Mediating PBL in a Wiki environment (cont’d)
Limitations Of Current IT Support For PBL
“To solve a problem, needed information and problem-solving capabilities must be brought together. Often the information used in technical problem is costly to acquire, transfer and use in a new location – it is, in our terms, ‘sticky’.” – von Hippel, 1994
The “Hypothesize, Research, Discuss & Consensus” stage, as Chew & Seah (2005) noted, “is the most important stage in collaborative learning, where students build on each other’s contributions as much as they are contributing new material.”
Most research so far on Computer-Supported Collaborative Problem Solving (CSCPS) at this stage seems to focus on Computer-Supported Collaborative Argumentation (CSCA) on online forums. For example, Cho & Jonassen (2002) experimented with constraint-based argumentation scaffolds in the Belvedere environment while Etheris & Tan (2004) studied the effect of embedded scaffolds (cognitive prompts) in Knowledge Forum.
While it is true that “problem solving requires argumentation” (Cho & Jonassen, 2002), PBL in education is more about the ability to be flexible in the use of one’s knowledge base (Chung & Chow, 2004), harnessing a variety of knowledge sources and the use and evaluation of information resources (Tan, 2003); analyse and synthesise the contextual information, acquire further knowledge and assimilate it into existing knowledge base (Nelson et al., 2004); building on prior knowledge and connecting this meaningfully to real life situation (Tan, 2003; Carder, Willingham & Bibb, 2001). Closure in the process also includes synthesis and integration of learning (Tan, 2003).
In other words, PBL involves exploration, communication, coordination, collaboration and reflection of both knowledge and arguments. Online forums, with or without CSCA, only supports argumentation. As Chang et al., (2003; cited in Lim, 2005) has lamented, there is a lack of appropriate software mechanisms to assist content exploration, evaluate and defend the credibility of sources as well as compilation and organization of information found online.
In addition, Ostwald, (1996) observed that communication becomes problematic when there is little shared context between speaker and listener. Context, the background against which the message is articulated and understood (Fischeret et al., 1995b, cited in Ostwald, 1996), is largely tacit and difficult to express:
Figure 3: Problematic situation: Breakdowns occur when there is little shared context.
He postulated that external representations provide referential anchoring (Clark & Brennan, 1991) – an object that can be pointed to and named, helping stakeholders ensure they are talking about the same thing – which helps to identify breakdowns and serves as a resource for repairing them.
Figure 4: Desired situation: Communication is grounded by a shared context.
Finally, as Visser (2002) noted, “The existing research on learner performance in problem-based learning environments … generally measure performance in terms of outcome measures rather than process measures of performance.” This is understandable since most process documentation and tracking systems are complex and expensive.
