Analysis of Scardamalia paper

From VMT

Return to Designing Social Interaction Software

Contents 1 Instructions 2 Some issues to discuss 3 Comments on Team Statements 4 Team 1 Statement 5 Team 3 Statement 6 Team 4 Statement 7 Team 5 Statement 8 Team 6 Statement

[edit] Instructions

1. Meet as a group in a VMT chat room and discuss the reading.
2. Discuss a group statement about the reading that everyone can agree represents your group's opinion.
3. Summarize your statement in the SUMMARY area of the chat room whiteboard.
4. Post your group's statement below.

Make sure that you are logged in. You can create a timestamp with your individual name by deleting the words "Date and Time of posting" and typing ~ ~ ~ ~ (a sequence of 4 tildes, with no spaces).

[edit] Some issues to discuss

1. The authors were experts on how children learn to read. Is it legitimate for them to generalize their observations to learners in different disciplines (like high school math or college HCI) and different age groups (from elementary school through graduate school)?
2. What is their critique of traditional schooling? How does this compare to other critiques?
3. What are their recommendations for a new approach to learning?
4. What is the role of technology -- computers, networks, etc.
5. This paper was written a decade ago. Since then, the authors and their colleagues put a great deal of research into building a system called "CSILE" or "Knowledge Forum". We also now have systems like "Blackboard", "WebCT" and "VMT". Do any of these systems accomplish what the authors call for?
6. What would it take for education to be transformed the way the authors suggest? At Drexel? In US public education? Globally?

[edit] Comments on Team Statements

• When I read this paper yesterday for at least the 10th time, I could not help but think about how it applied to our course. I was struck then, when I read the postings below about the paper, that no group commented on that. Is this course a knowledge-building course? All of it or some aspects? Compared to other IST online courses? Do you experience (or expect or hope to experience) it differently from other courses you have taken?

• Some groups thought that the knowledge-building approach was more applicable to young children, who have not been regimented by teacher-centered schooling. Other groups thought that it was more applicable to people who had already learned "the basics". Some thought it was more for certain fields. How can we reconcile these different positions? The authors, who were originally experts on how children learn to read and write, have used CSILE mainly with young children, thinking that the exchange of ideas would motivate their reading and writing skills, just like wanting to communicate motivates infants to learn speech. On the other hand, some medical schools and whole universities or info science programs have adopted a problem-based learning knowledge-building pedagogy throughout their curricula for adults.

• If you are deeply interested in knowledge building on a particular topic, then you probably want to find other people who share your interest. This is where the idea of supporting social networking comes in. How do you find those people and start to build knowledge together. Think about how this is done in professional research communities: you look through journals and go to conferences to see who is working along the lines you are interested in and eventually you might try to collaborate with them or at least exchange ideas and papers. How can networked computer systems help this process -- both for professional experts and for people learning to become experts?

Gerry 18:47, 12 April 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Team 1 Statement

Seth Erickson and Elizabeth Veasey

Seth E 14:31, 5 April 2007 (EDT)

Here is our Summary and Analysis of The paper by Scardamalia & Bereiter ....

CSILE functions as a collaborative learning environment and a intellectual communal database, with textual and graphical capacities. This networked multimedia environment allows students to create "nodes," containing an idea / information relevant to the topic of interest, with the intention of generating a knowledge-building community.

The article by Scardamalia and Bereitner (1994) offers a suggestion for how to escape the pattern of "reinventing the familiar with educational technology." The authors argue that the classroom needs to foster transformational thought for both students and teachers, to replace classroom-bred discourse patterns with those having more immediate and natural extensions to the real world. Essentially, they want to create communication systems in which the relations between what is said and what is written, "between immediate and broader audiences, and between what is created in the here and now and archived " are intimately related and natural extensions of school-based activities.

The authors’ point of view concerning traditional schooling was that the school system was falling short. To address this, they recommended restructuring schools so that schools “become the kinds of environments that support the process of expertise, in particular problem solving as it applies to competence and understanding.” i.e. schools become knowledge building communities. To do this, tools such as CSILE (or Blackboard, WebCT and VMT) could help students in the learning process by enabling them to view the works of their peers and by giving them more opportunities to actively engage and participate in the learning process; all of which can translate into a meaningful learning experience.

REFERENCES

Scardamalia, M. & Bereiter, C. (1994) Computer support for knowledge-building communities. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 3(3), 265-283.

[edit] Team 3 Statement

Tameca, Fernando, Dave

Dave 22:15, 7 April 2007 (EDT)

Generalizing their observations of learners in different age groups by the author is not a valid view. The older a person gets changes in cognitive thinking and learning occur. They start to ask more questions and different questions. A first graders concern with increasing knowledge is vastly different from someone of high school age.

Different disciplines also think and learn differently. People in certain disciplines tend to be hands on with learning while others can gather just from reading. For example a plumber learns by apprenticing and working hands on, while a scientist gathers knowledge by reading and debating. Certain disciplines also require a different environment (i.e. any computer related field versus a fine art) to enable optimal learning conditions.

