Students’ Reflections on Knowledge Building Process and Scaffolding

Abstract

Collaborative learning environments such as “knowledge building community” and “online learning community” have gained importance with the inclusion of new technologies in the education process. In order to provide active participation expected in these learning environments, scaffolds such as sentence openers and role assignments are used in order to support, guide and enrich students' knowledge building processes. In this study, it is aimed to examine the pre-service teachers' opinions about online collaborative knowledge building process and the scaffolds used in this process. Seventy-seven pre-service teachers participating in the study participated in the knowledge building process in four different groups, using different scaffolds and no scaffolds. In this process, students were asked to complete the knowledge building questionnaire consisting of 12 questions of five likert types and a semi-structured interview form consisting of 10 questions reflecting their own experiences. Qualitative research method was used in the research and the data were analyzed by content analysis. In addition, some descriptive statistics such as percentage frequency are included. It was observed that the opinions of the students about their experiences in the collaborative knowledge building process were mostly positive. The students mostly stated that “it is important to determine our goals and to plan our progress”. The students defined their contributions in the knowledge building process as the most “providing diversity of opinions”. In addition, the scaffolds used by pre-service teachers in the online collaborative knowledge building process and their reflections on the better quality knowledge building process were included and interpreted in the context of technology-supported education.