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.

Grasping students' emotions, especially those relating to learning, in a collaborative setting is no easy feat for teachers. The quality of collaboration comprises both visible behavior and emotion and the less visible emotional traits relating to engagement and motivation. Teachers often rely on their experience and intuition when it comes to these invisible traits. In this study, we collected multimodal data from a collaborative knowledge building classroom to analyze when and how students' emotions transpire during the working and improvement of ideas. Data included textual data, self-reports from surveys, interviews, and physiological data from face-to-face and online knowledge building discourse of 17 students in a 2.5-hour Social Studies lesson. We found shifts in epistemic emotions during idea improvement activities, and the students explained these shifts in understanding the discussion and engaging in idea-centric processes. We discuss findings for ongoing work to develop multimodal analytics for knowledge building practice.

The curriculum document remains as one of the most important resource and reference for teachers. Teachers typically follow the prescribed learning objectives in the curriculum for a particular grade level, there is no need for them to take students beyond the grade level. This approach creates a clear baseline knowledge, but it limits the opportunities for further exploration. Thus, it is not surprising that curriculum syllabus is often regarded as a constraint to student inquiry and discourse.

The within-school Professional Learning Teams (PLTs) and cross-school Network Learning Communities (NLCs) in Knowledge Building Community (KBC) in Singapore are presented as a principle-based, community-based approach toward teachers’ collective effort in advancing knowledge building practice. In this chapter, we explain how Knowledge Building (KB) principles are used to define the work in the community and characterize the trajectories of their practice. By describing activities in the community and examining online discourse, we provide a way to understand the scalability of the design and outcomes in community-based professional development. From 165 teachers’ online postings and 12 sets of individual teacher’s narrative on KB practice, we report on students’ capabilities and learning goals as a recurring problem space for this community. The teachers’ reflections on what they gain from the network and on the problem space suggests evidence of a positive impact of the KBC on teachers’ practice. With persisting issues of sustaining and scaling innovative practices in education, such principle-based, community-based professional development at both within-school and cross-schools levels emerges as a viable model for sustaining innovative practices. We position the expanding and connecting of communities as a primary condition for sustaining KB practice.

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.

This paper explores the application of a framework for idea novelty in students’ discourse for knowledge building. Knowledge building promotes collaborative discourse among students and supports them in expanding collective community knowledge. However, students often go beyond the sharing of information, and they contribute novel ideas that are vital to deepening community knowledge and expanding collective inquiry. Novel ideas not only reveal the character and quality of the discourse but also show how the conversation may extend to deepen the understanding of a challenging topic. This study attempts to illuminate novel ideas from students as they engage in knowledge building using the analytical lens of novelty. Data analysis from exploratory analysis and multiple correspondence analysis revealed patterns of how students contribute novel ideas to sustain their conversation. Utilizing advanced Machine Learning techniques, this study effectively identified and quantified patterns of idea novelty and complexity in student discourses, enhancing the understanding of collaborative knowledge construction.

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.