Patrick Sins, Crina Damsa and Jerry Andriessen
UU Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands
November 13, 2006

Course Name: Web-based Learning Environments

Institutions: Educational Sciences, Utrecht university

Course instructors: Jerry Andriessen and Jos Jaspers

Scope: This scenario presents a course that is implemented at the Department of Educational Sciences at UU from February till April 2007. This course has been developed in the past.

No. of participants: 15 to 20 students

Target population: Students in Educational Sciences

Content areas/Disciplines: Education and interactive learning with new media

Duration of the course: 10 weeks

No. of instructional hours: 30 instructional hours, 210 total working hours

Additional background information:
The course is a second-year bachelor course at the Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. The Department offers a bachelor study of three years in total which can be completed by a one year professional master, or a two year research master in Educational Sciences. A qualification in Educational Sciences offers the graduates a large range of job perspectives in: educational research, the field of teaching and education (e.g., curriculum design, coaching and -supervising, teaching in teacher training institutions), private companies (e.g., instructional design, consultancy, and training), or in government positions (e.g., educational policy, consultancy).

An important aspect in the design of this course is that students collaborate intensively in small groups, since we expect that it stimulates students to be more aware of and reflect on their learning process.

Course description

Web-based Learning Environments is a 10-week course for advanced students in Educational Sciences. This course was designed partially based on the principles of knowledge creation (e.g., Bereiter & Scarmadalia, 1993; Paavola, Lipponen & Hakkarainen, 2004). In this perspective on learning, the focus is on the creation of new knowledge through the construction of shared objects, with this process itself also being an object of reflection. For our course, this means that students’ learning activities and the object of reflection are similar: collaborative argumentation mediated through computer-supported graphical tools. More specifically, students learn more about how these tools may support learning by reflecting on their own experiences using these tools. During the course, students construct knowledge by elaborating on these collaborative shared artefacts.

Goals

Students are expected to gain knowledge about the extent to which information and communication technologies (ICT) may support collaborative learning and to provide support and advice to companies regarding this issue. To this end, the students are required to evaluate computer-supported collaborative applications in various contexts, with an eye on usability and user-friendliness. They are also asked to investigate online discussions of students during the course, according to the principles of knowledge building (i.e., argumentation, shared focus and group responsibility).

Set-up and structure

The format of the course can be described as project-based learning. The project task is the collaborative production of a scientific essay about collaborative learning supported by computer-supported graphical tools. Students are asked to write this essay in small groups of four students, based on their understanding of the scientific literature and on their experiences during five assignments. These assignments stress the importance of argumentation. The sequence of assignments follows a general evolution in pedagogical scenarios, from transmission based (understanding information), via studio-based (information sharing), to knowledge negotiation (developing new insights and knowledge) (Andriessen, Baker and Suthers, 2003).

 The course is presented in a blended set-up (face-to-face meetings and online sessions), related to the main assignment of the course. Students are expected to finish this course by writing a scientific essay about how graphical tools can support collaborative learning. To foster negotiation and discussion, students are informed that the essay must contain the following elements:

1. An overview of the common assignments used in CSCL research, and the most important results of the research on this topic;
2. An overview of the available tools for supporting collaborative learning;
3. A systematic approach to analyze dialogues, including the advantages of the limitations of this approach;
4. Overview of the main design principles of CSCL tools for supporting online collaboration.

The main assignment of the course is to write a scientific essay about how graphical tools can support collaborative learning. To attain this aim, we designed a series of learning activities in three different synchronous discussion environments, supported by graphical tools. Using these tools, students engage in intensive discussions regarding: scientific publications about CSCL, argumentation, and the use of graphical software supporting of collaborative learning and their experiences communicating through these tools. Initiative(s) for changing these priorities and elements of the essay are welcomed, but has to be negotiated with the other students as well as with the tutors of the course. The essay is written collaboratively, with shared responsibility for students as well as their teachers. During this process, students assign roles and responsibilities for each activity. There are two kinds of roles that students can take and which are reassigned after each assignment: process roles (i.e., essential tasks during discussions, such as chairman, critic, expert, process monitor and writer) and content roles (i.e., specialist on: a) methods of analysis, b) design of collaboration tools, or c) instruction and task design).

For this course, the following five assignments have been designed:

1. Problem description and domain understanding. During a period of two weeks, four scientific articles are studied and discussed (within groups of 10 students) through an asynchronous discussion board (i.e., Blackboard). Articles and discussion questions are selected and developed by the tutors in this course. Students are required to react to those questions and to arrive at an accepted final answer to each question. Tutors provide feedback after the discussion. The goal of the exercise is coming to understand the main concepts of CSCL and the role of graphical tools. Furthermore, students get familiar with a general method for analysing contributions to electronic discussions, developed in the SCALE project, the Rainbow method. The discussions have to be concluded in summary texts to be used in the final essay.

2. Sharing understanding: converging interpretations of articles. Another 25 texts are available for studying as theoretical background. Students have two CSCL tools at their disposal (i.e., VCRI and DREW), which are used during two argumentative knowledge-sharing exercises (exercise 2 and 3). These assignments offer students guidance in their inquiry. To complete the second exercise students discuss an article in pairs and construct a diagram that contains the essence of the article. Students are asked to prepare their work individually, after which they include their main points in the argumentative diagram to discuss it with their partner. Then, dyads within the groups of 4 analyze each other’s electronic discussions. They analyze the content and the quality of the other dyads’ work by focusing on the quality of: a) summarizing, b) knowledge sharing and c) argumentative activities.

