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Participation and common knowledge in a case study of student blogging

  • Richard Alterman
  • Johann Ari Larusson
Article
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Abstract

The interaction between participation and the emergence of common knowledge is the subject matter of this paper. A case study of a single class provides the focal point of analysis. During the semester the students participated in a blogging activity. As a result of their participation, the students create and distribute knowledge. The online efforts of the students can be described as participation in both a discourse and knowledge community. At one level, blogging is an activity composed of writing, reading, and commenting, and at a second level, the students share their thoughts in their own voices. At a third level, over the course of the semester, the student posts and commentary form a commons of information that can be mined later in the semester for other kinds of learning activities. Knowledge creation, distribution, and accumulation are analyzed in terms of student participation at both the level of individual events and from the perspective of an ongoing community.

Keywords

Common knowledge Participation Student blogging 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

The first author would like to thank the meta reviewer and other reviewers for their thoughtful and extensive comments on the earlier drafts of this paper.

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© International Society of the Learning Sciences, Inc. and Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Brandeis UniversityWalthamUSA

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