Scaffolding Research Skills for an Online Knowledge Building Community

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Scaffolding Research Skills for an Online
Knowledge Building Community

• Terry King
• School of Computing
• University of Portsmouth, UK

Presentation at eLit2006 Conference
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Aim

• Inform you about some case study research with
  students into high level e-literacy skills
  development.
• To convince you
• From an e-learning perspective, that social
  learning skills are the key set of e-literacy
  skills
• That the acquisition of such skills is not
  random, but can be systematic and graduated
• That appropriate scaffolding of such skills
  development is possible and essential.

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MSc eLearning Technologies

• Online, part-time, 3-year course
• Used as a case study since 2002 for
  action-research into how students form and
  maintain online knowledge building communities
• Involves students developing complex
  research-related e-literacy skills
• Become a focus for wider interest in areas of
  e-literacy on this course and beyond .. into
  blended learning initiatives at UoP
• Focus on student skills not staff skills

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Constructivist Model

• Real authentic problems
• Open-ended questions
• Discussions and group collaboration, team
  working, crits etc
• Negotiation of goals, personalization
• Try to develop ownership of the learning
  process
• Heavily socially constructivist

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Social Learning Skills

• Students must develop a wide range of social
  learning skills
• Responsibility of the course team to build in
  activities to help them do this
• Implicit through the structuring of course
  activities and their content
• Becomes increasingly explicit because these
  students need to be aware of what we as
  tutors/designers are doing so involve them in
  this process.

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Types of Social Learning Skills

• Four types
• Group discussions
• Group negotiation and consensus reaching
• Forming and maintaining a knowledge building
  community
• Working in a Community of Practice
• Each needs it own set of e-literacy skills

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Features of E-literacy Skills Set

• Hierarchical each builds on the other
• Progressively more complex
• Scaffolded
• structured and timely support, by course
  materials, activities or facilitator
  intervention
• containment - as students work with more
  ill-structured problems must be skillfully
  bounded

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Scaffolding Discussions

• Apply Gilly Salmons 5-Step Model
• First stage of all new online courses (Wk 0-6)
• Steps 1 2- Building confidence, socialising
• Step 3 Sharing and conferencing
• Step 4 Reflecting, responding, debating
• Step 5 Builds more self-directed learning, more
  reflecting, evaluation
• Scaffolded through graduated activities using
  asynchronous and synchronous discussions

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Scaffolding Online Group Work

• Directed reading (early)
• Synchronous discussion on good practice, possible
  issues, problem resolution
• Students given a group space early, need to
  meet and elect a group leader, time-keeper,
  etc.
• Structure the assignment so easy to handle and
  with deliverables that can be negotiated in
  stages. (Containment)
• Tutor deals with problems that come up monitor
  private learning journals.

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Scaffolding Knowledge Building

• Knowledge building (KB) is working with ideas
  (questions/problems) to generate new knowledge.
• Research paradigm Research skills
• Systematic introduction to
• the software (Knowledge Forum, KF)
• use knowledge building determinants to graduate
  tutor-lead activities so the students are eased
  into self-determined activities in KF

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Knowledge Building Determinants
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Scaffolding Critical Thinking within KF Software
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Disagreement and Challenges

• Basis of research communities
• Being confident/skilled enough to deal creatively
  with conflict
• Originally poor polite and positive!
• KF Disagreement scaffold 12 extra supports
  for disagreeing politely
• Raised level of challenging statements from 2
  (2003) to 10 (2006).
• Needs working on.

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Scaffolding Communities of Practice

• KF is a practice field
• Need to allow students to experience and build a
  community of practice
• Participate for real in a task-orientated
  community in which they have a legitimate stake.
• Start in 2006/2007 for final year dissertation
  students. Needs
• History and heritage (alumni as experts)
• Movement to centre (novices to experts)
• Movement out (as new experts take over)
• New e-literacy skills. Research into how we
  scaffold this learning successfully

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Conclusions

• From an e-learning perspective, that social
  learning skills are the key set of e-literacy
  skills
• That the acquisition of such skills is not
  random, but can be systematic and graduated
• That appropriate scaffolding of such skills
  development is possible and essential.
• Needs more research!

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Contact

• terry.king_at_port.ac.uk