Distinguishing knowledge-sharing, knowledge-construction, and knowledge-creation discourses

van Aalst, Jan

The study identified social processes that constitute a sense of community (such as encouragement, giving credit, drawing in participants, and apologizing) as the distinction between group discourses. These processes have been studied extensively in education and social psychology (e.g. Johnson and Johnson 1989; Slavin 1990 ) but have received little attention in computer-supported collaborative learning research, where social interactions tend to be studied in the context of problem solving from the perspectives of cognitive theory (de Laat et al. 2007; Roschelle 1992; Suthers et al. 2007 ), intersubjective meaningmaking (Koschmann and LeBaron 2002; Stahl 2006) , or are dismissed as off-task behavior (Meier et al. 2007 ). The social interactions identified in the study were neither part of problem-solving sessions nor irrelevant, but were directed at maintaining and improving how the groups worked. Cultivating the social dynamics identified in the study would be important for creating a safe environment for knowledge creation, and thus an important aspect of an innovation ecology.