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This study aims to examine users’ experiences and perceptions associated with the use of two wiki variants in the context of collaborative learning and knowledge management in higher education.

Participants included two groups of postgraduate students from a university in Hong Kong who used MediaWiki (n=21) and TWiki (n=16) in completing course requirements. Using a multiple case study approach and a mixed methods research design, data logs on the wiki platforms were downloaded and the contents were analysed. Students’ perceptions were examined through a survey.

The findings indicate that both wikis were regarded as suitable tools for group projects, and that they improved group collaboration and work quality. Both wikis were also viewed as enabling tools for knowledge construction and sharing.

This study provides insights that may inform the decisions of educators who are considering the use of wikis in their courses as a platform to enhance collaborative learning and knowledge management.

Previous research has shown that wikis can be effectively used in education. However there are a number of wiki variants and it may be difficult to identify which variant would be the best choice. There is a dearth of research comparing the effectiveness of different types of wikis. This study compares two wiki variants on a number of outcomes which may provide some insights to teachers who are in the process of selecting an appropriate wiki for teaching and learning.

The purpose of this paper is to verify how distributed cognition enhances collaborative problem-solving in the context of projects.

Using qualitative research and in-depth interviews, a sample of 32 project managers with experience in traditional and agile methods acting in Brazil and internationally participated in the research process. The analysis process, utilising coding techniques, involved stages: open, axial, coding and selective coding. These stages encompassed the evaluation of categories based on a hierarchy, in order to determine an appropriate level of abstraction that properly explains theoretical findings.

The results indicate that distributed team cognition is significant for collaborative problem-solving. The data from the interviews allowed the proposal of a model of cognition, and the identification of the elements that support it.

Understand how aspects of distributed team cognition can impact the behaviours of the project professional and contribute to problem-solving in the project environment.

The elements observed affects the collaborative problem-solving by presenting a model of distributed cognition, which is composed by directed communication, collective interaction, trust building and collaborative behaviour.

First, to explore the application of e‐learning as a medium for workplace learning, as a form of adult learning and organisational learning from a theoretical point of view, second, to review empirical studies on recent solutions to pedagogical problems encountered in workplace learning in general and in e‐learning in particular, and finally, to consider the challenges facing the further development of e‐learning solutions targeted at the workplace.

The paper reviews theories of adult learning, workplace learning and organisational learning and brings out main pedagogical implications of these theories from an e‐learning point of view. Some empirical studies in which electronic networks and communication tools have been utilised in workplace learning are also described.

The development of successful e‐learning solutions for the use of work organizations requires integrating research knowledge from different sources: theories of the learning organization, sociocultural theories of learning, and cognitive theories of learning.

Based on empirical examples and the literature review pedagogical challenges and theory‐based guidelines are presented for the design of e‐learning environments for the workplace. These include integration of theoretical knowledge with participants' practical experience, support for the explication of implicit knowledge, and encouragement of collaboration and knowledge exchange between different groups of people.

This paper integrates different theoretical approaches for the design of e‐learning environments of work organizations.

Based on the information commons service model, the aim of this article is to propose a new model for knowledge commons. It seeks to define the conceptual model and constructing framework of knowledge commons, which aim for a collaborative knowledge‐sharing environment to support innovative community activities of university library.

By analyzing the innovation activities of communities, infusing theories of knowledge management, collaboration and Library 2.0, the knowledge commons conceptual model is brought forward to improve communication, collaboration, sharing and conversation.

Since the innovative community is interdisciplinary and cross‐campus, the scattered research team and study group requires a library to extend the services to a logical system, while the virtual layer is to make this spatial decentralized and logically centralized system a reality. The core elements, namely information technology, organization and management, culture and spirit, make up the supporting layer, of which, trust and collaboration culture for innovation is important.

Research work and practice of information commons and library 2.0 have aroused a new round of the library service movement, while the knowledge commons conceptual model would provide steering for a knowledge sharing environment.

In this paper, the new model is based on information commons and assimilating the theories of knowledge management, collaboration and Library 2.0, intended to integrate digital library, physical resource, virtual resource and human resource into a whole. It is of great importance for the library to serve education and scientific research well.

It is particularly important to study the learner cognition based on information technology and change of learning environment in e-learning. Therefore, based on the combination of knowledge management and e-learning, the purpose of this paper is to discuss the basic rules and existing problems of virtual learning community (VLC).

In this study, a set of principles and basic framework of VLC was proposed, which could effectively instruct the construction of knowledge and collective wisdom development of VLC. Meantime, this paper revealed and constructed the theoretical framework and learning model for facilitating the advance of collective intelligence, described the main characteristics of collaborative knowledge building and traced the trajectory of convergence of collective intelligence and verified them through case studies and field studies.

The author analyzed the characteristics of VLC assisting knowledge construction and traced the trajectory of convergence of collective intelligence. In this way, the learners not only construct the meaning of knowledge in the process of participation from the edge to the center, but also complete the transformation from a green hand to an old hand. As a result, the learners form a sense of belonging to the community and complete the identity construction as a member of the community in the process of co-constructing the cultural tradition and value orientation of the community.

The analysis of the framework is made relatively in general terms, and lacks of the concrete, practical analysis. Therefore, it is necessary to adopt the social network analysis method to carry out systematic research on the framework, so as to make the actual operation of the VLC more practical.

It is significant to adopt the construction of the research system and theoretical framework in building VLC so as to improve the learner’s abilities of knowledge building and make full use of the advantages of the VLC.

