (King, 2004a, 32). This would indicate that the introduction of the Break Out Sessions has enabled the students to use synchronous chat more effectively to process their negotiations outside of the KFä database. In view of this, no more data analysis was carried out. 6.2 Student Attitudes This proved to be more problematical and will be dealt with in sections7 and 8 following. 6.3 Textual Analysis of Transcripts A coding scheme was drawn up for the textual analysis of the transcripts and can be found in Appendix 3. However it was decided to analyse the transcripts using CA and MCD analysis before using the coding themes so as not to compromise the themes which might emerge from the CA. The textual analysis has not yet been finalised. 6.4 CA and MCD analysis Some initial work has started on the data analysis using CA and MCD analysis on the chat room transcripts to see if this is a feasible technique. An initial interesting result has been found from investigating the MCDs that the students and tutors orient to in the discussions. Figures 4 and 5, show two talk-in-interaction sequences, one of which results in a poor outcome for the Tutor and another which results in a good outcome. Figure 4: Tutor orienting to a different MCD to the students
157
TUTOR--(unit-code)>>So we
seem to have two issues emerging .. (ST1 name) what about your 'blended
learning' issues idea? 158 ST1--(stud-code-no1)>>Very
selfish, (Tutor-name) - I will be
running a course in 159 ST1--(stud-code-no1)>>October,
with distance learning, but
160 ST1--(stud-code-no1)>>with 1
to 2 hours' tutorial sessions a month - it's 161 ST1--(stud-code-no1)>>my fault
- I have an interest in it and 162 ST1--(stud-code-no1)>>put my
head 'above the parapet, choosing a 163 ST1--(stud-code-no1)>>subject
I knew the college couldn't refuse# 164 ST2 --(stud-code-no2)>>I may
just join the blended learning group which I'm also interested in# 165 TUTOR--(unit-code)>>Can I
suggest that ST3/ST4, ST2 and ST1 (or ST2 + ST1), or both, put some clearer
statement of their issues in the Issues View .. 166 ST1--(stud-code-no1)>>what
sort of clearer, (tutor name)?# 167 TUTOR--(unit-code)>>(ST1 name)
- yes - just the kind of discussions we've been having now - nothing firmer# 168 TUTOR--(unit-code)>>Maybe you
should all email those who are missing tonight .drum up support# 169 ST1--(stud-code-no1)>>sorry, I'm
lost - support for what?# Figure 5:
Tutor manages change of MCD successfully
387 ST2 (stud-code-no2)>>An interesting question for me is why
(if the interfaces are so good) do not more people use VLE type software? 388 TUTOR (unit-code)>>ST2 - Ok that's fine. You could investigate
that through software?# 389 TUTOR (unit-code)>>Actually - most people think VLE interfaces
are c--p# 390 ST2 (stud-code-no2)>>LOL, then why don't more people rebel? 391 TUTOR (unit-code)>>Too much stake - too much legacy
software/courses etc# 392 TUTOR (unit-code)>>Also VLE's are costly - that could explain
their non-use# 393 TUTOR (unit-code)>>If you are not careful, you can get into
policy areas, quickly# 394 ST2 (stud-code-no2)>>Therefore we could identify what should
be in the interface for good on-line learning and then investigate whether
those options are present or absent# 395 ST2 (stud-code-no2)>>I think so because we could identify
learning online, identify the integration level, look at the types of
interaction, and then evaluate.# 396 TUTOR (unit-code)>>Yes - good. That would work. 397 TUTOR (unit-code)>>You have WebCT, and KF. Also, access to
Colloquia, which is free. 398 TUTOR (unit-code)>>That would be a start# 399 TUTOR (unit-code)>>I could probably get you access to
FirstClass# 400 ST2 (stud-code-no2)>>It would be fairly straightforward to
also build a knowledge base of evidence of current use# … 401
TUTOR (unit-code)>>Do you want to canvass Maxine and Ann on this
proposal?# 402
ST2 (stud-code-no2)>>Yes I think I will , although I think the
basics are already there in the proposals so far made# 403 TUTOR (unit-code)>>Like the others - I suggest a rise-above of
all the stuff on blended learning .. 404 TUTOR (unit-code)>>put your proposal in the rise-above
summary.. 405 TUTOR (unit-code)>>in "New Issues" to start with .. 406 TUTOR (unit-code)>>then create a new view, copy the rise-above
