=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1411/paper-07
|storemode=property
|title=Common Knowledge: Supporting the Orchestration of Multi-Modal Note-Sharing in a Heterogeneous Classroom Ecology
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1411/paper-07.pdf
|volume=Vol-1411
}}
==Common Knowledge: Supporting the Orchestration of Multi-Modal Note-Sharing in a Heterogeneous Classroom Ecology==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1411/paper-07.pdf
Common Knowledge: Supporting the Orchestration of Multi-
Modal Note-Sharing in a Heterogeneous Classroom Ecology
Cresencia Fong, University of Toronto, cresencia.fong@utoronto.ca
James D. Slotta, University of Toronto, jslotta@oise.utoronto.ca
Abstract: We will present Common Knowledge (CK) – a pedagogical and technological
innovation that supports teacher orchestration of inquiry discourse occurring in the digital and
classroom environments. We designed CK to support a “knowledge community” pedagogy
where students add their own ideas, build on peers’ contributions, and structure their inquiry.
Using tablets, students contributed to a knowledge base that was publicly displayed on an
interactive whiteboard (IWB). The IWB visualized the community’s idea flow, enabling
learners to sort their ideas along socially-negotiated categories, and allowing teachers to track
student progress to guide whole-class discussions. We present the final design, analyzed
according to a Technology-Discourse-Activity system. We observed that teachers used “3R”
orchestration cycle of Reflect-Refocus-Release, and offer guidelines about linking pedagogy
to technology design.
Keywords: orchestration, discourse, inquiry, collaboration, technology, knowledge building
Introduction and Objectives
In learning environments that aim to engage students as a knowledge community in collaborative knowledge
building (Group Scribbles - Roschelle et al., 2007; ConcertChat - Stahl, 2006), there is typically a heavy reliance
on teacher-guided oral community discourse (Slotta & Najafi, 2010). However, this places a serious burden on
teachers to orchestrate inquiry in heterogeneous classroom ecologies (i.e. F2F classrooms incorporating
computer-mediated activities), as they must continuously traverse between online and F2F environments to
guide discourse towards productive paths of inquiry. Our main goal was to design a technology environment to
support such traversing, and investigate how two elementary teachers used this in their orchestration of
productive inquiry activity within their heterogeneous classroom ecologies. A necessary secondary goal toward
investigating the primary one, was to develop an analysis framework that would capture how technology,
teacher-guided discourse, and inquiry activity function as a coherent whole. While our primary goal aligns with
the “Linking pedagogy and heterogeneous technological resource ecologies” workshop track, and our secondary
goal aligns with the “Methods and techniques to research heterogeneous ecologies” workshop track; we see this
work as making a greater contribution to the pedagogy track than to the methods track.
We draw from the theoretical perspective of activity systems (Engeström, 1987), and Activity-Oriented
Design Method (AODM - Mwanza, 2002), in which tools and materials are mediators of goal-directed human
activity which are themselves transformed in the mediation process. The CK environment can be interpreted as a
mediating tool for inquiry activity, with community discourse as a necessary mediator. Together, these elements
can be viewed as forming a Technology-Discourse-Activity system, which informs our understanding of how
any two dimensions can influence the third. This perspective also informs our design of successive iterations of
CK, including specific technologies, activity sequences, and targeted patterns of discourse.
CK has been designed as a content-agnostic note-sharing application for collaborative inquiry. Using
tablets, students contribute to a community knowledge base that is publicly visible on the classroom IWB. This
interactive display visualizes the community’s idea flow and enables learners to sort their ideas by topic. Now in
its third iteration, CK has been designed to embody an inquiry script: scaffolding the community through three
phases of science inquiry: Brainstorm, Propose, and Investigate. Students begin by brainstorming questions and
theories to share with their community as “brainstorm notes”, eventually tagging these notes with socially-
negotiated themes emerging from the community knowledge base. Then, they collectively draw on brainstorm
notes to propose research trajectories, which they share as “proposal notes”. They then choose a fluid (i.e.
changeable) special interest group, supported by a dedicated shared interactive display; carrying out
investigations as defined in proposal notes, and sharing findings via “report notes”.
Orchestrated Collaborative Classroom Workshop 2015, June 7, 2015, Gothenburg, Sweden.
Copyright held by the author(s).
Theoretical Perspective
Our research is grounded in the theoretical tradition of classrooms as Knowledge Communities, where
community members value a diversity of expertise, metacognitive awareness, a common goal of advancing the
collective knowledge, and a means by which to share learning (Bielaczyc & Collins, 1999). The Knowledge
Community and Inquiry (KCI - Slotta & Najafi, 2010) approach scaffolds students to work as a knowledge
community in building a collective knowledge base, which becomes a resource for subsequent scaffolded
inquiry activities, targeting specific learning goals (Slotta & Najafi, 2010).
