Exploring collective cognitive responsibility through the emergence and flow of forms of engagement in a knowledge building community

Abstract

Knowledge Building is a SMART pedagogy that encourages students to take collective responsibility for knowledge advancement; Knowledge Forum technology is designed to support them in this work. This study explores the application of a new method to assess the emergence and evolution of collective cognitive responsibility (CCR) based on peer valuation of impactful builders in an undergraduate course at the University of Granada. Scientometric and economic indices were adapted to analyze the equidistribution of impactful builders in the community and the flow of impact builders across various discussion threads and to identify features of students who were considered as impactful builders. Results point to the challenge of developing CCR in a university course where there is a lot of content to cover over a short period of time. While there are emergent impact builders and collaborators across the discussion topics, many students remained as less committed participants in the course. Students shared that impactful builders were those who shared new ideas and facilitated collective understanding. This study suggests that peer valuation of students’ contributions could be one way to approximate students’ engagement in CCR and potentially empower less committed participants to become impactful builders and collaborators. Further implications are discussed within the context of education for knowledge creation.