Learning in Lotus Land: Developing a Knowledge-Building Environment in a Simulated Workplace

Penny Collings, University of Canberra, 

PennyC@ise.canberra.edu.au

http://beth.canberra.edu.au/collings/

Involvement in KBEs

Since attending CSCL95 where I heard this area raised and discussed, I have been involved in the design of environments that support collaborative work and learning. My graduate computing and information systems students first learn how to use collaborative technologies and create their own workspaces, then they create and work in a (fictitious) Cultural Heritage Authority which they develop into a distributed learning organisation. About 30 students create and work in the organisation.

Students use Lotus Notes as their infrastructure for developing collaborative work and learning processes. As they become increasingly experienced in the use of collaborative technologies, the opportunity to explore aspects of organisational learning arise. Students become aware of issues such as the re-use of work products and processes and how to find contributions to electronic workspaces that are important for the support of work groups. They create ways of structuring information for the development of the organisation, for example, to support the implementation of a strategic plan and information systems prototypes. They develop an intranet and web site. In this sense, students are creating a knowledge-building environment.

Overall, the approach is to expose students to issues in information systems design and management and the design of work through a behavioural simulation. They will not always solve the problems they encounter but will have a complex and realistic understanding of many information management issues. They will be better placed to design and evaluate information systems and knowledge-building environments in the workplace.

Building on this student-centred work I have managed a pilot project to define and support a virtual community of teacher trainees undertaking practical work in schools. This project raises further questions of how KBEs can best be used in a virtual community, indeed how to think in terms of virtual communities and their needs. Many organisational processes work against the recognition and support of virtual communities that cut across traditional boundaries.

Interest in a particular theme: How can a KBE best be used in a classroom or virtual community?

My emphasis is on raising issues experientially, but we (there are several of us working together) have also attempted to address some of them through the design of electronic workspaces. In this way some CSCL problems identified in your call for participation are positively addressed. Many are familiar ones for groups who are encouraged to use collaborative technologies in learning. I find that students address them well when they choose to use the technologies and must consider the issues themselves. To select three of the probl;em areas you identified concerning classroom use:

·       Students avoid using KBE systems in favour of face-to-face interaction or email ...

My students focus on how best to combine these two modes of interaction; a problem is whether they record critical face-to-face decisions for sharing electronically and how to encourage and support this.

·       Discussions in KBEs tend to diverge rather than build towards consensus.

We have attempted to address this by structuring discussions as a meeting (with an agenda, etc); in our experience, this works for short meetings but not for activities that are more open-ended. We have also tried using roles to give some responsibility for outcomes.

·       The effective use of KBEs requires radical changes to classroom practices, which in turn requires significant teacher training.

In the 1999 collaborative pilot project mentioned above to support teacher trainees undertaking internship work in primary schools, and their university and school-based supervisors, the issue of training became clear. IT support for collaborative work and learning among this diverse group was hindered by a lack of skills among the group; yet the community of potential participants was about 300 people distributed over a wide area - clearly they could benefit from a knowledge-building environment to support their shared work. This project highlighted the need for new ways of training community members. Further, it highlighted the importance of identifying such communities as a way of focussing on the skills that are required by practicing teachers, their student interns and their university colleagues.

Summarising my personal ideas on the theme