CSILE & Knowledge-Building Communities

Donna Mercer, Paola Prato, Ben Ramos, Leonora Villarta

What is CSILE?

• In the 1980s, Marlene Scardamalia and her team at the University of Toronto developed a computer program, called Computer Supported International Learning Environments (CSILE), to facilitate knowledge-building within a learning community.

• Their product was the first networked knowledge building environment for education.

Software For Learning

This computer based program “provided a means for a group of students to build a collective database (knowledge-base) of their thoughts, in the form of pictures and written notes.”

(Scardamalia et al. 1989)

CSILE proposes:

“…Environments that foster rather than presuppose the ability of students to exert intentional control over their own learning” by “providing a means for a group of students to build a collective database (knowledge-base) of their thoughts, in the form of pictures and written notes.”

(Scardamalia et al. 1989)

Goals of CSILE• Promote intentional knowledge construction

and support active learning, cooperative group problem solving and reflection.

• Develop the intelligence of the user by reducing educationally irrelevant baggage

• Provide situations to develop the planning, monitoring, goal-setting, problem-solving and other higher-order abilities of users that are important objectives of education.

(Scardamalia et al., 1989)

CSILE format evolved into Knowledge Forum

Tenets of KF:1. “Intentional learning” takes place

when a student is actively trying to achieve a cognitive objective and not just working on traditional school tasks.

KF Tenets

2. The “process of expertise” through “reinvestment of mental resources in progressive problem solving” embeds and expands cognition.

KF Tenets

3. To optimize student learning means there needs to be a restructuring of schools into knowledge-building communities.

Today’s KF

Knowledge Forum 4.8 is in use in 19 countries, in education, health, business, and professional organizations.

(http://www.knowledgeforum.com/Kforum/

newsroom.htm)

What About the Teacher?• In such a community of learners, the role

of teacher as source of knowledge begins to shift to teacher as a facilitator or expert learner. Teachers, as well as students learn to use the technology, a further preparation for the real world today.

• KF is an environment which can also be monitored and prompted by teachers or guides (Veermans, M., et. al. 2005)

A Paradigm Shift

• Often schools are characterized as bureaucratic institutions, rather than learning organizations.

• What if schools became more like communities that gave the teachers, students, parents, and other community members the ability to determine the services the learners need and decide how they should be met (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1999)?

• This means that students go from being clients of the school to members and contributors creating a society of knowledge.

Learn It, Teach It, Understand It

• For this idea to work, students would need to work in research teams called “collaborative knowledge building” (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1999).

• Students would research a problem that was part of their community, report on that problem, and teach their classmates about what they had found.

• By making the problem something that is accessible to the learner, he/she has stock in his/her own knowledge base making learning more relevant.

• The idea is for students to become knowledgeable of a subject rather than knowledgeable about a subject.

• A learner advances in improving ideas rather than simply looking for the correct answer (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 2006).

Learn It, Teach It, Understand It

By having students create a network of knowledge (i.e. a Wiki) students can learn from each other and “boost an environment of objectivity and interrelationships that support collaborative work and knowledge building” (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 2006).

Learn It, Teach It, Understand It

Example #1: Calgary• The University of Calgary completed a study

in which two teachers set the objective of students developing an ability to analyze historical evidence.

• The community of students wrote and peer edited as they crafted essays and short answer responses.

• Students learned from one another how to properly edit work and create a model, as a result of their own work, for how to properly construct a short answer and essay response.

Example #1: Calgary• Students used Document Based Questions and

responses to those questions within the learning community.

• This study incorporated is a welcoming session to break the ice and help students become accustomed to the process of communicating via “chat” style and to raise comfort levels for the peer editing task.

• An important “measuring stick” of the study was keeping close track of the number of times individual student responses were read by other students, with a greater number of responses leading to the greater likelihood of improvements.

Example #1: Calgary

The study concluded:“By creating a community of learners,

students effectively engaged in discourse that took them beyond initial find-and-report analyses”.

(www.ucalgary.ca)

Example #2: University of Texas• At the University of Texas, project based

learning developers used Knowledge Forum to design a lesson that helped students understand the “reason for the seasons” (www.edb.utexas.edu).

• The lesson begins with a basic question, one that is clearly related to the lesson objective, which is answered by the different learning communities in a “chat” format that the entire learning community can see.

Example #2: University of Texas• Then the responses are transformed into

a few main theories to create discussion about theories rather than their own opinions (www.edb.utexas.edu).

• Finally, students are given a graphic representation in which they attempt to accurately depict how the earth’s movement helps to create the seasons (www.edb.utexas.edu).

Example #2: University of Texas• This activity allows the students to

have a greater role in constructing their own knowledge, and allows the teacher to be more of a facilitator than a disseminator of information, which is a goal of Knowledge Forum.

Using Web Tools to Create Community

Wiki: http://basingerah2011.wikispaces.com/Technology+Tutorials

Blog: http://dkmercer.wordpress.com/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php

Ning: http://451network.ning.com/

What’s next??

Sources• College Board. (2006

• Driscoll, Psychology of Learning for Instruction. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.•  • McAuley, S. (2001) Education Canada, 40(4), 8-11.•  • Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (1999). Schools as knowledge building organizations. In D. Keating & C. Hertzman (Eds.), Today’s children, tomorrow’s society:

The developmental health and wealth of nations, 274-289. New York: Guildford.•  • Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (2006). Knowledge building: Theory, pedagogy, ad technology. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), Cambridge Handbook of the Learning

Sciences, 97-118. New York: Cambridge University Press.•  • www.edb.utexas.edu/missiontomars/csile.html•  • www.knowledgeforum.com/Kforum/newsroom.htm•  • www.ucalgary.ca/iejll/vol11/rich/•  • Scardamalia, M., Bereiter, C., McLean, R.S., Swallow, J. & Woodruff, E. (1989).• Computer-supported intentional learning environments. Journal of Educational• Computing Research, 5(1), 51-68.•  • Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (1994). Computer-Supported Intentional Learning Environments (CSILE). The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 3(3), 265-283.•  • So, Seah & Toh-heng (2010). Designing Collaborative Knowledge Building Environments Accessible to All Learners: Impacts and Design Challenges. Computers

& Education •  • Hakkarainen, K. (2003). Progressive Inquiry in a Computer-Supported Biology Class. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 40(10), 1072-88. doi:

10.1002/tea.10121•  • Lipponen, L., et. al. (2002). Effective Participation and Discourse Through a Computer Network: Investigating Elementary Students' Computer Supported

Interaction. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 27 (4), 355-84. doi:10.2190/MGTW-QG1E-G66E-F3UD•  • Veermans, M., et. al. (2005) The nature of the discourse in web-based Collaborative Learning Environments: Case studies from four different countries.

Computers & Education, 45( 3), 316-36. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2005.04.011