generic improvements in communication technology to enhance socio-cognitive gains

Generic improvements in communication technology to enhance socio-cognitive gains

Maria Chuy, Bodong Chen, Monica Resendes, Jan van Aalst, Carol Chan, Marlene Scardamalia, & Carl Bereiter

CSCL 2011, July 4-8, Hong Kong, China

Generic improvements in communication technology

“Generic” = improvements that are not tied to any particular technology and that are potentially applicable in a variety of media environments—ranging from learning management systems to social networking sites and from wikis to video sharing sites

One discourse, multiple access points Any media object treatable as an object of inquiry

and knowledge buildingIdea spaces, in addition to people spaces,

document, or message spaces Learner-created metadataSupport for ubiquitous theory-building

Outline of main ideas

Present situation: Separate discourses with some ability to link--

Facebook, Twitter, text messages, online forum, email, smart board, Moodle, etc., etc.

Little sustained discourse in any medium

One discourse, multiple access points

Any media object should be treatable as an object of inquiry and knowledge building.

To a very limited extent this is done now by attaching discussion boards to such diverse objects as blog posts, news articles, and online videos.

At worst these become platforms for venting opinions; at best they are platforms for sharing knowledge and giving advice.

Rarely, if at all, are they platforms for sustained knowledge-building discourse.

Media objects as objects of inquiry

Improved technology:Discourse contributions originate in various

sources --Facebook, Twitter, text messages, online forum, email, wikies, smart board, Moodle, videoconference, etc., etc.

They are transmitted to a cloud-based knowledge building environment where more complex knowledge operations are carried out.

Results of these operations can be retrieved and responded to in the various media but sustained collaborative work gets its main support in the knowledge building environment.

One discourse, multiple access points

Media objects may be forum notes, documents, diagrams, animations, screen shots of outputs, etc.

Focus of the inquiry: What does this object mean in the context of some larger inquiry?

E.g, larger inquiry: What caused dinosaur extinction?

Media object: Timeline showing when different dinosaur species became extinct.

Object-focused inquiry: What does this timeline mean with respect to different explanations of dinosaur extinction?

Media objects as objects of inquiry

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are rich in knowledge-building possibilities.

However, users of OERs tend to be isolated from each other and from collaborative knowledge building.

Carnegie-Mellon University develops a new Knowledge Forum client to bring students into collaborative knowledge building in Open Learning Initiative courses.

Early results show students feel it helps them learn.Students welcome chance to share problems,

ideas, and understandings with each other.

OERs as objects of inquiry

A Workspace Dedicated to IdeasCurrent situation: Knowledge Forum views are

workspaces for building on, linking, synthesizing, and adding to notes.

A Workspace Dedicated to IdeasNote space may become crowded Different notes embody same ideaSingle note may contain multiple ideas

Visual from “The Birth of a Word” by Deb Roy

A Workspace Dedicated to IdeasSingle note projected on to multiple ideas that it contains


A Workspace Dedicated to IdeasSingle idea abstracted from multiple notes Ideas linked to ideas, independent of note linkages


Operations in the idea space Identifying “big” and/or “promising” ideasMetacognitive layer: ideas about ideas“Rising above”: Synthesizing, creating a higher-order

layer of ideas


Student-generated meta-data

Pre-Google: Educational resources stored in repositories; catalogued and tagged by hand

Semantic web: Distributed resources; meta-data automatically generated by semantic analysis tools

Technology-assisted Knowledge Building: Semantic tools help learners assign high-level tags to ideas (not media objects)

E.g, tagging ideas as important, promising, puzzling, difficult, impossible

Generating searchable tags requires a flexible database, e.g., tuplespace

Ubiquitous theory-building

Theories are explanations. Therefore, they are essential in teaching for understanding.

Theories drive inquiry. Therefore they are essential in inquiry-based learning.

Theories are proposed solutions to problems. Therefore they are important in invention and policy.

But…theories are not opinions or articles of faith.Theories are not calls to action. Reduce energy

consumption is not a theory.Theories are vulnerable to evidence and

improvable on the basis of it.


Theory-building is important not only in STEM but also in history, social studies, literature

Theory-building produces explanations of historical events, social conditions.

Theory-building produces interpretations of literary and artistic works.

Theory-building aims at explanatory coherence (Thagard).

Explanatory coherence includes emotional coherence.


Even young children can build theoriesThey produce explanations to account for facts.They abandon theories in the face of evidence.They can recognize one theory as doing a

better job of explaining than another.Young children demonstrate an epistemology

superior to that of the average adult--to whom theories are beliefs that lack conclusive proof.

But… working to improve a theory does not come naturally and requires external support.


To support theory-building, support knowledge-building dialogue--for instance, with sentence-openers:

Looking more deeply into this problem… This idea can be improved by… This concept (distinction, analogy, hypothesis) helps to… This idea is worth working on because … Something else this idea might explain is … Another way to look at this is...Putting these ideas together …

One discourse, multiple access points Any media object treatable as an object of inquiry

and knowledge buildingIdea spaces, in addition to people spaces,

document, or message spaces Learner-created metadataSupport for ubiquitous theory-building

Researchers, educators, and programmers are invited to join in building an open-source next-generation knowledge building environment embodying principles discussed here: