Kai Hakkarainen

Models of Innovative Knowledge Communities and Three Metaphors of Learning

The authors analyze and compare three models of innovative knowledge communities: Nonaka and Takeuchi’s model of knowledge-creation, Engeström’s model of expansive learning, and Bereiter’s model of knowledge building. Despite basic differences, these models have pertinent features in common: Most fundamentally, they emphasize dynamic processes for transforming prevailing knowledge and practices. Beyond characterizing learning as knowledge acquisition (the acquisition metaphor) and as participation in a social community (the participation metaphor), the authors of this article distinguish a third aspect: learning (and intelligent activity in general) as knowledge creation (the knowledge-creation metaphor). This approach focuses on investigating mediated processes of knowledge creation that have become especially important in a knowledge society.

Patterns of Participation and Discourse in Elementary Students' Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning.

Abstract The goal of the investigation was to analyze patterns of participation and discourse mediated by Virtual Web School (VWS). Twenty-three fifth-grade students participated in the study. The findings showed that the density of interaction among participants was high, and all the participants used VWS to some extent. There were, however, substantial differences in the participants’ participation activity and their position in the network of VWS-mediated interaction. The study also showed that the VWS-mediated discussion was not sustained, but instead comprised a number of short discussion threads. Although over half of the participants’ postings were focused on class-learning topics, much needs to be improved in the quality of their discussion.

Students' skills and practices of using ICT: results of a national assessment in Finland

Abstract The purpose of the study was to investigate Finnish elementary and high school students’ skills and practices of using the new information and communication technologies (ICT). Beliefs about the importance of ICT were also assessed. Five hundred and fifteen students responded to a self-report questionnaire. The students attended 25 schools that used ICT intensively and represented all provinces of Finland. From the analysis, there emerged three factors that represented these students’ relationships to ICT. Characteristic of the first factor was a belief that computer supported learning makes learning more meaningful and encourages one to make more efforts to study. Self-reported competence in using ICT was strongly loaded on the second factor, together with intensive reported use of ICT at home as well as networking with expert cultures and coaching of other people to improve their ICT skills. The third factor represented intensity of using ICT at school and appears to be determined more by the availability of equipment and the extent to which ICT is used in the school than by a student’s expertise in ICT.

A knowledge-practice perspective on technology-mediated learning

The purpose of the present paper is to examine the relations between Carl Bereiter’s and Marlene Scardamalia’s knowledge-building approach and social practices. It is argued that technology enhances learning through transformed social practices. In order to truly contribute to educational transformation, pedagogical approaches have to be embedded in locally cultivated “knowledge practices” that channel the participants’ intellectual efforts in a way that elicits collective advancement of knowledge. Consequently, knowledge advancement is not just about putting students’ ideas into the centre but depends on corresponding transformation of social practices of working with knowledge. Creation of cultures which advance knowledge presupposes sustained efforts of teacher-practitioners, collaborating with students and researchers, aimed at iteratively transforming prevailing knowledge practices toward more innovative ones.

Collaborative technology for facilitating progressive inquiry: future learning environment tools

The design of a web-based, networked learning environment, Future Learning Environment (FLE-Tools) embodies a model of progressive inquiry. In this paper, we introduce the progressive inquiry model and describe how different modules of FLE-Tools are designed to facilitate participation in this kind of inquiry. Results of a pilot experiment of using FLE-Tools in higher education are presented. The study was based on an analysis of 125 messages posted by thirteen university students to the FLE-Tools database. The results indicated that the course provided positive evidence for an integration of progressive inquiry and online discussion. The pedagogical and design challenges with which we are currently struggling are discussed.

Instrumental Genesis in Technology-Mediated Learning: From Double Stimulation to Expansive Knowledge Practices

The purpose of the present paper is to examine the socio-cultural foundations of technology-mediated collaborative learning. Toward that end, we discuss the role of artifacts in knowledge-creating inquiry, relying on the theoretical ideas of Carl Bereiter, Merlin Donald, Pierre Rabardel, Keith Sawyer and L. S. Vygotsky. We argue that epistemic mediation triggers expanded inquiry and plays a crucial role in knowledge creation; such mediation involves using CSCL technologies to create epistemic artifacts for crystallizing cognitive processes, re-mediating subsequent activity, and building an evolving body of knowledge. Productive integration of CSCL technologies as instruments of learning and instruction is a developmental process: it requires iterative efforts across extended periods of time. Going through such a process of instrumental genesis requires transforming a cognitive-cultural operating system of activity, thus ‘reformatting’ the brain and the mind. Because of the required profound personal and social transformations, one sees that innovative knowledge-building practices emerge, socially, through extended expansive-learning cycles.

Pursuit of explanation within a computer‐supported classroom

The problem addressed in the study was whether 10‐year‐old and 11‐year‐old children, collaborating within a computer‐supported classroom, learned an explanation‐driven process of inquiry that had characteristics of the progressive nature of scientific inquiry. The technical infrastructure for the study was provided by the Computer‐Supported Intentional Learning Environments (CSILE). The study was based on qualitative content analysis of students’ written productions in physics posted to CSILE’s database in three investigative projects. The study indicated that some young students do engage in epistemic agency and genuinely pursue explanation‐driven inquiry. students’ intuitive explanations were often functional (referring to human agency) and empirical (in terms of observables) in nature. Provided that understandable explanations were available, some of the students moved towards theoretical scientific explanations.

Collaborative discovering of key ideas in knowledge building

In this paper, we describe our work-in-progress for developing Collaborative Discovering Tool (CoDi tool) that is meant for enhancing knowledge building discourse in the Future Learning Environment 2 (Fle2) system. Knowledge building discourse in the Fle2 type of systems usually leads to gradual accumulation of notes. We have found that users experience difficulties to get an overall picture of the knowledge produced and synthesize its advancement. By providing means for the participants to highlight key ideas, that they find particularly useful, the CoDi tool was designed to facilitate collective management of knowledge and inquiry and provide various visual representations of the database. We report results of a pilot experiment carried out with the CoDi prototype that appears to be a promising tool. However there are certain open questions concerning what are the social and pedagogical effects of highlighting ideas in different educational setting, how highlighting should be organized so that it would provide strongest support of knowledge advancement, and whether the results should always be shared not only by tutors but also by students. Regardless of the challenges, the development of the CoDi tool appears to open up an interesting line of inquiry that we would like to share with the CSCL community.

Developing Tools for Analyzing CSCL Process

The purpose of this paper is to describe methods for analyzing the CSCL process by using logfiles and other quantitative measures. We present methodological approaches that would help CSCL teachers, tutors and researchers to assess the participation activity and system level features of social interaction that take place during CSCL.

Computer Support for Collaborative Designing

The purpose of the present study was to examine how collaborative designing could be facilitated by a new generation networked learning environment (Future Learning Environment, FLE-Tools) and to analyze whether and how students working in the environment were able to share their design process. The study was carried out by analyzing qualitatively knowledge posted to FLE-Tools’ database by three courses of first-year textile students (N = 34) who were engaged in a collaborative design project that focused on designing clothing for prematurely born babies. The study indicated that designing in the network environment facilitated engagement of expert-like designing in a sense of supporting specification of constraints related to designing clothing to premature neonates through in-depth problem structuring and search of new information. A design challenge of FLE-Tools is to provide more effective tools for collaborative work with visual sketches as well as developing tools and practices that would help to share knowledge emerging not only in the conceptual but also during the actual manufacturing phase of designing.