VISIBILITY AS A PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGY AND KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTION IN VIRTUAL EDUCATION CONTEXTS

This research examines the relationship between visibility and knowledge construction in the context of virtual education. Visibility is a concept little studied invirtual learning environments. It is defined as a social phenomenon in the learning communities, in which teachers and students gain social and academic recognition according to their position within a particular course and according to the perception that the course members have about them (Clifford, 1963;Hernández, 2010).

Knowledge building is an ongoing process that emerges from the relationship between the content, the teacher and the student (Bossalasco, Donolo, &Chiercher, 2009). Levels of knowledge construction were defined accordong with the postulates of Gunawardena (1997).

A quasi experimental design was used, and the data were analyzed using content analysis. Two groups were selected from an ergonomics course. In the experimental group the teacher used pedagogical strategies focused on make the students more participatory, and therefore more visible. In the control group the teacher used traditional pedagogical strategies (not focused on visibility). The visibility and knowledge construction of each student was assessed through content analysis of the students’ academic production. The analytic categories of the content analysis were defined a priori according to previous research.

The visibility knowledge construction were higher in the experimental group than in the control group. It was found that visibility positively influences the students’ knowledge construction. The implications of this results for virtual education will be discussed.