Improving learning and writing outcomes: Influence of cognitive and behavioral group awareness tools in wikis

Abstract

Group awareness (GA) tools can facilitate learning processes and outcomes by visualizing different social attributes, such as cognitive and behavioral information about group members. To assist learning and writing in social media, combining various types of awareness information may foster learning processes due to challenges, which are difficult to address by one type of GA information alone. The systematic investigation of GA tool combinations is largely unexplored with GA information often being examined separately or intermixed. To reveal both positive and negative (interaction) effects of providing different types of GA information, we conducted a 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment with N = 158 participants. Learners were provided with a wiki learning environment and, except for the control condition, different types of GA tools involving cognitive (knowledge bars) and/or behavioral (participation bars) GA information. GA tool effects were considered at wiki selection, discussion, and article levels. Eye-tracking was used for investigating the attentional effect of the GA visualizations. The results show that both types of GA information have effects on individuals’ selection preference, more strongly with the goal to learn new content than to support other wiki collaborators, which were introduced as within goal scenarios. Also, participants provided with behavioral GA support were more engaged in wiki contributions. However, only the combination of cognitive and behavioral GA information, rather than their separate visualization, had a positive effect on resulting article quality. This highlights the need for a holistic perspective when developing GA tools to improve wiki processes and outcomes.

Interactive Knowledge Visualization Based on IoT and Augmented Reality

“…With the popularization of information technology education, there are more and more types of educational technology tools; however, some studies have shown that the integration value of information technology and education is mainly reflected in the container for storing and disseminating information, and learners lack the ability to learn independently [12]. The construction of classroom teaching in the future should reflect the learner-centered constructivist design concept, and the external presentation of knowledge should echo the learner's internal cognitive structure [13,14]. In the past, traditional classroom teaching was mainly conducted by teachers in front of the blackboard, which not only limited the classroom time but also had poor interaction between teachers and students, and students' learning enthusiasm was low, Exploring methods to improve teaching quality through online interactive teaching and making effective eduacational resources play a full role are problems worth thinking about at the moment.…”

Role of Conjunctions and Students’ Cognitive Characteristics in Argumentative Essay Writing

“…Another finding is that there is a positive relationship between adversative conjunctions and integrative perspective arguments. This shows that the more intense the use of adversative conjunctions, the greater the presence of integrative perspective arguments in the students' argumentative essays (Ollesch et al, 2021;Weston-Sementelli et al, 2018).…”

“…Using this method, the researchers were able to classify the types of arguments used by the students. The researchers also adapted Crowell's coding scheme to assess the results of the analysis because this scheme can investigate the level of complexity of the students' argumentative essays and also assess the movement of the arguments they use as opposing arguments (Deane et al, 2021;Ollesch et al, 2021).…”

Feed-Back About the Collaboration Process from a Group Awareness Tool. Potential Boundary Conditions for Effective Regulation

“…Research on CSCL has investigated different types of GATs. While cognitive group awareness tools visualize different aspects of the knowledge that is available in the group (e.g., Dehler et al, 2011;Engelmann & Hesse, 2011;Ollesch et al, 2021), social group awareness tools provide information about processes and states of group members such as participation (Bachour et al, 2010;Janssen et al, 2011;Ollesch et al, 2021;Strauß & Rummel, 2021b), how much information has been shared (Kimmerle & Cress, 2009) or how the members of a group perceive each other (Phielix et al, 2011). In this chapter, we focus on social group awareness tools.…”