Critical Moments of Knowledge Co-construction: Reconsidering Meaning-making of Postings in Online Group Discussion

Abstract

This study attempts to investigate the critical moments in online knowledge co- construction. We analyzed the episodes of the dynamic group discussion by reconsidering the meaning-making of each posting in order to gain a full contextual understanding of how collective knowledge developed. The results identified three critical moments: "confusion and hesitation", "from stick around to move forward" and "making justification and breaking through". Unlike using the single posting or adjacent pairs of postings as the unit of analysis, this study claims that linking backwards to earlier turns is as important as linking forwards to later turns for discovering a complete picture of how online group members co-construct knowledge. The nuance of dealing with the time dimension across different approaches in CSCL is also discussed.