January 30 2007

E-Coaching Tip 34: Threaded Discussions and Knowledge Construction

In keeping with this spring's theme of "connections, collaboration and community", this tip probes the types of interactions that might elicit more critical thinking and community-building in discussion posts.

Last week's tip looked at the characteristics of reflective and listening-based responses to discussion posts as opposed to simple turn-taking. The tip also suggested encouraging students to think about their posts in the three parts, of (1) What I know; (2) Why I know what I know, and (3) What I wish I knew.

This week's tip looks at community interactions in more detail and includes a five phase "Interaction Analysis Model" for community discussion and then ONE technique for you to try in your discussion posts.

Next week's tip will continue these ideas as related to the "cognitive presence" of faculty and students. Think ahead to what that might mean:

Threaded Discussions -- Definition and Images

Continuing our probe of how communities develop, it is worth noting that a primary characteristic of a community is shared perceptions, experiences and beliefs. Note that community members do not have to agree fully with the specific beliefs of other members of the community; but it is necessary that community members share and develop awareness of what their fellow members believe and think about how their beliefs converge, merge, and overlap. Obviously, there must be some sharing of attitudes and beliefs or a member will not feel part of the community.

In the online world of discussion posts, we are often like children where we each take turns saying what I believe, (as noted last week) but there is little discussion about how those beliefs merge, converge and diverge. One tool to help students think about how beliefs might be shared or overlap is to have the students think of their beliefs as Venn diagrams, overlapping in some areas but quite singular in other areas.

Now let's look at threaded discussions and a definition of those as to how they can be used in community-building.

Threaded discussions have a history that pre-date our familiar course management systems and discussion posts. Some of the research on threaded discussions can provide some insights into how a learning community develops. Swan (2005) provides a definition of a threaded discussion as " an asynchronous online dialog or conversation that takes the form of a series of linked messages organized around a common subject or theme." She goes on to suggest an image of how discussions evolve and grow. "They (threaded discussions) grow like crystals, with multiple threads expanding simultaneously rather than evolving linearly."

It might be useful to stop and reflect on your discussion posts in your course and assess how well learners organize their thoughts around a particular subject or theme, and then select an image or object that best describes the growth or creation of the ideas. I like the image of the crystal as I think it captures how our store of knowledge grows, node by node and link by link. In fact, this is a question that you might want to pose to your students, asking them to describe the structure of a particular threaded discussion!

Interaction Analysis Model - Five Phases of Knowledge Construction

Before you quickly go into your course site and see if image-building would work with your content, let's consider the work of another set of researchers -- Gunawardena, Lowe and Anderson (1997) -- who developed an Interaction Analysis Model with five phases of knowledge construction:

• Sharing/comparing of information,
• Discovering/exploring of dissonance or inconsistency among ideas, concepts or statements
• Negotiation of meaning and co-constructing of knowledge
• Testing and modifying of proposed synthesis or co-construction
• Agreeing on final statement and applications of newly constructed meaning or insights

This Interaction Model suggests a process that might contribute to community building as well. Let's look at the first step of sharing and comparing -- and link that to the idea of shared beliefs and also to Vygotsky's zone of proximal development.

As you will recall, the first part of the three-part post suggests stating "What I Know." This in fact can also be used as phase one of starting a new topic in a course. Most course topics have concepts, definitions, statements about those concepts and implications, questions, applications centering about those concepts.

Starting with the point of what do you know about a topic and then asking students to state what they know, what they understand to be the definitions of concepts and the connections to other concepts or beliefs can be of way of eliciting and clarifying what students know and believe at the beginning.

Here is a strategy for community-building that overcomes the all too-common turn-taking of simply stating "what I know" and "here is my answer." (This strategy does not encourage much response, discussion or sharing of beliefs!)

Try This Strategy with One of the Core Concepts in Your Course

Identify a core concept that you want your students to learn, think about deeply, one that impacts much of your course content. Create the initial catalyst discussion as to how you want the students to think about that concept.

Divide your group of students into teams of three. Within each of the teams, one person has the responsibility of developing the initial post of "what they know and why " about a particular new concept or topic. A second member of the team then responds to, clarifies and expand on the postings of the first team member, sharing his or her beliefs and knowledge, being certain to include "what I wish I knew." The third member of the team then has the task of integrating and sharing his belief and knowledge and summarizing the team's beliefs -- either integrated or disparate. Depending on the size of your class/group the responsibilities for these three separate types of actions can vary.

The last part of this discussion can be a summary statement or report or position about community-shared beliefs or new knowledge construction by you or one of the students. This last step creates a "take-away" or key learning from the course.

This strategy also builds on the characteristic of community identified by Wenger (1997) -- negotiated meaning -- and lays the foundation for substantive discussion later in the course or topic. This technique also encourages some of the types of posts suggested in last week's tip of postings being substantive, logical and even provocative.

Remember -- More about the instructor role and "cognitive presence" will come next week!

Notes and References

Revised November 8, 2008
Copyright Judith V. Boettcher, 1997-2008