The authors stated that “the classroom needs to foster transformational thought”. (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994). There is no real-world experience gained in schools. Another critique of the authors was no clear sight of goals and objectives. Students and teachers attention are focused on the activities while losing sight of the objectives that spawned the activity. They are also critical of traditional schoolings focus on the individual. There is a lack of social interactivity that is required to build knowledge. Schools in North America also tend to be have acute problems (drugs, violence, etc.) and tend to score lower than other countries on achievement tests.

Technology is the social connector that individuals can use to interact and debate one another to progressively build knowledge. The article stated that the technology that was being used made the presentation of the subject “appear more inventive and sophisticated” but it did not prove that the students had learned. (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994). It could have been a copy and paste. It was thirteen years ago when the article was written. Just look at today, we’re all over the United States working on this project. Technology definitely enhances and adds to the ability to learn. Technology is meaningless though if a child does not have the motivation and/or the needed social support for learning.

VMT and Blackboard both support the authors design for learning by eliminating the turn taking problems. In the built in chat anyone can type in and talk at any time. Also it builds on peer commentary, allowing for other s to comment or critique anothers work. Age limitations are also eliminated as any age can question and challenge another of younger of even older age. Students have time to react to postings rather than be held to act on the spot with oral discourse. These two systems have a very solid publication and review process capability. Groups can post their work and have other take, view and comment. Written in nature both systems provide for cumulative progressive results, students look at what is there and are better able to add to the discourse as compared to an oral forum where what is said is soon forgotten. All individuals are required by the system to input into the discussion, this solves the problem of the most vocal students getting the most input in an oral disscusion.

In order for education to be changed to meet the authors requirement, it would take resources, political change, and adaptation by society. Most people are so used to things being a certain way. Many are not open to online education or changes to the way of learning. Drexel iSchool and several other institutions already seem to be meeting the authors expectations via their online programs. These online forums with their web based delivery can be very beneficial if done right.

References

Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (1994). Computer support for knowledge-building communities. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 3(3), 265-283

[edit] Team 4 Statement

Floyd , Rajeev

Jeeves5454 16:18, 7 April 2007 (EDT)

• No, we felt that it was not legitimate for the authors to generalize their observations to learners in different disciplines and age groups. We felt that the earlier the age of the student, the easier and more progressive the method of learning that coould be applied. Observations based on learning cultures and groupd is often based on a lifetime of previously applied principle and it would be easier to achieve the knowledge building community with younger students, as college aged students may have set in their ways. As stated knowledge building is a communal activity, and like any community there are rules to be followed. Changing the rules midway is a sure fire way to achieve anarchy.
• The authors based their criticisms on a number of factors that may or may not have been central to determining the true ills of current knowledge process learning. Towards that end the critique of the problems that students face, as well as an often un-fair comparison to high achievement students in different societies, can be considered to be correct, if a bit short sighted or lacking in depth of all of societies issue. If these concerns were present as long as 10 years ago, the Computer Aided Learning Process has been off the ground for several years already, but has yet to achieve statictically significant improvements for previously class and culture based groups. Thus we agree that their critique of traditional schooling is correct in that it may lead to reform , but that there is a deeper issue beyond that at school, and their current critique is heavily biased towards their proposed solution.

[edit] Team 5 Statement

Members Olivia, Lisa, Kate, Ben, Kevin

Date and Time of posting Kevin 20:28, 9 April 2007 (EDT), Olivia 22:37, 10 April 2007 (EDT)

Summary - CSILE is a computer based program that allows for a community of students to collect and build upon a knowledge base that gives all students an opportunity to participate at their own level. This method of learning focuses on knowledge-building discourse as a way for students to form a deeper understanding of the subject material.

• Although the authors were experts on how children learn to read, to a certain degree, it is possible to generalize their observations to learners in different disciplines (like high school math or college HCI) and different age groups (from elementary school through graduate school). Regarding the application of CSILE to varying disciplines, the specific content of the learning environment and details of discourse will differ; however, the approach of trying to establish a solid knowledge base will be the same across different types of disciplines. The variations across different age groups will be more pronounced since a child of 5 years old would undoubtedly rationalize and internalize mathematics (for example) concepts in a much different manner than a high school student would learn concept in the same discipline.

• The article critiques the traditional schooling method for training students to learn material in a shallow way, while the CSILE approach leads to deeper learning and expands on the base knowledge: students are "left out" of the process of building a knowledge base via this traditional method of learning. These critics of traditional schooling propose the "restructuring of schools" to incorporate the CSILE approach and the idea that an important part of education is for students to learn how to carry out diagnostic and decision processes.

• The CSILE recommends utilizing technology and computer-based interactions between peers instead of relying on instructor-to-student discourse. The importance of technology is not only to assist in the communications between students, but to archive the knowledge for subsequent "generations" of students. For instance, knowledge collected can carry over to the next group of students who can take the information to the next level by using computers and technology. By allowing the previous groups of students to mentor the later groups it will reinforce the learning that has already taken place.