to the new view, and get going from there.# 407 TUTOR (unit-code)>>How does that sound?# 408 ST2 (stud-code-no2)>>Cheers - been useful# Examining the sequences in both figures reveals that a common MCD that both the students and the tutor orient to is the device of “ideas development”, with membership categories such as ‘novice’, ‘expert’, ‘researcher’ etc. There is also the common MCD of Software Progression. The tutor is a member of the ‘enabler’ category in both MCD’s. In Figure 4, when all participants orient themselves to Ideas Development then the turn-taking proceeds successfully, but at the end (Line 169) the tutor suddenly re-orientates to the MCD of Software Progression. This is easy for the tutor who is orienting generally to enabler, but the student is lost. As is shown is Figure 5 in lines 401 – 407, at the end, the same thing happens as in Figure 4 – with the tutor wanting to clarify or direct the student to a procedural course of action. But here while the tutor is fairly directive on procedure, they are still oriented partly to MCD (Developing Ideas) and the switch to MCD (Software Progression) is smooth and the student feels comfortable with that. as shown in Line 408. From this example it is clear that the tutor needs to aware of the enabling they are doing, and carefully scaffold the shift from one ‘role’ to another. Alternatively, perhaps the structure of each session needs to be more explicitly structured for all participants, so that it is clear that the group will need to agree a procedural ‘action plan’ at the end of each session, so that the students expect it. As a final point, studying the data at a first level seems to indicate that the tutor makes abrupt statements, is directive or interventionist. It may be that this is in response to long pauses in the talk. We have no way of knowing that from the data and this loss of timing information may in fact be important when looking at the tutors role. The little CA data analysis carried out suggests that it is feasible and useful to pursue this beyond the pilot study. 7.1 Student Attitudes Students were not asked to explicitly comment on the Break Out Sessions in either their Learning Journals or the Unit Evaluation, where there was a general section on Moderated Discussions. Unfortunately we obtained no data on Break Out Sessions for this in the Pilot! 7.2 Complexity of CA CA was a completely new field and method of data analysis for the author, and it will require a great deal of extra work before the analysis of the pilot data is complete. However as the next possibility for data gathering will not occur until February 2005, there is time over the period Sept – Dec 2004 to complete this analysis and action any findings. 8.1 Student Interviews Six of the students (of the 9) will be available later in 2004 for
interviews about their attitudes to the Break Out Sessions. These interviews
will be able to incorporate any findings from the CA and textual analysis. It
is planned that interviews will be the main data source for attitudinal
investigations in future research in this area. 8.2 Pauses in Transcripts It is planned to make ‘Break Out Sessions’ a regular feature of the
taught unit so that a new set of
transcripts will be obtained in the academic year 2004/2005. When those
discussions are being held, a complete record of the event will be maintained
as a video clip by using screen capture software, focused on the chat screen
while the discussion is taking place. In this way, timings and pauses will be
captured, at least for the tutor experience, so the transcripts can be
amended to include this information.
9. References Ambrose,
L. (2001). Learning Online Facilitation Online, Moving Online
Conference II, 2-4 September, Gold Coast, Australia. Retrieved 2 August, 2004
from Benfield,
G. (2000). Teaching on the Web - Exploring the Meanings of Silence,
UltiBase Online Journal, Melbourne.
Retrieved 2 August, 2004 from Bereiter, C. (2002). Education
and mind in the knowledge age. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Berge,
Z. L. (1995). The Role of the Online Instructor/Facilitator, Educational
Technology, 35 (1), 22-30. Retrieved 3 August 2004 from Cacciamani,
S. (2003, August). Knowledge building communities, tutor role
and inquiry activity development. Presentation at the IKIT
Summer Institute 2003, Toronto, Canada. Retrieved 3 August, 2004
from Collison,
G., Erlbaum, B., Haavind, S. & Tinker, R. (eds) (2000). Facilitating
On-line Learning: Effective Strategies for Moderators, Atwood Publishing. Hootstein,
E. (2002). Wearing Four Pairs of Shoes: The Roles of E-Learning Facilitators,
Learning Circuits, ASTD Online Magazine. Retrieved 26 August, 2004,
from http://www.learningcircuits.org/2002/oct2002/elearn.html. Housley,
W. (1999). Role as an Interactional Device and Resource in Multidisciplinary
Team Meetings, Sociological Research Online, 4 (3). Retrieved 26 August,
2004, from http://www.socresonline.org.uk/4/3/housley.html. Hutchby,
I. & Wooffitt, R. (2003). Conversation Analysis. Cambs: Polity
Press. King, T.R. (2004a).
