28
Nov

Group Wiki Work on Knowledge Development.

By spikeh1464 0 Comments
Categories: Knowledge-Making, Online Knowledge-Making and Research

[This is a republication of a Radio Weblog Entry. Five years ago I explained a group knowledge making model. This is a slightly amended and commented republication of that model:

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Knowledge Making Group and Their Wikis

Knowledge Making Group and Their Wikis

Note the use of wiki’s and the intense within group communication about what are initially specialized sub assignments of the overall task. Each person has her/his own assignment and kibitzing/feedback work to do with two others. Coordinator has job of “catching the drift” and redefining/correcting if apparently off course or encouraging if s/he senses a successful approach to not only the individual’s self assigned task but the eventual successful dovetailing each developer’s piece with all of the others.

[Original piece, "Weblogging in the Context of Research (Knowledge-Making", was published on my radio.userland website: :http://radio.weblogs.com/0106698/2003/12/05.html#a202].  The entry is reprinted below.

Weblogging in the Context of Research (Knowledge-Making)

Summary: I illustrate and explain a small group knowledge-making model. I do this in order to distinguish communicative contexts for weblogging. The general weblogging case –well described by Dave Pollard in a recent entry (See also my response and links here)– is different from the situation in which weblogging is part of an individual or group research (knowledge-making) activity. My sense is that, since new knowledge development requires extensive introspective note taking, research journaling and, often, the testing of successive hypotheses, a wiki is better suited to the process. I’ve left the external communication role (of more finished pieces of research work) to the weblog. Details below and in notes linked to below.

In my above-referenced  entry I noted:

…if the issue really is expanding individual and collective knowledge, then the inter-blogger steps are a “surface” process which is an overlay on another, less accessible phenomenon, namely, a group’s acquisition of new (at least to its members) and goal-related knowledge. IMHO the explanation of the blogging process in this context would be better served if some explanation of essential knowledge-making actions were folded into, or at least linked to from within, the discussion of sequential blogging behavior.

I followed this expressed concern with notetaking concerning the differences between general case blogging and blogging in the context of research/knowledge-making. For my set of notes using Dave Pollard’s blogging steps but expressed from the point of view of an individual writing an in-house blog for a working research/knowledge-making group look here.Those notes led to my construction of this entry’s diagram which I offer for your consideration and evaluation. It, too, is drawn from the within-research-group perspective.Explanation of the research and publication process follows beneath the diagram.

KnowledgeMakingGroup

Most research group endeavors have a life cycle–preceding from formation and ending with either a mature knowledge product or a partial version of the planned-for knowledge product, (or, in the extreme worst case, nothing that was intended nor even any unintended side product that has value). The within-group processes I describe below are aimed somewhere in the middle of the life of the research group.

At the base of the diagram you will see 5 R-S pairs. Those represent 5 researcher pairings with a research(knowledge-making) “situation”. Each has researcher’s assignment has two aspects: first is to “getting a good answer” to a research question and second is to make it accessible, via explanation, to other members of the research team.

Each researcher’s notes, problems, results and explanations are detailed in her/his respective wiki. As part of participating in the research team each researcher comments upon, offer suggestions for, evaluate, etc. , the work of two other team members–via the evaluated member’s wiki. Those processes are signified signified by the dashed arrows from each researcher to two other team members’ wiki documents (those documents are W1, W2, W3, etc.). Such cross-communication can help to assure that the researcher will be developing her/his findings and explanations in ways that are compatible with the larger knowledge question which all are addressing with their particular research projects.

There is one other (the sixth) team member: the Reporter/Coordinator(RC). S/he will also be reading/evaluating the wiki’s from the perspective of the larger knowledge-making situation of which the separate researcher situations are each distinct parts. S/he will also be reading from the perspective of an explication of the total product to a public.

In the early project stages the research coodinator/reporter documents impresssions of progress in the in-house summary document which is the group wiki (GW).

For non-group members summary snippets are issued via the group weblog (GWL); its purpose is to document progress and/or to justify solicitations of material support from a suprasystem or from a granting agency. Informational support might come via weblog comments from collaborating groups in a larger enterprise (e.g., a containing suprasystem) or from the broader public made up of knowledge consumers and competing research enterprises. Any responses from those outside sources will be fed back into the group wiki as a means of challenging/updating within-group work.

