ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Knowledge Building and Mathematics: Shifting the Responsibility for Knowledge Advancement and Engagement
Author: Moss, Joan
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Mathematics Achievement,Grade 4,Mathematics Instruction,Urban Schools,Learner Engagement,Algebra,Problem Solving,Instructional Effectiveness,At Risk Students,Laboratory Schools,Discourse Analysis,Program Descriptions,Computer Mediated Communication,Web Sites,Computer Assisted Instruction,Educational Technology,Internet

Three classrooms of Grade 4 students from different schools and diverse backgrounds collaborated in early algebra research to solve a series of linear and quadratic generalizing problems. Results revealed that high- and low-achieving students were able to solve problems of recognized difficulty. We discuss Knowledge Building principles and practices that fostered deep understanding and broad participation. Students used the online Knowledge Building environment Knowledge Forum[R] to conduct their work and we illustrate how Knowledge Forum supported a Knowledge Building culture for mathematical learning and problem solving. Analyses of participation patterns and note content revealed practices consistent with Knowledge Building principles, specifically &quot;democratization of knowledge,&quot; with students at all achievement levels participating, and &quot;epistemic agency,&quot; with students providing evidence and justification for conjectures and generating multiple solutions to challenging problems. (Contains 2 figures and 11 footnotes.)
Developing Deep Understanding and Literacy while Addressing a Gender-Based Literacy Gap
Author: Sun, Yanqing
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Females,Grade 3,Gender Differences,Males,Literacy,Grade 4,Vocabulary Development,Achievement Gap,Discourse Analysis,Computer Mediated Communication,Web Sites,Computer Assisted Instruction,Educational Technology,Internet,Laboratory Schools

Online discourse from a class of 22 students (11 boys and 11 girls) was analysed to assess advances in conceptual understanding and literacy. The students worked over a two-year period (Grades 3-4), during which they contributed notes to an online Knowledge Building environment--Knowledge Forum[R]. Contributions revealed that both boys and girls produced a substantial amount of text and graphics, and that their written texts incorporated an increasing proportion of less-frequent, advanced words, including academic vocabulary and domain-specific words from grade levels higher than their own. Brief accounts of classroom discourse indicate how deep understanding and vocabulary growth mutually support each other in online and offline exchanges. The gender differences that were observed show boys doing slightly better than girls, suggesting that Knowledge Building has the potential to help boys overcome weaknesses in literacy. (Contains 6 figures, 2 tables and 2 footnotes.)
Social Network Analysis to Examine Interaction Patterns in Knowledge Building Communities
Author: Philip, Donald N.
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Network Analysis,Group Dynamics,Grade 5,Social Networks,Interaction Process Analysis,Grade 6,Classroom Environment,Evaluation Methods,Classroom Communication,Questionnaires,Discourse Analysis,Computer Mediated Communication,Web Sites,Computer Assisted Instruction,Blended Learning,Laptop Computers

This paper describes use of social network analysis to examine student interaction patterns in a Grade 5/6 Knowledge Building class. The analysis included face-to-face interactions and interactions in the Knowledge Forum[R] Knowledge Building environment. It is argued that sociogram data are useful to reveal group processes; in sociological terms, the community lies in the connections among the group. A classroom of unconnected individuals is unlikely to form as a Knowledge Building community; data analyses reported in this study show promise in understanding the dynamics of Knowledge Building in a consistent and measurable way. The strength of the work is not in particular patterns demonstrated but in new forms of assessment and their potential to inform work as it proceeds. The research reported shows that teachers and students are finding social network analysis useful and that through their engagement research-practitioner-engineer teams are better positioned to develop tools to advance Knowledge Building pedagogy. (Contains 5 figures and 1 table.)
Partnerships for Knowledge Building: An Emerging Model
Author: Laferriere, Therese
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,International Cooperation,Educational Innovation,Educational Change,International Education,Grounded Theory,Preservice Teacher Education,Urban Schools,Rural Schools,Models,Partnerships in Education,College School Cooperation,Social Networks,Discourse Analysis,Computer Mediated Communication,Web Sites,Computer Assisted Instruction,Government School Relationship,Participant Observation,Program Descriptions,Case Studies,Interviews,Educational Technology,Internet,Network Analysis

