Growing in the KnowledgeGarden

Synopsis

Peter, who's with the faculty of Education, has created a web-based environment for students, combining social support with academic collaboration.

Description

Peter has created KnowledgeGarden – a web-based environment for students to build enduring communities throughout their time at USQ and beyond. It provides a forum for chat, blogs, personal web pages, wiki pages, online tutorials and meetings, question and answer sessions, message boards, a ‘shoutbox' for SMS style messages, a page offering help on specific topics from real people, photos and profiles and much more.

Target audience

Peter was involved with USQ's first online learning programs in 1996, and noticed that staff within each course worked hard to build up strong learning communities based on friendship, trust, mutual support and the shared resources of course  interactions. However, at the end of each course the community was lost. This continual process, of building communities only to have them disappear, was jarring to external students.  Peter created KnowledgeGarden to give off-campus students the same enduring, informal networks as a campus provides.

Learning goals and objectives

In using this environment in his own classes, Peter is moving away from asking students to "create assignments for an audience of one" – instead, they can work together on a project, organise their own workgroups, create their own pages and share their work at optional end-of-semester conferences. KnowledgeGarden enables students to practise professional behaviours of communicating, organising time, working in groups and organising meetings. Students can have a meaningful social presence as part of a vibrant social community, providing connectedness, warmth, humour, trust, and a place to share ideas and help one another.
Peter says that many students experience problems at some point during their studies, and it's important to give them support and a vision of what can be achieved through completing the program. This is a powerful way of increasing retention and completion rates.

Roles
Peter created KnowledgeGarden but sees himself as the founder, not as an owner. The name and logo were decided by an open submission and voting process, and the community is focussed on collaboration and members helping one another. He has put in a lot of work to set the community up in a particular way, so that it is democratic, respectful, responsible and inclusive.
Any USQ Faculty of Education student, past or present, can use KnowledgeGarden. Peter has made its use compulsory on his courses, and the students themselves have asked other lecturers to use it. More than 500 students have been a member at some point. There are currently 100-200 active users.

Results

Originally, the community was set up for students on the course "Emerging Environments for Learning" (FET 8611), because Peter felt that a course discussing emerging educational technologies should also be using them in a practical way as a model of best practice. Since then, however, KnowledgeGarden has expanded, taking on a life of its own, so Peter has set up a system for students to progress from guest, to member and then community guide. He's also added more tools and features.

Problems and advice for others
One problem was false starts. The first attempt was a media wiki version which worked well but could not be opened up to others at the end because of the objections of two students. Peter started again in a new format and made the sharing and open nature more explicit right from the start. There were also certain issues concerning copyright and re-use of materials that Peter has made clearer in the revised version of KnowledgeGarden.

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