Knowledge-Building Environments - #4c

Through a working paper, Gerry Stahl, develops his perspectives on knowledge-building collaborations via software environments.  His diagram of personal and social knowledge building develops the cyclical steps of creating knowledge through the interaction of individuals, other people and our culture.  I like this visual framework as it is a nice summary of some of the components of constructivism.  Additionally, it helps put into perspective the notion of ‘negotiation’ of differing ideas that transform to collaborative knowledge.  As well, it also highlights the importance of creating public ‘cultural artifacts’ for communicating the new information.

Stahl then outlines forms of computer support to assist in the various steps of knowledge-building.  He calls a variety of the characteristics potentially available in wikis, to include: creating notes, searching, sending e-mails when events occur (in the wiki format, one would use RSS feeds, rather than e-mails), historical tracking, asynchronous nature, visible process, and organizational structure.  Although there is no date on the publication of this working paper, I will guess that its contributions have been few, if any, since the late 1990s based on his published location and resume information.  So, would he evaluate wikis as an appropriate ‘software’ environment for collaborative knowledge-building?  I think there is great potential!

Stahl, G. (n.d.) Perspectives on collaborative knowledge-building environments: Toward a cognitive theory of computer support for learning. Retrieved April 2, 2006 from http://d3e.open.ac.uk/cscl99/Stahl/Stahl-paper.html