Curriculum design for social, cognitive and emotional engagement in Knowledge Building

• Published in: International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education Vol. 18; no. 1; pp. 1 - 19
• Main Authors: Zhu, Gaoxia, Raman, Preeti, Xing, Wanli, Slotta, Jim
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 30.07.2021; BioMed Central, Ltd; Springer Nature B.V; SpringerOpen
• Subjects: Colleges & universities; Computer Appl. in Social and Behavioral Sciences; Computer Science; Computers and Education; Course Content; Curricula; Curriculum Design; Design-based research; Educational Technology; Emotional Development; Feedback; Graduate Students; Higher Education; Humanities; Information Systems Applications (incl.Internet); Knowledge bases (artificial intelligence); Knowledge Building; Law; Learner Engagement; Learning; Learning Activities; Masters Programs; Research Article; Research Methodology; Social & emotional learning; Social Development; Socio-emotional interaction; Statistics for Social Sciences; Student Attitudes; Student engagement; Student participation; Student voice; Teacher Education Programs; Knowledge Building; Student voice; Design-based research; Socio-emotional interaction; Student engagement
• ISSN: 2365-9440; 2365-9440
• DOI: 10.1186/s41239-021-00276-9

Knowledge Building has been advanced as a pedagogy of engaged learning where students identify as a community whose purpose is to advance their shared ideas. This approach, which has been studied for three decades (Scardamalia & Bereiter, in: K. Sawyer (ed) Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences, Cambridge University Press, 2014), includes cognitive, social constructivist, and emotional elements (Zhu et al. in User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction, 29: 789–820, 2019b). This paper investigates how refining Knowledge Building activities based on students’ feedback impacts their social, cognitive, and emotional engagement. Using a design-based research method, we refined successive course activities based on feedback from 23 Masters of Education students. With successive iterations, we found that the density of students’ reading networks increased; they theorized more deeply, introduced more authoritative resources, and made greater efforts to integrate ideas within the community knowledge base. As well, their level of negative affect decreased. These findings suggest that soliciting students’ input into course design can benefit their engagement and disposition toward learning, with implications for curriculum design.