Advancing the Online Curriculum in Higher Education through
Knowledge Building. Unpublished master's thesis, School of Education and
Continuing Studies, University of Portsmouth, UK. Retrieved September 16,
2004 from http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/~kingt/research/MA_TKing.pdf. King, T. (2004b). Modelling Student Discussion and Tutor Facilitation in Online Knowledge Building [Abstract], in Handbook of ALT-C 2004, Association for Learning Technology 11th International Conference, University of Exeter, September, 70. Retrieved September 16, 2004 from http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/~kingt/research/altc2004.htm. Paulsen,
M. F. (1995). Moderating Educational Computer Conferences, in Z. L. Berge
& M. P. Collins (Eds), Computer-mediated Communication and the On-line
Classroom in Distance Education, Hampton Press, Cresskill, NJ. Retrieved
26 July, 2004 from http://www.emoderators.com/moderators/morten.html. Russell,
A. (2003, August). The role of conceptual artifacts in
knowledge building practice. Presentation at the IKIT Summer Institute 2003,
Toronto, Canada. Retrieved 26 July, 2004 from http://ikit.org/SummerInstitute2003/posters/russell.html. Sherry,
L, Tavalin, F & Billig, S.H. (2001). Good Online Conversation: Building
on Research to Inform Practice, Journal of Interactive Learning Research,
11(1). Retrieved 2 August, 2004 from http://www.webproject.org/pdf/oeri.pdf. Silverman,
D. (2001). Interpreting Qualitative Data. (2nd ed). London:
Sage. Vallis, R. (2001). Sense and Sensibility in Chat Rooms. Unpublished doctoral thesis, School of Education, University of Queensland. Walston, J. T. & Lissitz, R.W. (2000). Computer-mediated Focus Groups. Evaluation Review, 24(5), 457-483. APPENDIX 1.Initial Literature Survey
May 2004 King (2004) identified three inter-related problems that can arise in developing an online Knowledge Building Community (KBC). Firstly that in devising a model with three phases, students were required to move from one phase to another, while appreciating the difference in the KB discourse appropriate to each phase. Secondly, that the three phases mapped onto three distinct virtual spaces, but that these spaces with their own characteristics were not explicitly defined. And, finally, that students were expected to negotiate their own movement from one phase to another; something which they found difficult and frustrating in an asynchronous environment. It has been decided to leave any future development of the virtual spaces model, the second point, until attempts have been made to resolve the final problem, and the purpose of this literature survey is to examine all the factors that may be brought to bear and provide a guide to resolving it in a future curriculum development. Scardamalia and Bereiter (1993, p.210) listed the characteristics of schooling according to the KBC model. Table 1 uses those characteristics to identify the key tasks confronting students and teachers.
The teacher responsibilities listed are carried out in a face-to-face
classroom where the teaching model is relatively uncomplicated, with students
discussing a great deal of both the processing of their activities (such as
how they reach consensus, voting on outcomes, requesting clarification etc)
and the ‘content’ of Knowledge Forumâ software (KF)
notes, with their teacher as a seamless process. Online there are three
levels of a Three-Phase Model to be negotiated, with the movement into the
phase of devising group knowledge building goals and then into the final
phase of investigating those research questions being the most problematic
for the students, especially as KF contains no facility for synchronous
discussion (King, 2004). The DFG sponsored workshop report (DFG-NSF, 2003)
argued that the online tutor would need to provide meta-cognitive scaffolding
in the form of explicit reference to both the research and teaching models so
that the students would be more self-aware of the steps to be taken. Hmelo
and Day (1999) suggest that this should be done through specific online
discussions with the tutor, which are made more meaningful by the tutor
providing questions designed, firstly, to ensure that students have the
common conceptual ground to move forward with their own discussions;
secondly, to support the students emerging skills in using KF and its various
features, such as scaffolds; and, finally, to help the students to focus on
research outcomes. McLoughlin, Winnips and Oliver (2000) call
this support ‘cognitive structuring’ where learners “are assisted to organize
their own experiences following the provision of explanations or meta-level
strategies to enable students to organize their own thinking”; with,
additionally, scaffold supports providing verbal scaffolding. Another
key issue was the problem of incorporation of ‘process’ discussions within KF
database content. King (2004) reported that 19% of all the KF notes were
about the organisation of group processing of work. It is an important aim to
remove these from future KBC discourse. Also Marjanovic (1999)
reports the many advantages to be gained through students synchronous
discussions, such as greater improvements in discussion quality and group
dynamics, and as these are not made naturally available in KF, a more formal
encouragement for students to meet synchronously in WebCT could have valuable
outcomes additional to negotiation across phase boundaries. The Chat Room facilities in WebCT are
wholly textual and thought has been given to using the Whiteboard Tool to
provide the opportunity for visual representations during discussions with
students. Henry, Henry and Riddoch (2003) give detailed directions for white
boarding in student face-to-face group work, and the advantages for using
whiteboards, especially to encourage use of diagramming and other images.
They concluded that the major advantages were to elicit prior knowledge, help
groups come to consensus, for students to explain their own thinking, and to
facilitate the construction of evidenced-based knowledge. Edelson, Gomez,
Polman, Gordin, and Fishman (1994) further regarded science students
acquiring an understanding of the uses of visualisation as a vital skill.
