Key skills for co-learning and co-inquiry in two open platforms: a massive portal (EDUCARED) and a personal environment (weSPOT)

Abstract

This paper presents a qualitative investigation on key skills for co-learning and co-inquiry in the digital age. The method applied was cyber-ethnography with asynchronous observation (forum and wiki) and synchronous discussions (webconference) for analysing skills developed by a co-learning community. This study focuses on participants from different countries who interacted during nine months in two open platforms: the massive educational portal EDUCARED of the " 7 th International Conference on Education 2012-2013 " and weSPOT, an European " Working Environment with Social Personal and Open Technologies for inquiry based learning " . As a result of this study, it was observed that the EDUCARED portal led to the development of more explicit digital literacies, possibly because it was a simpler and familiar interface (forum). And in the weSPOT environment, experienced participants with digital technologies had more opportunities to develop other skills related to Critical-Creative Thinking and Scientific Reasoning.