Language has been shown to be a central mediator of thinking and learning within a knowledge
community (Wertsch & Smolka, 1994). O'Connor and Michaels’ (1996) analysis of “revoicing” – the oral or
written re-phrasing of a student's contribution by another participant – describes how teachers orchestrate group
lessons through language socialization into intellectual practices, offers a means for teachers to foster idea
growth, reinforcing collective epistemology and guiding inquiry progression.
The enactment of any pedagogical designs, whether facilitated by technology or not, requires
thoughtful management of students, activity, resources, technology, and time. Dillenbourg refers to this process
as “orchestration” - “how a teacher manages, in real time, multi-layered activities in a multi-constraints context”
(Dillenbourg et al. 2012; p.1). As an “orchestration tool” (Dillenbourg et al., 2012), the inquiry and
collaborative scripts at the heart of CK offer a technology structure to manage the knowledge community’s
inquiry process.
Method
The design of a scaffolding technology environment like CK requires an understanding of how teachers
orchestrate inquiry using discourse that engages students in reflection about their idea progress. Hence the need
for research of discourse and activity sequences in technology-mediated inquiry environments. We analyze such
sequences in the context of an overarching Technology-Discourse-Activity system to understand how CK
technology, teacher-guided discourse patterns, and the inquiry activity script inter-relate. Because the
technology and activity script were designed to be enacted in the classroom context, the discourse is one
variable left open to the teacher to serve as a means of achieving those specified designs. In this way, CK
research is deeply connected to classroom practice (Design-Based Research Collective, 2003).
A grounded approach to video coding was used to determine teachers’ orchestrational and discursive
scaffolds. Participants were two veteran grade 5/6 teachers, ‘Brad’ and ‘Jen’, in a private elementary inquiry-
oriented school located in a large Canadian city, with 23 students each (approximately equal numbers of grade 5
and 6 students). By our third iteration of Common Knowledge (CK3), Brad had been teaching for 8 years, and
Jen for 5 years.
CK3 is a content-agnostic technology environment, designed in close coupling with a KCI-inspired
inquiry script. Consistent with the KCI approach, students are scaffolded to work as a knowledge community
through several distinct phases of inquiry, contributing to a shared knowledge base in each phase. Since the
knowledge base is indexed to socially-negotiated themes, teachers are tasked with orchestrating the
community’s inquiry towards themes that address their pre-determined specific learning/curricular goals. CK3
also aims to capitalize on the physical classroom layout as an additional dimension of collaboration scripting
and collective knowledge mapping. This was a 9-week grade 5/6 Astronomy inquiry progression supported by
CK3, and was enacted in the spring of 2013.
To investigate teachers’ orchestration of classroom activity, we measured the classroom time teachers
allocated to teacher-guided and student-driven inquiry activity involving CK3 over the 9-week enactments. A
grounded approach to video coding was used, with coarse-grain coding focused on teachers’ activity
orchestration. Video data of three 90-minute CK3 classroom periods from each teacher were chosen for finer
grain coding, based on the richness of CK-driven classroom discourse and opportunities for CK note
contributions during the same session. Finer grain coding focused on teachers’ discourse patterns during CDEs,
to discover possible discourse patterns.
Findings and Discussion
Qualitative video analyses was conducted on teacher-guided community discourse episodes (“CDE”) and
student-driven activities that involved Common Knowledge (“SD-CK”). Figure 1 provides details of Brad’s
orchestration during the three classroom sessions selected for further analysis. The top panel (i.e., “# of Notes”)
presents students’ note contribution activity. The number of notes shown begins with a non-zero value, as some
notes had been contributed in class sessions preceding those that were coded.
Figure 1. Enactment timeline for Brad’s orchestration during three selected CK3 sessions. The bottom (red/pink)
level shows the orchestration sequencing of CK3 activity. The top level shows students’ contributions of
different types of CK3 notes. The black vertical lines delineate each session. The yellow vertical line marks
initiation of the Propose phase of inquiry. The blue vertical line marks initiation of the Investigate phase.
Teachers used students’ CK notes to launch and guide F2F community discussion during the reflect
(CDE/red) phase of their orchestration, culminating in teachers’ instructions that refocus the community’s
subsequent inquiry activity, providing direction to students about strategies to address issues that emerged from
that discussion. Students were then released (pink/SD-CK) to pursue their inquiry trajectories – resulting in
further note contributions to the community knowledge base (see “# of Notes” graphs in Figure 1). This 3R
cycle (Reflect-Refocus-Release) figured prominently in teachers’ orchestration, and was pivotal in helping
students develop awareness of their community’s state of knowledge, achieve knowledge convergence, and
receive teacher guidance towards productive inquiry.
The continuous traversing between student-driven activities in the CK environment (Release) and F2F
community discourse events (Reflect), each informing the other, was guided by teachers’ Refocusing
instructions. These instructions emerged naturally from student input during Reflection community discussions.
