Teo, Chew Lee

Existing research has substantial progress in uncovering outcomes of collaborative learning in recent years, but more attention can be directed towards the better understanding of collaborative learning processes via quantitative frameworks and methods. Through the use of knowledge building as a collaborative learning pedagogical approach, it is possible for researchers to glean deeper insights into aspects of students’ collaboration within authentic learning environments. In this paper, the multimodal approach of data collection and analysis was conducted with a proposed conceptual analytical framework that can characterize constructs of collaborative activities in a knowledge building classroom using machine learning methods. The application in a pilot is discussed along with how this conceptual development can offer a summary of new insights into students’ individual and group collaborative trajectories during learning tasks.

This case study explores how a science teacher adopted knowledge building and learning analytics to support a class of primary five students to collaboratively inquire and learn about electricity. Specifically, we aim to understand how the teacher implemented a lesson design guided by knowledge building principles of idea improvement and community knowledge and how he used visualisations from an analytics tool to facilitate students in collaborative inquiry in science. We collected student notes from their online discourse in Knowledge Forum, video-recorded a total of 11 lesson videos and conducted interviews with the teacher and students. We found that students’ online discussion reflected explanation-seeking questions to sustain the inquiry on the topic and explanations to deepen and improve their ideas on concepts of electricity. We also found that the visualisations from our analytics tool supported (i) teacher-facilitated whole-class discussions on curriculum keywords and student ideas to develop conceptual understanding and idea-building, and (ii) students in exploring science ideas they were interested in. The findings from our study contribute to the understanding of teachers’ enactment of inquiry-supported pedagogies in primary science classrooms.

Designing Informal Knowledge Building spaces requires intentional designs and effort. This paper presents a case study of designing a learning environment for cultivating collaborative knowledge creation with student agency for sustaining ideas. In the design-based studies, the datacomes from three consecutive iterations of the students’ Knowledge Building Design Studio (sKBDS), an out-of-school research program, as an immersive learning environment for knowledge building. With a sciencerelated theme, we gathered 86 elementary and secondary students (32, 32, and 22, respectively) and 1964 students’ online notes(642, 721, 601, respectively) in three iterations. The results demonstrate that students enjoyed the high-level agency in co-creating the inquiry structure, exploring diverse ideas, and deepening their understanding, and sustaining knowledge creation in sKBDS.