Study On The Level Of Students' Knowledge Construction And The Influencing Factors

In recent years, knowledge construction is a hot research subject in CSCL. After making a summary of literature about knowledge construction of CSCL, the author finds that there is little quantitative study on the influencing factors of knowledge construction. There are four factors in a CSCL Teaching System: teacher, student, teaching content and teaching environment. Does the teacher affect on the level of students'knowledge construction? What effect can the student make in the level of his own knowledge construction? Do teaching content and teaching environment affect on the level of students'knowledge construction? After defining these influencing factors clearly, we can give some strategies to improve the level of the students'knowledge construction.Upon the questions above, this paper firstly does the positive research on the group garden and learners forum of the course which the author studies in the Virtual Learning Community of Capital Normal University in 2007 by content analysis to know which level the learners have reached in the group knowledge construction by synchronous interaction and asynchronous interaction. And then, makes a difference comparison by quantitative study between the high level of students'knowledge construction by asynchronous interaction on the same course in 2007 and 2008 to judge if the teaching environment has an effect on it . Thirdly, it calculates the interpersonal communication of teachers and students on three different hierarchies by Social Network Analysis. On the whole hierarchy, we firstly judge whether the communication network of teaches and students effects students'knowledge construction of high level. Then on the individual hierarchy, we analyze the relations between the individual attribute of teaches and students and students'knowledge construction of high level. Finally, we calculate the contribution of different role to knowledge construction of high level on role analysis hierarchy.It finds out the level of knowledge construction is low, and the level of knowledge construction by synchronous interaction is higher than asynchronous interaction. Teaching environment with study and debate scaffold is beneficial to the students'knowledge construction of high level, but the coding of meaning negotiation on knowledge construction doesn't increase. The network of high density and reciprocity is beneficial to knowledge construction of high level for students, and the teacher's outdegree and betweenness and reciprocity is beneficial to knowledge construction of high level for students. The student who has higher eigenvector and outdegree and reciprocity has higher level on knowledge construction. And the core participants are the most important contributors to knowledge construction of high level. At last, the author gives the equation on teachers and students and interpersonal communication of them and students'knowledge construction of high level by linear regression, from which we can learn how they affect students'knowledge construction of high level. Combined with interviewing the students, we can give Strategies from teaching environment, teacher and student to improve the level of students'knowledge construction. And it will give a guiding function and reference meaning to the teachers and students when they teach or study the network courses, deeply it will promote the quality of network teaching.