Knowledge-building Community Encounter Collaboration: A Study Of Facilitation Mechanisms

Opportunistic Collaboration,featured by flexibility and freedom,is a kind of collaboration that aims at realizing knowledge creation.Carrying out Opportunistic Collaboration is an important condition for Knowledge Building Community and other knowledge creation organizations.At present,the fixed-group collaboration is widely used in domestic Knowledge Building practice,which,to some extent,hinders the development of knowledge creation activities and the formation of Knowledge Building Community.Most of existing researches concentrate on the impact of Opportunistic Collaboration towards knowledge development and collective cognitive responsibility,while the research about improving Opportunistic Collaboration is still lacking.Therefore,how to implement teaching activities effectively and form the promoting mechanism of Opportunistic Collaboration systematically is a meaningful research issue.Design-based Research is the main method of this research,which includes two stages:Stage one: Pilot Study.After preliminarily constructing a theoretical framework of promoting the Opportunistic Collaboration,a one-semester pilot study which included totally 36 hours,12 face-to-face activities,was conducted with 18 master students.The pilot study tried to bridge the theoretical framework with practice and find out the preliminary teaching strategies,preparing for the formal research.On the other hand,the pilot research verified and modified the theoretical framework,which was the foundation to explore the promoting mechanism of Opportunistic Collaboration in formal research.Stage two: Formal Research.The formal research was conducted with another 24 master students,which lasted for one semester,with 36 hours,12 face-to-face activities.The whole teaching process was carried out based on the theoretical framework verified in the pilot study.Three rounds of iteration were formed.The first iteration,which was named as the bottom-level mechanism of space reconstruction and barrier removal,focused on the physical layer's environment construction,adopting strategies like removing fixed desks and chairs,designing Knowledge Building Circle.The second iteration,which was named as the middle-level mechanism of move continuation and interaction promotion,focused on the interpersonal layer's collaborative stability,adopting strategies like mining relevant information and simulating the poster session in academic conference.The third iteration,which was named as the deep-level mechanism of cognition development and culture formation,focused on the cultural layer's cognition breakthroughs,adopting strategies like guiding students to have class discussions,revising and deepening their inquiry direction and triggering students to have weak ties collaboration.The data of this research included two parts: the online data was mainly about students' ideas and interaction on Shuke,the Knowledge-Building online platform.The offline data included class videos,questionnaires and final interview records.The data analysis included: 1)Analyzing students' displacement frequency and types by video recording.2)Analyzing students' interaction intensity,namely density and cliques,using the number of online and offline interactions.3)Analyzing students' ideas diffusion scope,cognition level and cognitive behavior mode based on their notes on Shuke,using content analysis and lag sequential analysis method.4)Analyzing students' changes using qualitative analysis,such as questionnaire and interview.The results showed that in the first iteration,the displacement frequency of students grew from none.The richness of displacement type presented a low-high-low fluctuation trend.The online and offline interaction density and flexibility were increased,while the changing rangeability of online density and flexibility remained small.In the second iteration,students' displacement frequency increased significantly and its type richness grew gradually and started to settle down.Compared with the first iteration,both the online and offline interaction density and flexibility were significantly improved.Moreover,students' idea diffusion scope and their cognition level were enhanced gradually.In the third iteration,students' idea diffusion scope improved slightly.Their cognition level was continuously deepened,and their cognitive behaviors became complicated gradually.After three iteration sessions,students' motivation and attitude toward collaboration had changed from acquaintance-based collaboration to idea-centered collaboration.Students' cognition towards Opportunistic Collaboration had changed from lacking understanding to acceptance.All these changes indicated that whole three iterations had good effects on promoting students' Opportunistic Collaboration from the bottom level to the deep level.The following conclusions are drawn: 1)Promoting students' Opportunistic Collaboration is a systematic and complex process with three layers of promoting mechanism from the bottom level to deep level.The bottom-level mechanism is to change students' fixed-group collaboration habits by designing an adequate environment that is flexible and adaptable to Opportunistic Collaboration.The middle-level mechanism is to reinforce students' idea diffusion and interaction by enhancing mutual relevance of ideas and making students' ideas flow,as well as increasing idea diversity and richness.The deep-level mechanism is to help students engage in deep Opportunistic Collaboration by improving students' cognition level and cultivating students' understanding toward Opportunistic Collaboration.From the perspective of internal-logic relationship,the three-layer mechanism changes from external intervention to internal intervention and the depth of intervention increases step by step.These three layers have their own intervention emphasis,while they are also mutual interrelated and coupled.From the perspective of external-logic relationship,the three layers of promoting mechanism and three iteration stages correspond to each other and have the relation of successive superposition.2)Three-layer mechanism has a gradual deepening effect on the formation and development of students' Opportunistic Collaboration.The bottom-level mechanism makes students get rid of the constraints of fixed-group collaboration.However,there are still some shortcomings in maintaining students' habit and improving the depth of Opportunistic Collaboration.The middle-level mechanism effectively maintains students' displacement frequency and interaction intensity and also makes students adapt to Opportunistic Collaboration gradually.To some extent,the middle-level mechanism improves the depth of Opportunistic Collaboration.The deep-level mechanism enhances students' cognition level and complexity as well as creating a culture of Opportunistic Collaboration.The three-layer promoting mechanism proposed in this research will provide a fundamental guidance for carrying out collaborative activities and training knowledge workers in Knowledge Building Community and other knowledge creation organizations,aiming at knowledge creation.