Inquiry-based, knowledge building pedagogy needs new classroom innovations and technology designs to enable sustained, connected, and long-term inquiry within each classroom and to further enable idea build-on across classrooms. We designed ITM to address these needs, drawing upon our theoretical and empirical research on collaborative learning and knowledge building.  Our innovations focus on two goals:

(a) Supporting student-driven, ever-deepening inquiry processes in a way that engages student responsibility for structuring the collective journey of inquiry;

(b) Making student creative progress accessible across classrooms for mutual learning and build-on.

See more info about ITM at https://tccl.arcc.albany.edu/wpsite/?page_id=265

This looks like an innovative way of leveraging technology to support collaborative learning, and the video really helps explain how the platform works! I am interested in knowing whether collaboration is more effective if it is facilitated by a teacher or if students can self-monitor their interactions to keep the discussion on track and moving forward? Also, has the ITM been deployed in any real-world classroom settings to date or is it still under development in more controlled settings? Finally, do you have plans to evaluate the effectiveness of ITM on learning outcomes (e.g. using a comparison group)?

Thanks for your questions! Yes, we have been conducting a multi-year design-based research study in a set of Grade 3-6 classrooms that use ITM (and Knowledge Forum) to support co-organized inquiry and discourse in the areas of electricity and energy, human body systems, and ecology, etc. In each inquiry-based initiative (unit) that extends over multiple weeks or months, the teacher works with his or her students to costructure their collective journey of inquiry without extensive scripting. High-level issues, such as what to learn/investigate, through what processes, by whom, can be costructured by students with the teacher as the inquiry proceeds over time. 

Re. the effectiveness of ITM on learning outcomes (e.g. using a comparison group), the following new article reports a study of this kind, showing that the ITM-supported processes to costructure inquiry led to more connected discourse and deeper understandings. (Zhang, J., Tao, D.,  Chen, M.  Sun, Y., Judson, D., & Naqvi, S. (2018). Co-Organizing the Collective Journey of Inquiry with Idea Thread Mapper. Journal of the Learning Sciences. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10508406.2018.1444992)

I like the focus on students' ideas, the connections between ideas of multiple students, and the built in assumptions that students' ideas are objects of inquiry themselves. The framework reminds me a bit of the work by Carl Bereiter and Malene Scardemalia on knowledge construction by communities. How do you prepare teachers to support this work by students? It looks like there must be some fundamental shifts in how classes are run, how assessment is used and how the curriculum unfolds over time. I'd be interested to hear about this.

Hi Mark,

You're right in seeing the connection between this work and Knowledge Forum/knowledge building communities by by Carl Bereiter and Malene Scardemalia. Actually ITM interoperates with Knowledge Forum in supporting student collaborative discourse and implementing analytics/assessment for inquiry.

The change required of teachers is fundamental. We have been working with a distributed team of collaborative teachers to co-design the changes and reflect on classroom processes using data over time throughout the school year. A summer institute is held each year. We also have a mid-year shared meeting and team-based biweekly/monthly meetings. Based on the extensive experience and data analysis, we hope to be able to make the pedagogical design and process transparent so we can design more powerful technology and analytics to support the dynamic co-organization of the classroom processes. 

Re. Assessment: ITM provides a way to visually track student progress and participation in core areas of inquiry. The areas are framed in connection with big ideas/key issues in the curriculum. ITM includes (and is adding more) analytics to trace who is working on which areas of inquiry, with what level and kinds of contributions. The co-assess their journey of inquiry by highlighting the core questions, insights/ideas gained, and gaps of knowledge building. This process servers as collaborative formative assessment. I have a paper on the assessment design, which shows specific measures such as idea quality, collaboration ties, etc. https://tccl.arcc.albany.edu/wpsite/wp-content/uploads/isls-paper-02_29Jingping_final.pdf

Hello, Jianwei and colleagues. This project looks like a great way to facilitate collaborative inquiry and discourse. I’m interested in hearing more about the design and development of ITM. What did this process look like and how were various stakeholders (e.g., teachers, students) involved?