Knowledge building (KB) theory and Knowledge
Forum (KF) were initially integrated in 1999,
in a second year Medical Legal Visualization
course, in the Division of Biomedical Communications
(BMC), Faculty of Medicine, UofT. In 2003, two
novel concepts were introduced: KB "dynamic
curriculum design" and KF Analytic Toolkit
(ATK) measures embedded as concurrent feedback.
These concepts address issues of "inert"
and "iterative" curriculum design and
summative evaluation that are considered barriers
to conceptual change.
A Knowledge Forum database is a repository of
knowledge building "objects in-action",
an archive of formative and summative idea and
artifact development. We hypothesized that current
students given access to the previous year, cutting
edge student work, archived in the Knowledge
Forum repository, would enable knowledge advancement.
Scardamalia (2002) indicates that deep knowledge
building is analogous to how a scientist works.
To advance knowledge one must work at the cutting
edge. This distinguishes "expert from non-expert-like
learners" (Berieter and Scardamalia,1993).
We believe that students should work like "knowledge
researchers", instead of "knowledge
recipients". To support this challenge we
employed the concept of "dynamic curriculum
design", using last years KF repository
as a springboard to begin this years work.
ATK KB measures were embedded as concurrent formative
feedback to enable student and team self awareness,
comparative assessment and reflection on KB contributions;
students explicitly indicated ways they intended
to evoke change and improve on ideas.
Results indicate KB dynamic curriculum design
and ATK embedded concurrent feedback supports
students efforts to work like knowledge researchers
to advance the current edge of the field. Students
attitudes and opinions survey results favors
use of KB/ KF. The pedagogic culture of this
course and of the BMC graduate program, in general,
provides unique opportunities for combining didactic
and emergent curriculum design, and for embedding
concurrent feedback to enable deep knowledge
building, conceptual change and creative work
with ideas.