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Open
Learning Initiative and Knowledge Forum: Toward Making Any Web Object an Object of Knowledge Building Maria Chuy, John Rinderle, Marlene Scardamalia, Chris Teplovs, & Candance Thille |
ABSTRACT The Open Learning Initiative (OLI) brings important new learning environments to education—open and free (see http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/). Our goal in integrating these environments with Knowledge Forum is to create a model—a way to surround learning objects of all sorts with powerful discourse. Why this special effort? Improving the quality of discourse is, arguably, our most powerful means for raising the quality of education. Toward this end we are collaborating with colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University to build a web based version of the Knowledge Forum’s user interface, to be used inside or outside OLI. Inside OLI it will integrate with the look and feel of the OLI software and be accessible from every page of the course. We will also include activity indicators in the OLI software to point out to students where discussions are taking place in the course. Each Knowledge Forum note will be automatically tagged with the page in OLI where it was created, allowing students to click and see the context of each post. By default notes will be grouped by course module, with each module having its own Knowledge Forum "view." The goal is to support knowledge building in OLI courses in a natural way that on the one hand does not require students to launch a separate tool but on the other does not interfere with their use of the course. Outside OLI we aim to create the generic models that will allow us to treat any object on the web as an object of high-level knowledge building discourse. Challenges to be addressed include: • Setup and configuration of the database software so that it scales to meet the needs of OLI (multiple course sections, thousands of students, automated provisioning of new databases). • Embodiment of knowledge building principles in the user interface. • Technical assistance in implementing scaffolds. • Pedagogical design of course activities centered around Knowledge Building principles. • Materials and supports to help students and instructors in the practice of knowledge building. • Open source code that will advance both OLI and Knowledge Building initiatives. |