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Purpose The authors explored shifts in social interactions, content engagement and history learning as students who were studying one pandemic simultaneously experienced another. This paper aims to understand how the Net.Create network visualization tool would support students as they tried to understand the many complex interactions in a historical text in a remote learning environment and how sustained knowledge building using Net.Create would shape student attitudes toward remote learning, collaboration and engagement. Design/methodology/approach This paper explores changes in engagement and learning in a survey-level history course on the black death after a shift to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors used activity theory to focus the adaptation of Net.Create, a web-based collaborative social-network-analysis tool and to understand how it supported group-based remote learning. The authors describe how the redesigned activities sustained engagement with historical content and report coded student network entries, reading responses and surveys to illustrate changes in engagement and learning. Findings The results suggest that students benefit from personal connections to historical content and their peers. Net.Create supported both through collaborative knowledge-building activities and reflection on how their quarantine experiences compared to the historical content they read. It is possible to avoid student frustrations with traditional “group work” even in a remote environment by supporting collaborative learning using Net.Create and a mix of individual and group contributions. Originality/value This is the first use of a collaborative network visualization tool to support large classroom interaction and engagement with history content at the undergraduate level.
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Mediating Collaboration in History with Network Analysis
This poster discusses a promising collaboration platform to encourage students in co- constructing historical knowledge through a network visualization tool. The tool uniquely mediated collaboration at both the small and large group level in a big lecture format undergraduate history class. The findings demonstrated the tool mediated a specific sequence of collaborating processes at both levels and students’ ability to see the historical relationships.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1848655
- PAR ID:
- 10300998
- Editor(s):
- Lund, K.; Niccolai, G.; Lavoué, E.; Hmelo-Silver, C.; Gweon, G.; Baker, M.
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- A Wide Lens Combining Embodied, Enactive, Extended, and Embedded Learning in Collaborative Settings, 13th International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL)
- Volume:
- 2
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 949-950
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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