seminar
Social, Cognitive, and Linguistic Markers of Collaborative Knowledge Building
Event related reference resources:http://www.cite.hku.hk/events/doc/2008/JianweiZhangHKSeminar.pdf
Description:
About the Seminar
Knowledge building —the creation of knowledge as a social product— is a pervasive phenomenon in a knowledge-based society. Schools of today need to incorporate the same process into student learning. Knowledge building moves away from the traditional learning contexts in a number of ways: from individual to collaborative processes and outcomes; from pre-designed to emergent goals; from content coverage to depth of understanding; from standard content to diverse expertise. These changes challenge researchers to find and integrate new measures to gain insights into knowledge building processes.
In my recent research, I developed and adapted a set of research tools to examine collaborative knowledge work supported by online environments. These included Inquiry Threads Analysis for mapping out communal knowledge growth, Social Network Analysis for evaluating collective responsibility, content analysis of depth of understanding, and linguistic measures of student discourse, etc. Collectively, these measures help look into the social, cognitive, and linguistic aspects of collaborative knowledge building. This presentation will report findings generated based on the above measures, reflect on their connections, and discuss possible uses of some of these measures by practitioners.
Please register at
http://mis.cite.hku.hk/events/default.asp?eventid=SEM08/0016
About the speaker(s):About the Speaker Dr. Jianwei Zhang is an assistant professor at the State University of New York at Albany. His research interests are at the interface of knowledge building, interactive learning environments, and learning innovation in cultural contexts. His research has demonstrated new possibilities of engaging students in collaboratively evolving knowledge-building processes that are essential to creative knowledge communities, supported by collaborative online tools. These processes are characteristic of emergent/progressive goals, opportunistic collaboration, improvisational discourse, and collective responsibility. His study of knowledge building in a dynamic collaborative environment was awarded the Outstanding Journal Article of the Year Award from AECT (Association for Educational Communications and Technology, 2007). For additional information, please visit: http://tccl.rit.albany.edu .