The purpose of these exercises is, first, to build a shared artefact representing shared ideas about an existing expert text. Second, they serve to familiarize students with tools used for synchronous collaborative writing. Finally, students are enabled to reflect on their own knowledge building practices by analyzing each others’ discussions. The results of students’ analyses, the comparisons, and the reflections made on the use of these tools are put together in a small report, which is rated by the teachers.

3. Sharing understanding: discovering shared ideas in articles. In the third exercise, dyads are asked to map the main similarities of two related scientific articles. The results of the discussions between students are again analyzed by the other dyad within the student group. The goal here is to share understandings of these artefacts by jointly constructing a graphical representation. Also, students are asked to discover affordances of VCRI and DREW to support collaborative learning. Students are required to report these findings which are subsequently rated.

4. Discussion and synthesis. Students are asked to generate a list of criteria that have to be met by a graphic tool to support collaboration. This discussion takes place in a third electronic tool, Digalo - an environment which does not offer chat, but only a (configurable) graphical discussion environment. Boxes with statements of various shapes, and arrows that can indicate various relations can be constructed in the workspace. In addition, each box is linked to a comment window, in which annotations can be made. Students are asked to prepare a list of issues to discuss, based on a list provided by the tutor. Ultimately, the graphical representations have to represent the groups’ point view.

5. Production of the final essay. The tutor discusses the list of criteria with the students before students start to work on the final essay. In this essay students have to integrate information and results of the previous assignments to inform explain, and/or critically review features of graphical tools for use in specific contexts.

Critical features/Requirements

Non-specific technical requirements:

• Students that work on collaborative assignments appear to be in a constant need of feedback from others. Therefore, a community-based electronic tool should allow users to: a) monitor each other’s work; b) provide solicited or unsolicited feedback; c) ask questions of various kinds; and d) engage in knowledge creation activities. Discussion should be centred on the artefacts that are created, as well as on the characteristics of the tools used;
• The tool should also stimulate students to engage in extra efforts that bring out the benefits of collaborative work;
• Tools should help participants to work together, take initiatives and assume collective responsibility for the quality of the artefacts;
• Students still heavily rely on the tutors for providing meaning and feedback on their work. Regarding this aspect, tools should support students in their effort to become aware of their own progress. In some way, the community should have a role in raising their awareness of what they are doing and what has been accomplished during and at the end of the course.

Technical requirements

• Use of an elaborate planning tool in which students can insert their (learning) goals for their collaborative activities. In addition, if students completed a goal, they can add a hyperlink to the knowledge artefact(s) they created associated with this goal in order to monitor and evaluate progress;
• Integration of discussion analysis tool (Rainbow) with the graphical discussion tool (VCRI or DREW) to support interaction between students about their own learning practices;
• Integrate links to scientific articles into graphical tools;
• Individual space within the shared space;
• Enable smooth transition between activities performed inside the tool(s);
• System executed by different browsers and operating systems.

Pedagogical requirements

• More focus on transformation of knowledge objects through reuse of produced artefacts;
• Collaboration has to be monitored and evaluated in a simple manner during the course;
• Externalization of knowledge has to be rewarded: students that contribute to the collaborative process should be compensated;
• More clear use of existing knowledge: represent and share expert information, contribute individual information, and experience;
• Cognitive traces: students have to more explicitly report and reflect on how they have achieved new insights, and give their peers the possibility to follow this process;
• A discussion should be devoted to students’ ideas about practice and the transformation of that practice when using these tools;
• Students' personal ideas and intuitions should have more chance of being put forward;
• More discussion should be about transformation of education, and possible uses of these tools in professional practices;
• Students should get the feeling they actually contribute to the development of better tools;
• Provide instruction regarding the computer-supported tools used.

Rationale:

Our course incorporates the following trialogical learning principles:

• Knowledge creation process;
• Work around shared objects;
• Use of mediating tools;
• Externalization of tacit knowledge;
• Idea diversity as input for knowledge advancement.

Research hypotheses

Our expectation is that in educational settings designed according to these principles, students become increasingly competent in managing and taking responsibility of their own learning process; that is they develop epistemic agency. In our research, we intend to define the term epistemic agency and we attempt to relate this concept with the principles of the trialogical approach to learning. Secondly, we will examine the development of epistemic agency of students during this course. We will identify good practices of epistemic agency development and we will offer suggestions for tools that may promote (the development of) students’ epistemic agency. Finally, the role teachers may play in the development of students’ agency is also taken into account.

Research objectives

• Gain insight in the concept of epistemic agency and its development
• Operationalize and capture the development of epistemic agency of students
• Support the development of epistemic agency by pedagogical and technological means
• Gain insight in the role of teachers in students’ agency development

Research questions

• How can epistemic agency be defined in this context of trialogical learning?
• How does students’ epistemic agency develop in this trialogical educational setting?
• Which trialogical design principles support the development of epistemic agency?
• Which tools support and sustain the development of epistemic agency?
• What is the role of teachers in developing students’ epistemic agency?