Knowledge Construction with Social Web Tools Author(s): Margarida Lucas, António Moreira Keywords: Social Web – Knowledge Construction – Interaction Analysis
Abstract:
This paper examines knowledge construction in a distributed learning environment supported by social web tools. Research data was gathered from online asynchronous discussions in a first-year Masters Degree course in Multimedia in Education. Our analysis was modeled on Gunawardena, Lowe and Anderson’s (1997) study and results indicate that, despite a significant percentage in the phase of sharing and comparing information, interaction at the highest levels of knowledge construction is relevant and suggests that knowledge was constructed.
Important work for two reasons:
First, studying actual use of social tools beats by a wide margin projection by programmers of what they think users will find intuitive or useful.
Second, how to study users and software is in its infancy and explorations such as this one provide a basis for further study in this critical area.
There is a “technical” side to topic maps but the “social” and “interface” sides are just as important. Alone, none of them are sufficient for a successful topic map application.