A last observation: the dashed line surrounding the group is meant to indicate that the boundary is voluntary. All members voluntarily limit their communications to fit within the bounds of the research mission. This self-limitation will occur for some portion of their time as dictated by their interests and the commitment made to the group. In the best of research groups this self-limitation is in fact empowerment. (See my entry about knowledge-making in bounded groups)

[Note 1: I have expanded the number of tools used to two: wiki and weblog. When a publication is to show it's edit history and to allow text intrusions ranging from paragraph level editing by multiple editors to page-level comments, I've chosen a wiki. When the document itself is to remain intact but is be accessible to attached commentary and for linking, I've chosen a weblog. It is possible to follow the design using weblogs alone (replace all wikis with weblogs).The wiki, however, affords a far more nuanced set of possibilities.]

[Note 2: Larger knowledge-making enterprises could be approached by using the illustrated group design as a module and by adding necessary organizationalinfrastructure and process]

[Note 3: If we replace the researcher and group wiki's with in house circulation of a weekly progress update--- on paper, and if we replace the group weblog with newsletter publications and/or journal articles -- again, on paper , then we still have a "plan". How much better off are we , at this level of analysis, because we HAVE inserted Wiki and Weblog?]

Most recent edit: 12/8/03

08
Jul

Annette Baier’s Work on JStor

By spikeh1464 0 Comments
Categories: Educational Criticism

JStor access at Drake to all of these entries.

Trusted archives for scholarship

Your access to JSTOR provided by
Drake University

29
Jun

Siemens & Downs Connectivism Course

By spikeh1464 0 Comments
Categories: Educational Criticism

“Course Link

“Connectivism course starts Monday…

As mentioned in June, we are offering an open online course on Connectivism. The course begins on Monday and is freely available to anyone with an interest in learning more about the topic. You can sign up for free here. The course outline is also available. And, for a bit more information, I’ve put together a short introductory presentation on how the course operates.
For learners wishing formal credit through University of Manitoba, a paid enrollment option is also available.”

29
Jun

Positive Effects of Online Learning Systems

By spikeh1464 0 Comments
Categories: Educational Criticism


Students are learning more in online and combined learning spaces than in the average classroom. Take a look below. US Department of Education meta research.

“Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies (2009). A systematic search of the research literature from 1996 through July 2008 identified more than a thousand empirical studies of online learning. Analysts screened these studies to find those that (a) contrasted an online to a face-to-face condition, (b) measured student learning outcomes, (c) used a rigorous research design, and (d) provided adequate information to calculate an effect size. As a result of this screening, 51 independent effects were identified that could be subjected to meta-analysis. Key findings include:

  • Students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction. Learning outcomes for students who engaged in online learning exceeded those of students receiving face-to-face instruction, with an average effect size of +0.24 favoring online conditions. The mean difference between online and face-to-face conditions across the 51 contrasts is statistically significant at the p < .01 level.
  • Instruction combining online and face-to-face elements had a larger advantage relative to purely face-to-face instruction than did purely online instruction. The mean effect size in studies comparing blended with face-to-face instruction was +0.35, p < .001. This effect size is larger than that for studies comparing purely online and purely face-to-face conditions, which had an average effect size of +0.14, p < .05.
  • Few rigorous research studies of the effectiveness of online learning for K–12 students have been published. The systematic search of the research literature found just five experimental or controlled quasi-experimental studies comparing the learning effects of online versus face-to-face instruction for K-12 students. As such, caution is required in generalizing to the K-12 population because the results are for the most part based on studies in other settings (e.g., medical training, higher education).
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03
Jun

Character Education at College – Find the Meaning of Life

By spikeh1464 0 Comments
Categories: Educational Criticism

I found Anthony Kronman’s answer to character development in the Chronicle of Higher Education (September 27, 2007 … the <a href =”http://chronicle.com/blogs/footnoted/669/higher-education-and-the-meaning-of-life”>click here for full read</a>)

His presentation as a placeholder for non doctrinaire approaches to the formation of character. Character development isn’t, I am sure, memorizing or copying a complex of behaviors or things to say. His description of the Yale program shows recognition of this understanding at the level of Undergraduate education. I believe that such understanding could be pursued earlier, considerably earlier, with good result.

