Learning Across Sites: New tools, infrastructures and practices - Earli

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Figure 19.2 The management role model used by Group One in “Discuss”
could not achieve alone (Johnson & Johnson, 1999).
The second model is aimed at raising awareness among participants of a discussion
structure that will help to regulate the content of the discussion. This is done
by presenting the community with a problem- solving cycle, called progressive
enquiry developed by Hakkarainen (1998), which is based upon a pedagogical
model of the way knowledge is socially constructed in scientific communities.
Progressive enquiry engages members of the community in a step- by- step process
of question and explanation- driven enquiry (see Figure 19.2) as a way to develop
shared expertise on their collaborative task.
The participants in a PE- structured activity commence by creating a shared
context, followed by formulating a question to guide their work. The next four
steps are a process of brainstorming, evaluating, deepening and (re)structuring
their community knowledge as a way to derive at their final stage, the conclusion,
to round up the discussion.
It is important to make clear that the awareness by participants of a certain type
of support model can only stimulate the learning process if they actually appropriate
the model. Ludvigsen and Mørch (2003) found, for example, that the PE is
a useful model because it makes the students aware of the systematic parts of the
knowledge- building process. However they warn of the danger of overgeneralising
the model to different learning contexts where it may not be appropriate.
Software should therefore not impose these models on individuals and user groups,
but rather make them available according to the needs and abilities of the group
(Spencer, 2000).
This is why in future versions of Discuss we aim to offer groups the possibility to
make their own collaborative models to suit each group’s unique ways and needs