Information Measures of Knowledge Contribution: A New Method to Measure Knowledge Contribution in Collaborative Knowledge Building: An Information Theory Perspective

2021 ◽  
pp. 073563312199493
Author(s):  
Linjing Wu ◽  
Jing Li ◽  
Qingtang Liu ◽  
Liming He ◽  
Weiqing Yang ◽  
...  

The measurement of knowledge contribution in collaborative knowledge building is an important research topic in computer-supported collaborative learning. The information measures of knowledge contribution based on information theory are proposed in this study, which includes two measures: amount of information and information gain. Discourse data collected from a collaborative knowledge building activity were analyzed to validate these measures. The results showed that our information measures can complement the traditional behavioral. With the help of the two measures, community-level variation tendency and individual-level knowledge contribution characteristics could be analyzed in collaborative knowledge building activities. A log function was used to fit the community knowledge variation tendency to measure the convergence of knowledge building. Students were clustered into five types according to their behaviors and contributions in collaborative knowledge building. Both teachers and researchers can benefit from these two information measures by using them in practice.

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 871-892 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weiqin Chen ◽  
Richard Persen

With the development and adoption of information technologies in education, learners become active producer of knowledge. There is an increasing amount of content generated by learners in their learning process. These emerging learning objects (ELOs) could potentially be valuable as learning resources as well as for assessment purpose. However, the potentials also give rise to new challenges for indexing, sharing, retrieval and recommendation of such learning objects. In this research we have developed a recommender system for emerging learning objects generated in a collaborative knowledge building process and studied the implications and added values of the recommendations. We conducted two evaluations with learners to assess and improve the system?s design and study the quality and effects of the recommendations. From the evaluations, we received generally positive feedback and the results confirm the added values of the recommendations for the knowledge building process.


Author(s):  
Ralph Buchal ◽  
Emmanuel Songsore

The current study investigates students’ use of Microsoft Teams as a collaborative knowledge building platform for a group sustainability assessment project. Ashby’s sustainability assessment method was used to provide scaffolding. Surveys (n=16) were administered to assess the nature of student collaboration, including students’ experiences using collaboration tools in the past, the activities students engaged in while working on the group project in MS Teams, self-assessment of collaborative abilities, comfort with giving, receiving and sharing comments and feedback, assessment of the effectiveness of Ashby’s sustainability assessment method in developing these abilities, and their overall assessment of MS Teams as a collaborative knowledge building tool. Students rated their collaborative abilities to be good to excellent and felt that the project was effective in developing those abilities. They are comfortable providing and receiving feedback and sharing their contributions openly. They found MS Teams to be extremely useful, and better than alternative platforms for key tasks including messaging, file sharing and collaborative authoring.


2011 ◽  
pp. 1950-1960
Author(s):  
Elsebeth Korsgaard Sorensen

An alternative theoretical framework for analyzing and designing computer-supported collaborative learning environments is introduced. Bateson’s theory (1973) is used as a starting point for considering in what sense the specific dialogical conditions and qualities of virtual environments may support learning. We need more stringent analytical approaches of research that relate communicative qualities of virtual contexts to qualities of the collaborative knowledge-building process. This approach suggests that new didactic and instructional methods, addressing the learner’s communicative awareness at a meta-level, need to be developed in order to fully utilize the interactive and reflective potential of online collaborative learning. A deeper understanding of the reflective nature of the online environment and its potential for enhancing intellectual amplification will give rise to the birth of new and more innovative designs of online collaborative learning.


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