Abstract:

This proposed paper abstract discusses the competences of Web 2.0 in terms of providing users with tools of collaboration and knowledge construction. To that goal, two online educational platforms, namely eCampus and Idea Construction Zone, are explored, their potentials are touched upon, and examples of collaboration are given. Then these examples are analyzed to show what it takes to collaborate online, and under what conditions, online collaboration is likely to lead to knowledge construction.

The two case studies in this inquiry are from a Canadian University. Participants included 555 preservice teachers who took a
mathematics education course which was offered both online and blended. The participants were put into groups of 6-9, and were asked to solve and discuss mathematical questions as well as how to teach them to elementary school students. Grounded theory method was applied to make sense of the data, and Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory of learning was used as a lens to look at the social environment of learning at which the discoursive communication took place.

Analysis of postings made on online platforms reveals that there are cases of individual and social knowledge construction. When there is no reference to other postings or responses to an individual from any of the group members, the collaboration takes place on a low dynamics (communication), and such a process leads to individual knowledge construction. Preservice teachers might have read each other’s postings, and might have learned some solution strategies from one another, but there is no community to shape social knowledge construction. Preservice teachers work in the group (not with the group), and construct individual knowledge.

Conversely, when preservice teachers collaborate on an issue to help each other build knowledge of pedagogy and that of subject matter, knowledge construction is more social in nature, and collaboration is interwoven making a web-like process. It is when each and every member of the group gives their ideas and replies to the points peers introduce to the group. Preservice teachers try to make a connection between the ideas by picking up a point which interests them. It is in the course of back and forth discussions, some individual-to-individual and some individual-to-group, that the collaboration takes form and preservice teachers find a chance to learn from one another and construct their knowledge.

The process of letting peers know one’s ideas, reading through the discussions made by the group members, questioning the current beliefs, reflecting on what they think, and learning collaboratively could lead to the constructing of new sets of beliefs that is the result of learning in a discursive environment. That is the way knowledge is constructed in a setting where a small group of preservice teachers have come to share their minds and learn from one another.

Keywords:

Knowledge construction, Web 2.0.