Knowledge Building is approached in this study from an organizational perspective, with a focus on the nature of school-university-government partnerships to support research-based educational innovation. The paper starts with an overview of what is known about effective partnerships and elaborates a conceptual framework for Knowledge Building partnerships based on a review of literature and two case studies of school-university-government partnerships. In one case, a Ministry of Education wanted to bring more vitality into schools of small remote villages, and in the other case another Ministry of Education wanted to renew its school-based international cooperation profile. Emerging from this work is a three-component model for going to scale with Knowledge Building partnerships: Knowledge Building as a shared vision; symmetric knowledge advancement; and multi-level, research-based innovation. Characteristics of, and conditions for, effective partnerships for Knowledge Building are elaborated, and an emerging model is developed to help communities establish effective partnerships and contribute to this evolving model. (Contains 1 figure.)
Knowledge Society Network: Toward a Dynamic, Sustained Network for Building Knowledge
Author: Hong, Huang-Yao
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Computer Mediated Communication,Network Analysis,Social Networks,Interaction,Knowledge Level,Access to Information,Information Technology,Information Dissemination,Foreign Countries,Knowledge Management,Matrices

The Knowledge Society Network (KSN) &quot;takes advantage of new knowledge media to maximize and democratize society's knowledge-creating capacity&quot; (www.ikit.org/KSN). This article synthesizes the principles and designs of this network which were initiated over 15 years ago, and presents an exploratory study of interactions in the KSN over four years, elaborating different network structures and the potential of each for knowledge advancement. Four major sub-network structures for participant and idea interaction are described, as reflected in social network analysis of discourse in the KSN. Strengths and weaknesses of work within each sub-network were identified with suggestions for creating a more dynamic, sustained network for knowledge advancement. (Contains 7 figures and 7 tables.)
Understanding the Nature of Science and Scientific Progress: A Theory-Building Approach
Author: Chuy, Maria
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Constructivism (Learning),Scientific Principles,Grade 4,Teaching Methods,Intermode Differences,Instructional Effectiveness,Interviews,Scientific Literacy,Theory Practice Relationship,Inquiry,Cognitive Ability,Cognitive Measurement,Foreign Countries

In 1993 Carey and Smith conjectured that the most promising way to boost students' understanding of the nature of science is a &quot;theory-building approach to teaching about inquiry.&quot; The research reported here tested this conjecture by comparing results from two Grade 4 classrooms that differed in their emphasis on and technological support for creating and improving theories. One class followed a Knowledge Building approach and used Knowledge Forum[R], which together emphasize theory improvement and sustained creative work with ideas. The other class followed an inquiry approach mediated through collaborative project-based activities. Apart from this, the two classes were demographically similar and both fell within the broad category of constructivist, inquiry-based approaches and employed a range of modes and media for investigative research and reports. An augmented version of Carey and Smith's Nature of Science Interview showed that the Knowledge Building approach resulted in deeper understanding of the nature of theoretical progress, the connections between theories and facts, and the role of ideas in scientific inquiry. (Contains 1 table and 2 footnotes.)
Early Development of Graphical Literacy through Knowledge Building
Author: Gan, Yongcheng
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Visual Literacy,Biology,History,Optics,Elementary School Students,Grade 3,Grade 4,Grade 6,Visual Aids,Content Analysis,Comparative Analysis,Teaching Methods,Foreign Countries

This study examined growth in graphical literacy for students contributing to an online, multimedia, communal environment as they advanced their understanding of biology, history and optics. Their science and history studies started early in Grade 3 and continued to the end of Grade 4; students did not receive instruction in graphics production, nor were they required to produce graphics. Results show that students spontaneously produced graphics that advanced along seven dimensions, including effective representation of complex ideas, use of source information and captions, and aesthetic quality. On average, the scores for the seven dimensions were higher for Grade 4 students with two years of experience with Knowledge Building pedagogy and technology (Knowledge Forum[R]) than for Grade 6 students with one year of experience. The overall pattern of results suggests reciprocal enhancement of graphical, textual, digital, and scientific literacy, with students exceeding expectations by available norms, and performance enhanced through extended Knowledge Building experience. (Contains 6 figures and 2 tables.)
Towards a Knowledge Building Community: From Guided to Self-Organized Inquiry
Author: Cacciamani, Stefano
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Online Courses,Inquiry,Learning,Independent Study,Student Responsibility,Undergraduate Students,Learning Strategies,Metacognition,Cooperation,Foreign Countries

