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The use of distance-shortening strategies to enhance opportunistic collaboration in knowledge-building environments

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Abstract

Carrying out opportunistic collaboration, a method of flexible collaboration centering around ideas and free collaboration structures, is important in knowledge creation organizations, especially for knowledge-building community formation. However, fixed-group collaboration is still widely employed in educational practice, hindering the development of students’ knowledge creation activities. In this design-based study, we created and applied distance-shortening strategies, which are strategies for shortening students’ physical distance and idea distance, to support their opportunistic collaboration. The participants were 24 master’s degree students who took a required one-semester course titled Learning Sciences in Knowledge-Building Environments that included online and offline activities. Data included (1) records of students’ online activities; (2) video clips of students’ offline activities; and (3) the content of students’ online notes. Social network analysis, video analysis and content analysis were applied. The findings revealed that with distance-shortening strategies for constructing community knowledge and collective responsibility, the students were able to overcome the barriers of a fixed group and engage in opportunistic collaboration. Implications for principle-based and design-oriented knowledge-building activities and approaches to fostering knowledge creation are discussed.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We extend special thanks to Dr. Donald Philip for hel** us with editing and revising the first draft. We are thankful to professor Huang-Yao Hong for his comments and suggestions. The first edition of this paper was included in the 25th Annual Knowledge Building Virtual Institute.

Funding

This research was supported by the Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Foundation, Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (22YJC880011).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Teacher Education, Huzhou University, Huzhou, China

    Yujie Chen

  2. School of Education Science, Nan**g Normal University, Nan**g, China

    Yibing Zhang

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Appendix 1

Appendix 1

A Brief Introduction of the 12 Knowledge-building Principles (Scardamalia, 2002; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2010).

  • Real ideas, authentic problems: Students explore problems and ideas because of genuine concern and curiosity about the real world. The problems and ideas are relevant to their daily life.

  • Idea diversity: Students think from multiple perspectives and learn from diverse perspectives.

  • Improvable ideas: All ideas can be continuous improved for community knowledge advancement. Students strive for the refinement of ideas.

  • Rise above: Deepening and working towards higher level of the discussion as well as starting new and different direction of discussion.

  • Community knowledge, collective responsibility: Community members share collective cognitive responsibility for advancing ideas to the community.

  • Pervasive knowledge building: Knowledge building is not limited to a specific place, such as classrooms. It can be in every corner of the school and even out of the school.

  • Democratizing knowledge: Every student has an equitable opportunity to participate in knowledge-building activities.

  • Symmetric knowledge advancement: Distributed inner-outer community expertise is highly valued in knowledge-building community, which extends more opportunities to generate ideas.

  • Epistemic agency: Students are expected to take the initiative to study. They take charge of their own learning process.

  • Knowledge-building discourse: Fostering students’ deep intellectual advancement through deep discussion, opinion exchanges and idea building-on.

  • Constructive uses of authoritative sources: Students are supposed to use reliable reference materials appropriately to facilitate knowledge building.

  • Concurrent, embedded, transformative assessment: Assessment is integral to knowledge advancement, with self-directed and self-initiated productive assessment as work proceeds.

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Chen, Y., Zhang, Y. The use of distance-shortening strategies to enhance opportunistic collaboration in knowledge-building environments. Education Tech Research Dev (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-024-10389-3

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