“At Yale, where I teach, incoming freshmen can apply
to the Directed Studies program, which begins in the fall with
Herodotus, Homer, and Plato, and concludes in the spring with
Wittgenstein, T. S. Eliot, and Hannah Arendt. These programs differ in
many ways, and inevitably reflect the culture of their schools; some
are mandatory and others, like Yale’s Directed Studies, are elective.
But despite their differences, all rest on a set of common assumptions,
which together define a shared conception of humane education.

The
first is that there is more than one good answer to the question of
what living is for. A second is that the number of such answers is
limited, making it possible to study them in an organized way. A third
is that the answers are irreconcilably different, necessitating a
choice among them. A fourth is that the best way to explore these
answers is to study the great works of philosophy, literature, and art
in which they are presented with lasting beauty and strength. And a
fifth is that their study should introduce students to the great
conversation in which these works are engaged – Augustine warily
admiring Plato, Hobbes reworking Aristotle, Paine condemning Burke,
Eliot recalling Dante, recalling Virgil, recalling Homer – and help
students find their own authentic voice as participants in the
conversation.

These are challenging works. But they are
accessible too, and an 18-year-old with some curiosity about life will
find much that is inspiring in them: the great battle scenes of “War
and Peace,” and Tolstoy’s meditations on the insignificance of the
individual in history; Descartes’ invitation to his readers to doubt
everything they think they know, at least once in their lives; Arendt’s
account of Eichmann on trial, and her chilling description of the
“banality of evil”; Virgil’s Aeneas and Jane Austin’s Emma, both in
love, but with more on their minds.

Though critics have attacked
“great books” programs as a kind of indoctrination into a
European-dominated intellectual canon, the students in my Directed
Studies class respond in the opposite way. They become rambunctiously
independent. For they learn that the greatest minds in the world are on
their side – or aren’t, and feel entitled to quarrel with them. A
college freshman who has read Descartes, and who crafts her own reasons
to reject his invitation to doubt, is on her way to an independence of
spirit that is surely one of the conditions to living a meaningful life.

For our humanities departments to make room for this
kind of study again, they need not repudiate the research ideal. Much
would be lost if they did. But they can insist that teachers in these
fields equip themselves to guide their students in an exploration of
life’s meaning, which can be done with confidence and honor only if the
research ideal is acknowledged to have limits.

There are hopeful
signs this will happen. The tide of political correctness is receding
on our campuses. There is an increasing demand among undergraduates for
courses that address the big questions of life, in all their sprawling
grandeur, without reticence or embarrassment. At Harvard, Michael
Sandel’s famous course on justice, which explores the meaning of the
concept from Aristotle to Mill and beyond, draws hundreds of students
each year. Ten percent of the freshmen at Yale now apply to Directed
Studies – more than can be admitted.

Most importantly, perhaps,
the great upsurge of religious fundamentalism outside our colleges and
universities is a sign of the growing appetite for spiritual direction.
These movements can be a source of danger and division, and
intellectuals may mock and despise them, but teachers also ought to see
in them the energy that will drive the restoration of the question of
life’s meaning – and, with that, of the humanities themselves – to a
central place in our colleges and universities. The fundamentalists
have the wrong answers, but they’ve got the right questions. We need to
learn to ask them again in school.

Our culture may be spiritually
impoverished, but what it needs is not more religion. What it needs is
an alternative to religion, for colleges and universities to become
again the places they once were – spiritually serious but nondogmatic,
concerned with the soul but agnostic about God.

Much depends on
this. America’s entire leadership class now goes to college – something
that was not true a century ago. Infusing higher education with a new
and vibrant humanism will produce benefits not only for the future
leaders of government and business, but for society at large: A richer
and more open debate about ultimate values; an electorate less likely
to be cowed into thinking that only the faithful have the right to
invoke them; a humbler regard for the mystery of life in a world
increasingly dominated by technocratic reason.

The most immediate
beneficiaries of any such revival, however, would be the young men and
women in school today. Instead of offering a disorganized reprieve
between the hard work of high school and the challenges of a career,
their college education will endow them with priceless materials for a
lifetime of struggle with the most important question anyone ever asks.

When this happens, a place in fall’s freshman class will be the prize it ought to be.

Anthony
Kronman is Sterling Professor of Law at Yale and author of “Education’s
End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of
Life.”

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