Over four academic years a design experiment was conducted involving four online university courses with the goal of shifting from Guided to Self-Organized Inquiry to foster Knowledge Building communities in the classroom. Quantitative analyses focused on notes contributed to collective knowledge spaces, as well as reading and building-on notes of others. All team members, including teachers, contributed at high levels. Students tended to produce more notes in the guided-inquiry approach but read more and demonstrated more even distribution of work as part of self-organized inquiry. Qualitative data focused on strategies students reported as new to their school experience. Strategies fell into three categories common to both guided and self-organizing inquiry: elaborating course content for depth of understanding, collaboration in an online environment, and metacognition, with greater reflection on idea development. Distinctive aspects of self-organized inquiry, according to student reports, included going beyond given information, linking new understandings and personal experiences, attention to the collective works of the community, and learning from instructor's strategies. (Contains 2 tables.)
Can Children Really Create Knowledge?
Author: Bereiter, Carl
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Children,Knowledge Level,Concept Formation,Elementary School Students,Theories,Problem Solving,Cognitive Processes,Web Sites,Computer Uses in Education,Constructivism (Learning)

Can children genuinely create new knowledge, as opposed to merely carrying out activities that resemble those of mature scientists and innovators? The answer is yes, provided the comparison is not to works of genius but to standards that prevail in ordinary research communities. One important product of knowledge creation is concepts and tools that enable further knowledge creation. This is the kind of knowledge creation of greatest value in childhood education. Examples of it, drawn from elementary school knowledge-building classrooms, are examined to show both the attainability and the authenticity of knowledge creation to enable knowledge creation. It is mainly achieved through students' theory building, and it is a powerful way of converting declarative knowledge to productive knowledge. (Contains 2 endnotes.)
Beyond Learning Management Systems: Designing for Interprofessional Knowledge Building in the Health Sciences
Author: Lax, Leila
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Allied Health Occupations Education,Undergraduate Students,Integrated Learning Systems,Computer Uses in Education,Interdisciplinary Approach,Pain,Cooperation,Electronic Learning,Comparative Analysis,Foreign Countries

This paper examines theoretical, pedagogical, and technological differences between two technologies that have been used in undergraduate interprofessional health sciences at the University of Toronto. One, a learning management system, WebCT 2.0, supports online coursework. The other, a Knowledge Building environment, Knowledge Forum 2.0, supports the collaborative work of knowledge-creating communities. Seventy students from six health science programs (Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing, Occupational Therapy, Pharmacy and Physical Therapy) participated online in a 5-day initiative to advance understanding of core principles and professional roles in pain assessment and management. Knowledge Forum functioned well as a learning management system but to preserve comparability between the two technologies its full resources were not brought into play. In this paper we examine three distinctive affordances of Knowledge Forum that have implications for health sciences education: (1) supports for Knowledge Building discourse as distinct from standard threaded discourse; (2) integration of sociocognitive functions as distinct from an assortment of separate tools; and (3) resources for multidimensional social and cognitive assessment that go beyond common participation indicators and instructor-designed quizzes and analyses. We argue that these design characteristics have the potential to open educational pathways that traditional learning management systems leave closed. (Contains 7 figures and 1 table.)
Designing for Innovation around OER
Author: Lane, Andy
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Innovation,Instructional Design,Resource Units,Computer Uses in Education,Shared Resources and Services,Open Universities,Foreign Countries

This paper argues that designing collections of &quot;closed&quot; educational resources (content and technologies) for use by specific student cohorts and collections of open educational resources for use by any &quot;learner&quot; require different design approaches. Learning design for formal courses has been a research topic for over 10 years as the ever growing range of digital content and technologies has potentially offered new opportunities for constructing effective learning experiences, primarily through greater sharing and re-use of such content and technologies. While progress in adopting learning design by teaching practitioners has appeared slow so far, the advent of open educational resources (OER) has provided a substantive boost to such sharing activity and a subsequent need for employing learning design in practice. Nevertheless there appears to be a paradox in that learning design assumes a reasonably well known and well defined student audience with presumed learning needs and mediating technologies while OER are exposed to a multitude of potential learners, both formal and informal, with unknown learning needs and using diverse technologies. It can be argued that innovative designs for formal courses involve creating structured pathways through a mixture of existing and new content and activities using a mixture of media and technologies in the process. This type of &quot;configurational&quot; design that blends together given items to meet a particular need, rather than designing something fully de novo is typical in many areas of work and not just teaching. Such designs work very well when there is a small set of users of the innovation or their use of the innovation is narrow. However many innovations in information, communication and computing technologies often have multiple types of users and many more layers of complexity. In these cases, rather than heavily pre-define an innovative solution just to meet certain user requirements, it is necessary to design for greater flexibility so as to allow the users to adapt their use of the innovative solution for their own requirements once it has been deployed. The use of such an &quot;innofusion&quot; approach for OER is highlighted using the case study of OpenLearn (www.open.ac.uk/openlearn). (Contains 2 tables.)
The Challenges of OER to Academic Practice
Author: Browne, Tom
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Resource Units,Multimedia Materials,Shared Resources and Services,College Faculty,Teacher Motivation,Teacher Participation,Teacher Attitudes,Rewards,Recognition (Achievement),Intellectual Property,Copyrights,Trust (Psychology),Faculty Development,Faculty Workload,Foreign Countries

