Monitoring the Knowledge Building Process in a CSCL Environment: A Case Study from Turkey

The Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) field is based on social learning theories which offer that knowledge is constructed through learners’ interaction, knowledge sharing, and knowledge building as a community. Knowledge Building Theory presents a conceptual framework that allows researchers to investigate the social character of learning and its application with corresponding methods of CSCL area. This case study mainly aims to reveal learners’ knowledge building process located in time-stamped logs of a VMT environment that covers chat, shared whiteboard, and wiki functions. The study was conducted in the setting of a graduate level course in a state university in Turkey. In order to examine learners’ knowledge construction process in the VMT system, their verbal interaction related to course assignments were considered. Sentences of messages were applied as the unit of analysis and inspected them based on Progressive Knowledge Building Inquiry cycle (Hakkarainen 2003; White and Frederiksen 1998), which begins with a trigger activity and covers of four main stages; (a) idea generation, (b) idea connection, (c) idea improvement, and (d) rise above. In addition, we applied content analysis method to analyze learners’ submissions to wiki environment.