A closer examination of teachers’ discourse moves during these discussions was done to investigate how they
facilitated the discussions towards productive trajectories and guided ensuing student-directed inquiry work for
the subsequent Release phase of activity orchestration.
A grounded approach to video coding of teachers’ discourse moves during their facilitation of
community discourse events (i.e. Reflect phase of orchestration) in their 3 selected CK3 enactment sessions,
revealed four orientations of teacher-initiated exchanges: (1) Teacher Reflection (TR), in which the teacher
“revoices” or engages in a personal reflection about recent ideas or progress; (2) Individual Student Reflection
(IR), in which individual students or groups were posed an inquiry question; (3) Whole Class Reflection (CR),
in which the teacher poses a reflection question to the classroom as a whole; and (4) Class Instruction (CI), in
which the teacher issued straightforward instructions to the class. Teachers used these orientations to guide
community discourse, promote reflection on the community’s collective knowledge base, and engage the
community in discursive knowledge work.
Principles, Guidelines, and Conclusions
A pedagogical model such as KCI can inform the development of the inquiry script, as well as technological
features of CK. We now offer some lessons learnt regarding the linking of KCI pedagogy to technology design,
the analysis of such technology in a heterogeneous ecology, and the orchestration of a note-sharing technology
that scaffolds inquiry in a blended classroom environment.
First, there are tensions between supporting autonomous student inquiry and scripting procedural
inquiry elements into the technology design. Second, indexing of the shared community knowledge base should
not be a final one-time occurrence, but rather, a more continuous process spanning the length of the inquiry term
to support inquiry breadth over time. CK’s design focused on scaffolding students’ progression and this came
with a trade-off in terms of the breadth of their investigations. This remains an unresolved challenge and it is
important to keep this trade-off in mind in future design efforts.
Third, the Propose phase of CK3 slowed inquiry progress with the intention of productively
constraining idea diversity (i.e. brainstorming) and engaging students in knowledge convergence as they created
Proposals by synthesizing Brainstorm notes – thoughtfully considering their peers’ multiple small ideas to form
“big idea” Proposals. However, this proved to be cognitively too advanced for grade 5/6 students and dampened
the communities’ motivation. Hence, technology needs to provide further scaffolding to support students’
knowledge convergence processes. Fourth, CK3 also sought to productively constrain idea diversity by (1)
allowing untagged Brainstorm notes to “disappear” during the Brainstorm phase, then by (2) having Brainstorm
notes “disappear” with the launch of the Investigate phase. The goal of this was to focus the community’s
attention on ideas in the collective knowledge base that were relevant to the socially-negotiated topic categories
of the knowledge base, and to ensure investigative progress. However, teachers reported that they would have
liked to have had read-only access to Brainstorm notes during the final Investigate phase, to support student
reflection on inquiry progress and to see if any early brainstorm ideas that had been ignored in Proposals could
perhaps be connected to more advanced understandings in final Investigation Reports. All this begs the question
of whether intended productive constraints such as the intentional periodical slowing of progress and the
limiting of inquiry breadth, can actually be productive.
Fifth, the Technology-Discourse-Activity system provided a viable framework for analyzing how
technology, teacher-guided discourse, and inquiry activity function as a coherent whole; yielding redesign goals
for subsequent iterations of CK and uncovering a teacher orchestration pattern. Sixth, CK’s content-agnosticity
enabled knowledge communities to pursue topics based on their interest, and its scripting of inquiry processes
reduced teachers’ orchestration load. However, the teacher’s orchestration of a community’s knowledge flow
was pivotal in ensuring progress towards productive inquiry trajectories. Seventh, teachers utilized a “3R”
orchestration cycle of Reflect, Refocus, Release; to manage productive inquiry activity within their
heterogeneous classroom ecologies. In particular, Refocus was crucial in connecting knowledge flow between
online and F2F environments – providing guidance toward productive trajectories, based on student ideas that
were shared as CK notes online and as discursive contributions to F2F classroom discussions.
By engaging students in reflective note-sharing as part of a scripted inquiry progression, we were able
to investigate how CK could help students and teachers engage in a Knowledge Community and Inquiry (KCI)
approach. By adding CK as an inquiry scaffold, we produced a blended form of learning environment, where
individual students develop and share their inquiry work within a common digital repository, motivating
teacher-guided discussions, which in turn motivate new, refocused inquiry using CK. The note-sharing system
becomes a tool that mediates between the two learning environments: students’ collective inquiry done in the
digital note-sharing environment and community knowledge work done during teacher-guided classroom
discussions. Successful mediation of this blended learning environment entails the agile orchestration of inquiry
activity between the online and F2F environments, and strategic guidance of the community toward inquiry
progression. Hence the note-sharing system serves a dual purpose: to mediate between inquiry learning
environments, and to support teachers’ orchestration of the learning progression.
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