Elsevier

Computers & Education

Volume 69, November 2013, Pages 60-70
Computers & Education

Tracing knowledge co-evolution in a realistic course setting: A wiki-based field experiment

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2013.06.015Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Knowledge co-evolution was traced in a field setting.

  • External accommodation and assimilation can be triggered with prompts.

  • Externalization of knowledge co-occurs with internalization of knowledge.

  • Collaborative wiki editing can lead to substantial learning effects.

Abstract

The co-evolution model of collaborative knowledge building by Cress and Kimmerle (2008) assumes that cognitive and social processes interact when users build knowledge with shared digital artifacts. While these assumptions have been tested in various lab experiments, a test under natural field conditions in educational settings has not been conducted. Here, we present a field experiment where we triggered knowledge co-evolution in an accommodation and an assimilation condition, and measured effects on student knowledge building outside the laboratory in the context of two university courses. Therefore, 48 students received different kinds of prompts that triggered external accommodation and assimilation while writing a wiki text. Knowledge building was measured with a content analysis of the students' texts and comments (externalization), and with concept maps and association tests (internalization). The findings reveal that (a) different modes of externalization (accommodation and assimilation) could be triggered with prompts, (b) across both conditions, this externalization co-occurred with internalization (student learning), and (c) there is some evidence that external assimilation and accommodation had differential effects on internal assimilation and accommodation. Thus, the field experiment supports the assumptions of the co-evolution model in a realistic course setting. On a more general note, the study provides an example of how wikis can be used successfully for collaborative knowledge building within educational contexts.

Introduction

Social media, such as wikis, weblogs or social networking tools have been widely used to support learning in educational settings (Alexander, 2006, Bennett et al., 2012, Bonderup Dohn, 2009, Dron, 2007, Kang and Glassman, 2011). In particular, there is great potential to employ social media for collaborative knowledge building (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994), a form of learning that stresses the active, social and constructive character of learning (Cacciamani et al., 2012, Larusson and Alterman, 2009). Specifically, wikis have been popular means to apply novel teaching methods in classrooms (e.g., Barry, 2012, Biasutti, 2011, Everett, 2011, Heafner and Friedman, 2008, Ioannou, 2011, Larusson and Alterman, 2009, Naismith et al., 2011, Pifarré and Kleine Staarman, 2011, Wheeler et al., 2008), albeit with mixed success (Cole, 2009).

To describe social and cognitive processes that take place during collaborative knowledge building with shared digital artifacts such as wikis, Cress and Kimmerle (2008; see also Kimmerle, Cress, & Held, 2010) suggested a co-evolution model. The basic assumption of the co-evolution model is that individual cognitive structures co-evolve with the information that is documented in a shared digital artifact. The cognitive structures are modified as a result of internalization of knowledge (by processing information from the shared artifact), and the information that is documented in the shared artifact is modified through externalization of knowledge (from the cognitive system). While in knowledge building research significant theoretical (e.g., Stahl, 2002) and methodological (e.g., Suthers et al., 2010, Suthers and Medina, 2011) progress has been made in looking at artifact-mediated collaborative learning processes in the field of educational practice, the co-evolution model offers a distinct contribution in that it looks at how cognitive and social processes mutually influence each other.

The co-evolution model has been developed based on exploratory evidence from the online-encyclopedia Wikipedia (Cress and Kimmerle, 2008, Kimmerle et al., 2012), and has since provided the basis for a number of experiments under laboratory conditions (e.g., Kimmerle et al., 2011, Ley et al., 2011, Moskaliuk et al., 2009, Moskaliuk et al., 2012). However, to investigate the interplay of cognitive and social processes, a setting is needed that allows collaborative growth and development of knowledge to emerge naturally from a social, artifact-mediated interaction. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to investigate knowledge co-evolution in a realistic course setting in an educational context. In such a setting and in the context of students' typical learning activities, would it be possible to trigger external accommodation and assimilation (in the wiki)? And, if so, what would be the effect on the internalization that would take place (in the cognitive systems of the individuals)?

To answer these questions, we designed a rigorous field experiment and compared an accommodation and an assimilation condition. We gave learners the opportunity to interact with each other over a two week period in a relatively unconstrained manner. The experiment was part of two university courses where dyads of students had to accomplish a collaborative wiki writing task during two weeks allowing us to trace co-evolution in a realistic field setting. We expected that students in the accommodation condition would show more external accommodation than students in the assimilation condition, and vice versa. Following the assumptions of the co-evolution model, this should also have an impact on the internalization of knowledge: different forms of externalization should co-occur with different forms of internalization.

The paper is organized as follows. We briefly introduce the co-evolution model and present findings from previous studies. We then highlight challenges for measuring external and internal accommodation and assimilation, especially in a realistic educational setting in the field, and suggest approaches to tackle these challenges. Afterwards, we present the experimental setup, methods and operationalizations, and report the findings separately for externalization and internalization processes. We then draw conclusions on the co-evolution model and our methodology, and discuss pedagogical implications of our work.

Section snippets

Basic assumptions of the co-evolution model

Following a constructivist tradition, the co-evolution model suggested by Cress and Kimmerle (2008) posits learning as an active construction of knowledge. The co-evolution model builds on Luhmann's system theory of social systems (1995), and views individual learning and collaborative knowledge building (e.g., Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994) as two interrelated processes: When people construct knowledge through shared digital artifacts, individual learning processes mutually influence each other

Hypotheses

To sum up from the previous sections, we propose the following hypotheses with regard to knowledge co-evolution in our field experiment:

Hypothesis 1

Different types of prompts should trigger different types of externalization. Participants who receive accommodation prompts should show more external accommodation in a wiki than participants who receive assimilation prompts and vice versa.

Hypothesis 2

Writing in a wiki (externalization) should lead to a general increase of knowledge (internalization), regardless of

Design

A 2 × 2 field experiment with the between-subjects factor experimental condition (accommodation vs. assimilation) and the within-subjects factor time (pre-test: t1; post-test: t2) was designed to research knowledge co-evolution in a realistic course setting. The experiment was conducted as part of two regular university courses on similar topics running in parallel, one in Austria and one in Germany. The students were paired up in dyads and randomly assigned to two experimental conditions, the

Results

We first report results on the externalization measures (number of edits and comments in the wiki (Hypothesis H1), then we turn to the internalization measures (Hypotheses H2 and H3).

Discussion and conclusion

In the introduction of this article, we have argued that a field study in a realistic course setting is needed to analyze collaborative knowledge building. While recent progress has been made on analyzing knowledge building on the artifact level in such contexts (e.g., Suthers et al., 2010), a similar progress needs to be made on the cognitive level to understand artifact-mediated learning. In the present paper, we have contributed to this perspective by suggesting instruments for tracking

Acknowledgments

We thank Katrin Niglas for the review of the statistical techniques we have employed, as well as one anonymous reviewer for the valuable comments on a previous version of the manuscript. This work has been partially funded by the European Commission under the FP7 ICT Workprogramme, contract 318209, Project Learning Layers (www.learning-layers.eu).

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