An interactive evaluation approach for the creation of collaborative learning commons

• This paper reports on the interactive design and evaluation of Internet2-enabled international students' cooperation/collaboration projects involving students and faculty from four disciplines and from three campuses, two in California, U.S.A. and one in the North of Sweden. The purpose of the collaboration is to collect and exchange information and produce knowledge on what would constitute a student-centered physical and virtual ‘learning commons'. The project construct reflects lessons learned in the 3-year Creative University initiative at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden, as well as the growing shift from academic information commons to ‘learning commons', where the focus is on learning rather than technology. Our distributed, international design and evaluation process is based on principles and practices for action research and builds on theories for knowledge exchange embedded in the concept of Ba, as advanced by Nonaka and others. The Ba model recognizes four stages for making tacit knowledge explicit to enable information sharing and produce new knowledge within shared physical, virtual and mental contexts. To explore the practical feasibility of constituting and linking learning communities to create new disciplinary knowledge, share it across disciplinary communities, and co-create dynamic technology-enabled learning environments, we intentionally employed systems thinking methodology involving discourse, dialogue and communication through which faculty and students created shared meanings. Our report includes reflections on applied interactive evaluation framework and process as well as observations on the efficacy of a variety of technology supported tools for initiating and advancing distributed cooperative and collaborative learning. Our research results are further enriched by commentary on the social implementation factors affecting tool utility. For this kind of endeavour to succeed we need to pay explicit attention to the creation of viable group processes including knowledge assessment activities, influencing infrastructure for enabling technology, and integrate this with pedagogical insights on improving student learning.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Systemvetenskap, informationssystem och informatik med samhällsvetenskaplig inriktning (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Information Systems, Social aspects (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Informatik

Informatics

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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