Examining the Growth of Community Knowledge in an Online Space

With theoretical advances conceptualizing learning as a social, distributed and collective process, there is a need to capture and assess community knowledge— knowledge as a social product that has an out-in-the-world existence and has value to a community. There has now been much progress in analyzing collaborative processes and interactions in CSCL, we propose extending the analyses including both collaborative processes and knowledge products. This paper explores the conceptual basis for examining community knowledge and reports on two specific tools for examining the growth of community knowledge: knowledge-building portfolios and inquiry threads analysis. We discuss design and research implications for integrating these two tools that may serve both purposes of assessing and scaffolding community knowledge building.