Designing Orchestration Support for Collaboration and Knowledge Flows in a Knowledge Community

Abstract

This paper introduces orchestration support designed to enact the Knowledge Community and Inquiry (KCI) model in a fully online graduate seminar. With support from a tool named FROG, we designed orchestration support for a range of collaborative activities such as collaborative reading, collaborative group projects, and synchronous virtual meetings. Design efforts were made to facilitate knowledge flows among these activities to enable collaboration across people, time, and space. Through a descriptive case study, we investigated the extent to which the KCI model was supported by the design and whether the design facilitated learning. Based on a rich dataset comprising system logs, student artifacts, and interviews, results showed with synergistic integrated support key principles of the KCI model were reflected in students’ digital traces and accounts of learning experiences. This study contributes to a critical gap in the design and development of collaboration tools and has practical implications for online teaching.