Design principles for transforming making programs into online settings at public libraries

Purpose This paper aims to investigate design principles for transforming existing making communities of practice within public libraries into online knowledge-building communities to support youths, families with young children and adult members’ making and tinkering during COVID-19. Design/methodology/approach Building upon C4P and connected learning framework, the authors analyze existing literature and practitioner reports on informal learning projects related to making and STEM learning, family learning and online learning as well as emergent cases of innovative approaches in response to COVID-19 from public libraries, informal learning institutions and community groups. Findings The authors suggest 11 design principles around five areas: program design, facilitation, tools and materials, process documentation and sharing and feedback. Originality/value This work contributes to the information and learning sciences concerned with community engagement and knowledge creation by suggesting a design model to transform and sustain existing making communities of practice within public libraries into online knowledge-building communities during COVID-19.

Knowledge Building Analytics to Explore Crossing Disciplinary and Grade-Level Boundaries

Sustained creative work with ideas, work that leads beyond expectations, underpins knowledge creating organizations. Knowledge Building pedagogy, with its 12 principles and associated technology, Knowledge Forum, aims to provide necessary support for this goal. This exploratory study aims to assess the extent to which elementary-school students within Knowledge Building communities are able to exceed curriculum expectations. We defined “criss-crossing topics” as an indicator of exceeding expectations, and examined whether students are able to think and theorize in an interdisciplinary way and, in doing so, exceed curriculum expectations. We also examined how such criss-crossing topics may help advance the community knowledge. Results show that, when given agency, elementary students are able to extend knowledge boundaries, bringing greater range and explanatory coherence to their work, resulting in advancing community knowledge and idea improvement.

Tools and Processes for Online Knowledge-Building Communities

Knowledge-building communities exploit the combination of inquiry experiences, discourse, and critical reflections. They facilitate learning through collaborative explorations and investigations where the explorations might involve using new and more robust digital technologies as learning tools. Such communities have the potential for supporting teachers in transforming their technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) as they explore new technology-infused experiences. The challenge for this researcher team was to identify and implement a plan for establishing knowledge-building communities that effectively transformed inservice teachers' TPACK through online instruction. Using a design-based research methodology, a social metacognitive constructivist instructional lens was used to frame the online learning trajectory for organizing the course content and experiences by interweaving descriptive inquiry tasks with specific pedagogical strategies. These strategies included discourse and critical reflections for encouraging a transformation in teachers' knowledge through experiences in knowledge-building communities. The resulting trajectory provided a dynamic interaction of key tools and instructional processes for scaffolding the content for transforming TPACK understanding. The resulting researcher-conjectured, empirically supported online TPACK learning trajectory provided guidelines for teacher educators in the design of new online coursework for guiding teachers towards understanding the pedagogical challenges involved in orchestrating and managing knowledge-building communities as they integrate multiple technologies in their classroom instruction.

International Graduate Students: Agency, Intentionality, and Socialization Reciprocity

Using grounded theory methodology, this study explored the development and implementation of Cultures and Languages across the Curriculum initiative in a residential college at Michigan State University. With a focus on international graduate students, our investigation led us to knowledge building communities and to patterns of behavior that we have conceptualized as socialization reciprocity. We note two key characteristics of the knowledge-building communities created within the Cultures and Languages across the Curriculum program are agency and intentionality, and these can only be realized by starting from the premise that the contributions of all participants are essential to the community. We argue this is in contrast to the not uncommon assumption that the cultural, linguistic, and pedagogical knowledge of international graduate students is somehow deficient.