DIP: Connecting Idea Threads across Communities for Sustained Knowledge Building

网络学习和未来学习技术计划资助的努力将有助于展望下一代学习技术，并促进我们对人们如何在技术丰富的环境中学习的了解。开发和实施(DIP)项目建立在概念验证工作的基础上，这些工作展示了拟议的新型学习技术的可能性，项目团队建立和完善了拟议创新的最低可行实例，使他们能够了解未来应如何设计和使用这种技术，并回答有关人们如何利用技术学习的问题。教育中的一个重要问题是鼓励学习者围绕重要内容进行持续的探究，并帮助他们不断完善自己的理解。已经存在的技术可以帮助学习者社区(例如，班级中的那些人)跟踪他们正在产生和提炼的想法。这个项目的创新将帮助学习者群体建立两种联系：(I)他们正在进行的跨主题领域的不同讨论之间的联系；(Ii)他们正在讨论的想法和其他班级小组正在讨论的想法之间的联系。该项目团队早期的网络学习探索(EXP)项目表明，这种联系会引起好奇心，产生新的学习目标，以及更深入的理解。预计使这些联系更容易识别的技术也将使学生更容易回顾他们在前几年的课堂上学到的东西，并完善他们早期的理解。知识建设是一个社区对想法进行协作提炼的过程。知识构建的目标是让学习者参与持续的探究和进步的话语，通过这种话语，思想不断发展和提炼，从而产生更高水平的学习目标。该项目的目的是设计和建立对跨社区和跨时间的知识建设的支持，将社区连接到一个共享领域，在该领域中共享的知识库相互之间和跨社区共同推进(例如，跨解决类似问题的班级；跨学校年限)。学生通过从其他课堂引入富有成效的想法线索作为探究的起点，然后与其他人共同审查，在他们前进的过程中获取他人的想法，并与合作社区进行现场互动，从而开始他们的探究。正在开发的跨社区使用的知识构建平台称为城市(连接思想线索或青年)。在之前的CyberLearning Exp项目中开发的自动化分析帮助单个班级中的小组可视化他们的想法线索，并将彼此的想法线索联系起来。自动化过程正在扩展，语言处理算法可以识别其他社区的对话，这些对话可能有助于扩大一个群体的理解。该项目团队包括协作学习、计算语言学和自我调节方面的专家，旨在学习如何使技术跨社区工作，了解如何使用这种技术来保持对想法的参与和提炼，以及周围的社会技术系统需要具备哪些素质，才能实现这种持续和分布式的知识建设。

The Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies Program funds efforts that will help in envisioning the next generation of learning technologies and advancing what we know about how people learn in technology-rich environments. Development and Implementation (DIP) Projects build on proof-of-concept work that showed the possibilities of the proposed new type of learning technology, and project teams build and refine a minimally-viable example of their proposed innovation that allows them to understand how such technology should be designed and used in the future and to answer questions about how people learn with technology. An important issue in education is encouraging learners to engage in sustained inquiry around important content and helping them to continually refine their understandings. Technology already exists to help communities of learners (e.g., those in a class) keep track of the ideas they are generating and refining. The innovation in this project will help groups of learners make two kinds of connections: (i) between the different discussions they are having across topical areas and (ii) between the ideas they are discussing and those that groups in other classes are discussing. The project team's earlier Cyberlearning Exploration (EXP) project showed that such connections gives rise to curiosity and new learning goals as well as deeper understanding. It is expected that technology that makes these connections easier to identify will also make it easier for students to refer back to what they learned in previous years' classes and to refine their earlier understandings. Knowledge building is the collaborative refinement of ideas by a community. The goal in knowledge building is to engage learners in sustained inquiry and progressive discourse through which ideas are continually developed and refined, giving rise to higher-level learning goals. The aim in this project is to design and build support for knowledge building across communities and across time, connecting communities into a shared field in which shared bases of knowledge co-advance with each other and across communities (e.g., across classes addressing similar issues; across years of school). Students kick off their inquiry by importing productive idea threads from other classrooms as inquiry starters, then co-review with others, access others' ideas as they move forward, and engage in live interactions with partnering communities. The knowledge building platform being developed for use across communities is called CITY (Connecting Idea Threads or Youth). Automated analysis developed during the previous Cyberlearning EXP project helps groups within a single class visualize their idea threads and thread idea threads with each other. The automated process is being extended with language processing algorithms that can identify conversations in other communities that have potential to be useful in extending a group's understanding. The project team, which includes experts in collaborative learning, computational linguistics, and self-regulation, is aiming to learn how to make the technology work across communities, to understand how to use such technology to sustain engagement with and refinement of ideas, and the qualities the surrounding socio-technical system needs to have for such sustained and distributed knowledge building to happen.