To play devil's advocate, the passing of knowledge across students may not necessarily be the wisest approach because part of the memory process is lost if the knowledge isn't proactively sought out.

• One major point of the article seems to be that the current model is inherently flawed, because it creates/operates in a first order environment (page 2, lines 18-19), when more advanced forms of learning require a second-order environment. These second order environments are characterized by continuous, social-based learning. This form of learning seems to be based on the described models of scientific learning environments (mainly page 4 and page 6).

• Systems like "Blackboard" and "WebCT" have the potential to accomplish what the authors call for; however, they are all lacking in the critical "knowledge building" aspect stressed in the article. If the discussion topics and resulting interactions were archived for future classes to learn from, then Blackboard and WebCT would be legitimate prototypes of the interactive-knowledge-building environments described in Scardamalia and Bereiter's paper.

• In order to truly reform all traditional learning environments to the type of environment described in the article, would require the support of education systems (local and global level), students, educators, parents, as well as all parties involved in the development of educational materials. This would first require conducting studies to provide hard evidence that computer-supported knowledge-building learning is more effective than the traditional method of learning.

The article made many good arguments for the CSILE approach to teaching but our group brought up some issues that we thought were not sufficiently addressed in the article or did not exist when the article was written.

• Where should educators draw the line between traditional learning and CSILE? e.g. Should CSILE replace the traditional methods completely? Or should a hybrid approach be adopted?

• What age groups is CSILE best suited for?
  • CSILE is only applicable for children who can use a computer, read, and type. This type of learning will probably not be very effective before 2nd or 3rd grade.
  • CSILE should not replace social interaction because interpersonal skills can not necessarily be taught in an online forum type learning environment.

• Which subjects are most appropriate to be used by CSILE as the primary teaching method? This may be more appropriate for more abstract concepts, and less beneficial for straightforward subjects.

• Would a transitory teaching method using tradional methods to teach the basics of a subject and the social skills then moving to the CSILE approach to improve the depth of the knowledge be better then either approach alone?

• How should the effectiveness and value of CSILE be measured: by administering exams, conducting interviews, etc.
  • Should the success of the students using the CSILE approach be calculated into teach accountability since it is more community driven than traditional teaching methods? ie. is the teacher accountable for the growth of the knowledge community?

[edit] Team 6 Statement

Members: Eric, Bertha, Brian

Date and Time of posting: Bertha 22:34, 5 April 2007 (EDT)

Analysis of Scardamalia Paper:

• The authors were cautious about how they generalize their observations. They generalized learning methods, but recognize that the effectiveness of each method relies on the social environment's abilities to provide adequate support. (Pg 2 ln 14-15)
• The authors say that traditional schooling sets a goal for learning to which end the teacher leads the student. As opposed to the "knowledge-building community" method of learning where the students and the teacher both participate in the process of learning and there is no limit to the scope of learning.
• By placing a limit on the scope of learning based on the assumption of individual student abilities, the visible parts of knowledge, formal knowledge and skills, they have ignored communal knowledge building. (Pg 3 ln 9-26, Pg 4 ln 21 - 26)
• The recommendations are simple yet profound. Rather than focus on the individual, the authors suggest that a reformulation at the group level could foster a more vibrant learning enviroment. The authors suggest that discriminantion based on the individual should be removed; that although some basic learning by the traditional methods are necessary, learning should be an on-going process guided by curiosity and that knowlege should be reevaluated and gradually increased in definition regardless of the expertise of participating individuals. (Pg 2 ln 1-31)
• This boundaries of a knowledge-building community can be expanded by networking and computers. (Pg 9 ln 15-31, Pg 11 ln 11). The system the author's proposed and implement called "CSILE" is a perfect example of how technology can enable knowledge-building.(Pg 9 ln 31). This community database, wholly created by students, facilitated the creation of self generated intentional learning. The use of the student's own self monitoring and self diagnostic approach to their learning. This generalized format lends itself to peer commentary, multiple age and divergent ability levels, and culturally different students to share a common classroom experience. (Pg 11 ln 11-16).
• The "Blackboard", "WebCT" and "VMT" systems most students are aware of accomplish some of the same knowledge-building community building. The relationship between the "CSILE" and the noted systems had an interesting correlary. Fifth and sixth-grade students while studying midieval history became dissatisfied with the graphical notes of some of the other students and took the discussion to that of the physics of walls, drawbridges, etc. Thereby expanding the knowledge of their class, ie. knowledge-building.(Pg 12 ln 17-32). Here at Drexel I have experienced this type of peer review and have grown with the dialogue generated by this same learning methodology.
• To achieve this type of transformative change would require not just technology but a fundamental change in teacher strategies. That is to allow students to engage in collaborative knowledge building (Pg 13 ln 25 - 28). and move away from teacher centric classrooms towards a learning community approach.

Return to Designing Social Interaction Software