A serious shortcoming of most educational software is its limited coverage of a single body of knowledge. Students add knowledge, evaluate it, interrelate it, label it, sort it, and perform periodic reorganization of information to enhance the quality of the database. Students can put their work on hold while they think of new ideas, or they can retrieve notes already in the database for editing. A keyword search tool allows students to find information on topics that cross domains of knowledge, finding information that interconnects across subjects. Students can monitor the learning of others, not just their own.
Students respond to others ideas, requests for information, confusions, self-ratings, and so on.
No predictive differences were found on the constructive activity measure based on individual independent variables, indicating that both groups were highly involved. But, in the independent research group both productivity and use of thinking types predicted knowledge quality, while in the collaborative knowledge group, the significant predictors of learning were exploring and collaborating, the two measures of communal activity. Thus in the independent research group, where students generally worked on their own, overall productivity predicted learning, while in the collaborative knowledge group, where work was a communal effort, the extent of student involvement predicted learning. A worldwide league of Founding Members participating in transforming schools into knowledge building communities. Unifying these diverse uses is the fact that the communal database objectifies knowledge in a way that conventional educational media do not, making it more possible to diffuse knowledge, revise and augment it, and bring it together into larger wholes.