However, Henry et al. (2003) also made the point that the whiteboard needed
to be big and be capable of being divided into smaller sections. The author’s
own experiments in 2004 with using the WebCT Whiteboard alongside students’
discussions in the Chat Room demonstrated that the area of the whiteboard was
small and hard to display alongside the Chat area, difficult to use with drawing
tools, and images could not be saved. So, at this time, it is felt that
bringing in yet another software feature for the students to learn would be
counterproductive, but that in future versions of WebCT white boarding
facilities may improve and that this should be kept under review. At this point a decision was made to offer students
synchronous ‘Breakout’ sessions from KF in a WebCT Chat Room to specifically
focus on the three areas suggested by Hmelo and Day (1999) and encourage the
process discussions. However, it is
also necessary to consider the issues raised by Rahikainen, Lallimo, and
Hakkarainen (2001) for the need to maintain a balance in such discussions
between teacher-controlled and student-controlled aspects of the enquiry. How
can a tutor avoid excessively directing the students enquiries or too much
intervention, when the goal is to have students “self-generate their own
learning agenda”? Rahikainen et al.
(2001) found that where teachers guidance was given to an entire class online
that 36% was devoted to process and 36% to ‘setting working theory’ i.e. how
to proceed with research investigations. These student priorities were also
reflected in the guidance given to groups and Rahikainen et al. found that
the less advanced students had problems ‘getting started’ which agrees with
the findings of King (2004). So we concluded that the tutors involved in the
‘Breakout’ discussions should expect to be largely involved in those two
types of discussions and not need to be excessively directive about research
problems themselves. To avoid being
too directive Kayama and Okamoto (2002) suggest, as well as initiating
dialogue, that tutors observe and minimise suggesting, encourage turn-taking,
co-ordinate rather than control, and supervise student planning rather than
taking the initiative and executing.
Some final thought was given to the possibility of using such
‘Breakout’ sessions to encourage more reflective interactions, but, as
Rahikainen et al. (2001) found little evidence of student-lead interest here,
and Baker and Lund (1997) seem to
indicate that such interactions are best facilitated by the use of ‘thinking
types’ of the kind already present in KF, with King (2002) demonstrating that
worthwhile student reflection needs time to develop, that the type of
discussion indicated earlier would provide essential contact and mode of
operation for the ‘Breakout’ sessions. References Baker, M. & Lund, K. (1997). Promoting reflective interactions in a
CSCL environment. Journal of Computer
Assisted Learning, 13, 175-193. DFG-NSF (2003).
Report of Working Group One: Scaffolding Student Metacognition in
ICT (Report). DFG-NSF
International Workshop on Research and Development in Mathematics and Science
Education, Washington, DC, USA. Retrieved May 7, 2004, from
http://cltnet.org/archive/dfgnsf/docs/WashWG1Summary.pdf Edelson, D., Gomez, L., Polman, J., Gordin, D. &
Fishman, B. (1994). Scaffolding
Student Inquiry with Collaborative Visualization Tools. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of
the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA. Retrieved
May 11, 2004, from www.covis.nwu.edu/info/papers/
pdf/edelson-gomez-aera-94.pdf Henry, D., Henry, J. & Riddoch, S. (2003). Whiteboarding your way to great student
discussions. Buffalo State University of New York. Retrieved May 5, 2004, from
physicsed.buffalostate.edu/pubs/Elem_whiteboarding.pdf Hmelo, C. & Day, R. (1999). Contextualised questioning to scaffold
learning from simulations. Computers
& Education, 32, 151-164. Kayama, M. & Okamoto, T. (2002). Collaborative
learning in the Internet learning space.
Industry and Higher Education, August, 249-259. King, T. (2002).
Development of Student Skills in Reflective Writing .
Conference Proceedings of the 4th World Conference of the International
Consortium for Educational Development in Higher Education, held in Perth,
Australia. [Electronic Version]
http://www.csd.uwa.edu.au/iced2002/publication/Terry_King.pdf King, T.R. (2004).
Advancing the Online Curriculum in Higher Education through
Knowledge Building. Unpublished Master's thesis, University of
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(2000). Supporting Constructivist
Learning through Learner Support Online. Conference Proceedings of
the World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and
Telecommunications (EdMEDIA), 1, 674-680. Rahikainen, M., Lallimo, J. & Hakkarainen, K. (2001). Progressive inquiry in CSILE environment: teacher guidance and students' engagement. In P. Dillenbourg, A. Eurelings and K. Hakkarainen, (Eds.), European Perspectives on Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning. Proceedings of the First European Conference on CSCL, Maastricht, the Netherlands: Maastricht McLuhan Institute ( pp. 520-528). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Scardamalia, M. & Bereiter, C. (2003). Beyond brainstorming: Sustained creative work with ideas. Education Canada, 43(4),4-7 & 44. APPENDIX 2. Draft Coding Sheet for Textual Analysis
Words and phrases in the chat room transcripts will be coded to these themes as indicated:
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