Knowledge+Building+Communites

Knowledge Building Environment according to the article “Knowledge Building Environments: Extending the Limits of the Possible in Education and Knowledge Work” refers to the creation and improvement of ideas that have a life out in the world, where they are subject to social processes of evaluation, revision, and application.

Knowledge building is knowledge creation, often associated with innovation, intellectual property, intellectual capital and knowledge work. It is from this that theory based-design is rooted for effective teaching and learning.

Two factors of the contemporary technical trends that help promote such design: a) The emergence of distributed learning, open/flexible learning, asynchronous learning networks and knowledge building communities. b) Interaction and learning activities re-conceptualize to achieve same goals, for example ( Learning objects)

Through mediated forms of interaction & enculturation into a community of practice, knowledge is acquired.

Instructors’ roles are to support learners’ use of the learning environments. They are to identify misconceptions from learners and provide opportunities allowing the learners itself to help construct the environment. This acts as the creation of a scaffold for a building, allowing learners to be like workers to fully use resources made available to build a learning environment. Their other roles should be a facilitator, guide and mentor to provide experience beyond learning.

Users of this learning environment act as a member of the community to help support each another. Like a small community, they past learning experience to each other to interpret new content and improve each other standards. In this learning environment, participants take ownership of learning while benefiting each other learning experience.

As a designer, to this environment, we should design an open-ended learning environment. It should be able to support multiple perspectives, allowing participants of the community to discover, inquire and experiment with topics and questions they come upon. These topics and questions should be brought to fellow community members to debate, interact and discussed.

Wikispace is a great example of a knowledge building environment. Through the use of this online community, we can see the developed works and improvements of people within this community. It is also a great way of organizing course materials and students can help collaborate on selected topics.


 * Reference:**

Dabbagh, N. (2005). Pedagogical models for E-Learning: A theory-based design framework. International Journal of Technology in Teaching and Learning, 1(1), 25-44.

http://ijttl.sicet.org/issue0501/DabbaghVol1.Iss1.pp25-44.pdf

Scardamalia & Bereiter. 2003. Knowledge Building Environments

Scardamalia & Bereiter. 2003. Knowledge Building