This paper revealed and constructed the theoretical framework and learning model for facilitating the advance of collective intelligence. Besides, it provides a model reference for the follow-up construction of a new collective learning model.

The purpose of this study is to examine how dialogic spaces were co-constituted (opened, broadened and deepened) between students engaged in divergent and convergent collaborative learning tasks, orchestrated by teachers in Finnish primary and secondary schools. The concept of dialogic space refers to a dynamic, shared resource of ideas in dialogue and has come to represent an ideal form of educational interaction, in the contexts of collaborative learning, joint creative work and shared knowledge-building.

A socio-cultural discourse analysis of video-observed classroom dialogue, entailing the development of a new analytic typology, was undertaken to explore the co-constitution of dialogic space. The data are derived from two qualitative studies, one examining dialogue to co-create fictive video stories in primary-school classrooms (divergent task), the other investigating collaborative knowledge building in secondary-school health education (convergent task).

Dialogic spaces were opened through group settings and by the students’ selection of topics. In the divergent task, the broadening of dialogic space derived from the heterogeneous group settings, whereas in the convergent task, from the multiple and various information sources involved. As regards the deepening of dialogic space, explicit reflective talk remained scarce; instead the norms deriving from the school-context tasks and requirements guided the group dialogue.

This study lays the groundwork for subsequent research regarding the orchestration of dialogic space in divergent and convergent tasks by offering a typology to operationalise dialogic space for further, more systematic, comparisons and aiding the understandings of the processes implicated in intercreating and interthinking. This in turn is of significance for the development of dialogic pedagogies.

The purpose of this paper is to present a case study investigating students’ patterns of collaborative content creation in a wiki project that was designed to promote self-directed and collaborative learning in the context of a university course. In addition, it proposes a new organizational and analysis framework of students’ constructive and collaborative activities in wiki-authoring projects.

The key notion, around which the present conceptual and research framework was built, is that a wiki integrates a content space and a social (discussion) space both considered in collaborative manner. The analysis of student contributions to their wiki was organized along two dimensions: interaction and refection posts were analyzed using the framework of Community of Inquiry; content contributions to the wiki pages were classified into five categories: creating a new page, content expansion, content reorganization, content enrichment (with video, images or hyperlinks) and editing and grammatical corrections.

The analysis of the research data revealed important information that could help to depict an overall representation of individual interactions and contributions, students’ collaborative performance within wiki groups as well as the overall evolution of the wiki content. The findings showed that properly designed wiki projects can be effectively introduced in higher education with the aim to support students to improve their authoring and collaborative skills through critical thinking, peer interaction and reflection.

The findings of this study are limited by the specific sample and the context of implementation. Future research will be directed to various educational contexts and to include in the analysis students’ experiences and learning outcomes of wiki-authoring activities.

The results provided supportive evidence that successful wiki-based projects in higher education depend on the way students’ individual and collaborative authoring contributions are interwoven. Effective wiki-based interventions should consider students’ learning as the outcome of both, individual and collaborative work, determined by self and peer reflection in wiki groups.

The originality and the significance of the present study are justified by the conceptual framework proposed which can guide both aspects of students’ learning presence within self-directed wiki-authoring projects, i.e. research and educational practice (design and monitoring).

Cooperative knowledge spaces create new potentials for the experimental fields in natural sciences and engineering because they enhance the accessibility of experimental setups through virtual laboratories and remote technology, opening them for collaborative and distributed usage. A concept for extending existing virtual knowledge spaces for the means of the technological disciplines (“ViCToR‐Spaces” ‐ Virtual Cooperation in Teaching and Research for Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Engineering) is presented. The integration of networked virtual laboratories and remote experiments (“NanoLab Approach”), as well as an approach to community‐driven content sharing and content development within virtual knowledge spaces (NanoWiki) are described.

Although researchers have demonstrated a keen interest in knowledge collaboration in online encyclopedias, previous studies have seldom explored the dynamic interrelations in online encyclopedias over time that involve the iteratively melding of individual cognitive system and knowledge collaboration system. Therefore, this paper aims to reveal the structure and dynamics of knowledge collaboration in online encyclopedias from a perspective of system dynamics (SD).

This paper proposes a general activity system of knowledge collaboration in online encyclopedias based on Engeström’s activity theory. According to the SD methodology proposed by Forrester, this study develops a holistic SD model by identifying interactions of knowledge collaboration factors based on behavioral theories; validating the SD model by structural tests and behavior tests involving historical data of English Wikipedia; and conducting simulation to capture the interactive dynamics of the salient factors of knowledge collaboration.

According to the SD methodology, this study develops and validates an SD model to explore interesting dynamic interrelations among core factors (contributors, conflicts, discussions, entries quantity and entries quality) that are neglected by previous research. The results show that there is a significant negative feedback relationship between inactive contributors and entries quality, between contributors and conflicts and between edit conflicts and entries quality. There is a complicated nonlinear feedback relationship between active contributors and entries quality, and between edit conflicts and discussions.

Different from prior empirical studies that normally investigate the unidirectional linear relationships among prominent factors of knowledge collaboration in online encyclopedias from a static perspective, this study captures a dynamic picture of their interrelations by unfolding their behavior patterns over time. The main contribution of this study is to develop a holistic SD model and to reveal and elaborate on the complex dynamics involved online encyclopedias based on activity theory.