I was curious by the idea of “rapid knowledge building” and so chose to read the  GroupScribbles as a Rapid CSCL Tool:Learning Experiences of Pre-service Teachers article listed under this week’s posting. I’ll offer a really quick summary and then make a few comments about some points that stood out for me while reading the paper.

Summary
The article outlines the use of a “rapid CSCL tool” called GroupScribbles that allows users to generate, share and refine ideas on a stylus-based tablet device. Participants in the study include two classes comprised of preservice teachers from Singapore. The study included a four stage process in which students were introduced to the tool and worked together to  collaboratively co-designed lesson plans based on foundational knowledge building principles.

Researchers were interested in exploring the capacity of GroupScribbles to help the preservice students to collaborate, organize work, to share, critique and refine each others’ ideas and encourage shared construction of meaning.

A screenshot of the main interface of GroupScribbles reveals a very simple design of two main panels for idea contribution (though more panels can be added if the user desires).

The lower panel is a private space and is used for private note taking, while the upper panel comprises the shared public space to which all students can contribute. Contributions are written on “scribble sheets” that support both text and graphics. Scribble sheets can be moved around, annotated with small “labels” and edited or updated at any time. The authors point out that because scribble sheets only allow for a limited amount of text, the tool is specifically designed to generate “concise ideas” or  “quick sketches”. A unique feature of GroupScribbles is that all contributions are anonymous.

The Intervention
The experiment itself was comprised of four stages. The first stage was a basic introduction to the tool that actually had students participate in a real-world, paper-based version of  GroupScribbles – aptly referred to “paper scribbles” (PS).  In this stage, students were divided into 4 small groups and given an “authentic problem” to think about. They were asked to write down their ideas on actual sticky notes and then post them on the wall around the room. Students then completed a “gallery walk” using a “one stays two stray” approach (one student stayed around the area of their group’s notes to answer questions, which the other two students wandered the gallery, and then they switched). The second stage was designed to familiarize students with Knowledge Building theory and the fundamental principles of the pedagogy, and used a jigsaw activity supplemented with the GroupScribbles tool. Students also worked in their original groups to begin to co-design a lesson plan based on the Knowledge Building principles. The third stage constituted a “microteaching” session where students implemented their lesson plans, with their peers acting as ‘students’. The preservice students then worked together to collaboratively refine their lesson plans.  The final stage, groups presented their lessons plans to the whole class.

Findings
After the invention concluded, researchers conducted content analysis on the students’ postings. Analysis of student contributions fell into three categories – Type 1: Generation of isolated ideas and/or knowledge; Type 2: Generation of related ideas and/or knowledge; Type 3: Refined (or improved) ideas and/or knowledge. Their analysis showed that the group lesson plans showed evidence of all three types of knowledge building categories. Similarly, of the four student groups, three created lesson plans that, according to the researchers, effectively embodied knowledge building principles.

Moreover, noted benefits of use of GroupScribbles for this activity included: increased level of participation using GroupScribbles in comparison to paper scribbles; support of self-organization on behalf of students during collaborative activities; increased access to the whole community’s ideas that helped smaller groups to improve their own ideas; and finally, an appreciation of anonymity on behalf of the students (one student is quoted as reflecting: “I like the fact that GS allows me to give my opinions and ideas anonymously. This way, I am not ashamed if other people criticize my ideas, and hence will be able to take comments and critics more constructively”).

The authors conclude that GroupScribbles did indeed foster participation, collaboration, idea-refinement and collective meaning negotiation. The researchers were also careful to note, however, that the benefits of GroupScribbles “may only be capitalized upon when the teacher is equipped with the knowledge of how lessons may be designed to foster knowledge building in a collaborative learning environment” (260).

A couple of questions arose for me while reading this article (not the least of which is a desire to dig a little deeper into what exactly is meant by “rapid knowledge building”), which I’ll briefly expand on here.

Comments

Anonymity The whole question of anonymity of contributions in a collaborative environment is an interesting one. On the one hand, I’ve been in primary grade classrooms where identity and the social aspect of posting notes on Knowledge Forum is a huge component of the practice itself. Students are proud of their notes, taking ownership of the ideas they contribute to the group and attributing credit to ideas generated by others. This, of course, can be both empowering to students (a shy student has her idea validated by a socially prestigious student), or can have a negative effect on group knowledge sharing (students’ might only be interested in reading their friends’ notes). In classrooms with older students, these examples may also apply. Moreover, in other social media, contributions are very often tightly linked with one’s identity (“virtual” or ‘real’), and thus is increasingly the norm in popular technologies. Knowing the identity of the person behind a contribution may also be useful if one knows the members of the group well – different contributing members will have different areas of expertise, and so sometimes it is useful to know who to ask for what, or whose contribution you might ‘trust’ more than others in that you know they are knowledgeable on a certain issue.
Anyway, I think that the usefulness of the anonymity in this example is bound up with the fact that the tool itself, as the authors describe, is most useful for generating a lot of (likely underdeveloped) ideas very quickly. This requires less time for students to perfect their contributions before exposing them publicly. So, there is a level of comfort that the tool affords for getting ‘half-baked’ ideas out of one’s head and into community space.

– A short aside – as quoted above, one student remarked that he or she liked being anonymous because “This way, I am not ashamed if other people criticize my ideas, and hence will be able to take comments and critics more constructively”. This comment raises an interesting point about how important generating an atmosphere of safety, intellectual risk, as well as mutual trust and respect is to an authentic knowledge building culture. I’m not about to get into possible reasons why this student might feel “ashamed”, as the causes could roam from individual traits to personal history to larger social and cultural factors.  However, it is a useful reminder that any talk about Knowledge Building (with a capital K. B.) must take into account communal culture and atmosphere – which are difficult (but not impossible!) to cultivate and sustain in short-lived and widespread communities that characterize many types of open ed or distance learning classes. –

I am left to wonder how students would feel about the anonymity if the tool was used for a longer period of time, which would likely result in growing relationship between students in groups and as a whole class, and with more iterations on idea refinement? Or, if anonymity is best kept to activities that will be fairly short-lived and contained? On the other hand, does anonymity in some ways become less of a concern as ideas become refined through sustained knowledge building and continued efforts to synthesize ideas? As ideas grow and become more robust, they become embodiments of the contributions of the group as a whole, until no single individual can claim ‘rights’ to the idea itself?

I wonder if people in the #cscl group would find it liberating or exasperating if our contributions (at least on the forums) were anonymous? I remember now that there was expressed desire for a ‘safe space’ to ask ‘dumb’ questions…

References
(Tan, N. Y. L., Chen, W., Looi, C. K. (2009). GroupScribbles as a Rapid CSCL Tool: Learning Experiences of Pre-service Teachers. ICCE 2009.)