The degree to which Open Educational Resources (OER) reflect the values of its institutional provider depends on questions of economics and the level of support amongst its academics. For project managers establishing OER repositories, the latter question--how to cultivate, nurture and maintain academic engagement--is critical. Whilst participating in the HEFCE funded institutional OER programme (2009-10), the team at the University of Exeter encountered a range of academic opinions on OER, and followed many as they rode the peaks and troughs of opportunities and challenges that this kind of work entails. This paper discusses the potential motivators for academics in providing OER material, as an understanding of these is helpful when introducing the subject to new contributors, and when informing planning decisions--both procedural and financial--so that key incentives are protected. We will also look at the reasons for some academic scepticism surrounding OER and how these views can be--if not tempered--then at least understood with a view to informing future policy. The enthusiastic advocacy that some academics possess in relation to OER is borne of their vision of its use. It is important to ensure that the high priority objective of obtaining academic support does not overlook instances where there is tension between this vision, and what can be achieved with available resources. We will discuss the key information that OER managers need in order to mitigate this scenario. OER projects do not work in isolation from internal competition and it has been essential to be sensitive to the conflicting pressures that academics have to contend with in their work profile. We will discuss the value of establishing where an OER project sits within an institution's educational and research strategies, and its financial framework, the questions to ask and the signs to spot to obtain this information, and how managers can use this knowledge to make decisions, avoid pitfalls and garner support. This will involve addressing academic initiatives and reward schemes, including a discussion of how IPR and copyright can not only present challenges but also play an important role in motivating and demonstrating academic engagement. This paper draws upon formal and informal engagement with a range of stakeholders who have been involved in the project, including the many colleagues who attended several staff development sessions. (Contains 6 footnotes.)
Sharing and Reuse in OER: Experiences Gained from Open Reusable Learning Objects in Health
Author: Windle, Richard J.
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Resource Units,Multimedia Materials,Computer Uses in Education,Higher Education,Allied Health Occupations Education,Material Development,Design,Sustainability,Shared Resources and Services,Quality Control,Foreign Countries

The open educational resource (OER) movement has the potential to have a truly transformative effect on higher education, but in order to do so it must move into the mainstream and facilitate widespread participation in the sharing or creating of resources and in their reuse. To help in this process, experience can be gained from projects and initiatives which have acted as forerunners to this movement. Here we present the experiences gained and lessons learnt from one such project based around the open sharing of reusable learning objects in health sciences education. In particular we share our experiences of reuse, its patterns, measurement, drivers, barriers, and tools designed to balance the pedagogical tensions between use and reuse. Like many in the OER movement we promote an emphasis on the role of community-building. We also argue that in order to produce materials that are worth sharing, value must firstly be placed on developing materials suitable for primary use, including robust evaluation and an alignment to real-world learning needs. Lastly, unlike the prevailing trends in OER we urge a consideration of quality assurance and outline the role that it can play in promoting sharing and reuse. (Contains 7 figures and 9 footnotes.)
Repurposing with a Purpose: A Story with a Happy Ending
Author: Greaves, Lyn
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Instructional Design,Independent Study,Information Systems,Constructivism (Learning),Foreign Countries,Virtual Classrooms,Business Education,Science Education,Universities,College Students

The work reported here forms part of a UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) funded project (BL4ACE) (http://bl4ace.tvu.ac.uk/). This project built on previous work that evaluated the effectiveness of a learning design to underpin academic competence in a Business Studies degree. A significant concern of the blended learning design was to scaffold independent learning activities by incorporating and reusing interactive Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs) within a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). This paper reports on improvements in learner experience and performance following the transfer of the established Business Studies learning design across subject domains to a Science module. It reports on the enhancement of both modules by reusing and repurposing existing RLOs from other Institutions, and evaluates the experiences of both Business and Science students using the support provided through the interactive learning materials. (Contains 1 table and 5 figures.)