Co-designing a collaborative curriculum for secondary school biology. The researchers worked with teachers to design a knowledge-building approach for biology classes that addressed curriculum requirements while fostering student agency and a community of learners. Over two iterations, they developed a knowledge community and inquiry model involving a collaborative wiki resource and inquiry activities. Analysis found higher student achievement and engagement, though challenges remained in coordinating teacher roles and balancing knowledge construction with assessments.

1. Co-Designing a Collaborative Curriculum
for Secondary School Biology
Vanessa L. Peters and James D. Slotta
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
University of Toronto, Canada
EARLI 2009 - Amsterdam

2. Knowledge Communities in the Classroom
Reflection
Knowledge Building (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2003)
Share Consequential
Research
Information Task
Deep Disciplinary
Content
Fostering a Community of Learners
(Brown & Campione, 1996)
High level of student agency
Distributed expertise
Community knowledge base
Technology scaffolds
Progressive Inquiry (Hakkarainen, 2003)

3. Research Question
Can secondary science teachers adopt a knowledge community
approach in their classrooms while still addressing the mandated
curriculum?
High content Time commitment
volume
Targeted learning Knowledge Access to technology
outcomes Community
Conventional Significant changes in
assessments teachers’ practices

4. Previous studies of FCL in secondary classrooms
Biology classroom: Teachers tended to revert back to traditional
teaching teaching modes; loss of emphasis on big ideas of curriculum
(Rico & Shulman, 2004).
Mathematics classroom: Implementation requires a
reconceptualization of mathematics instruction, as well as some
rethinking of the essential features of FCL (Sherin, Mendez, & Louis,
2004).
Social studies classroom: Pragmatic nature of social studies compatible
with FCL; teachers embraced jigsaw activity, but still “defaulted” to
familiar methods (Mintrop, 2004).

5. Knowledge Community and Inquiry (KCI) Model
(Slotta, 2007; Slotta & Peters, 2008)
Community Knowledge Base
Collaborative Scaffolded Assessable
Knowledge Inquiry Learning
Construction Activities Outcomes
Emergent Themes & Content Expectations
Community Voice & Learning Goals

6. Two Iterations of KCI
Human Physiology Canadian Biodiversity
๏ 102 students, 2 teachers ๏ 114 students, 3 teachers
๏ 1 week (spring 2006) ๏ 8 weeks (fall 2006/winter 2007)
๏ CKC activity (2 class periods): ๏ CKC activity (6 class periods):
• Human system diseases • Ecozones and biomes
๏ Inquiry activity: • Biodiversity issues
• Challenge Cases ๏ Inquiry activity:
• Research proposal
Co-Design: Researchers and teachers work together in defined roles to design
and develop an educational innovation (Roschelle, Penuel, & Shechtman, 2006).

7. Scaffolded wiki environment
Supports collaborative
authoring
Easy to use, fast start-up
All document revisions are
archived
Customized templates

8. Knowledge Community and Inquiry (KCI) Model
(Slotta, 2007; Slotta & Peters, 2008)
Community Knowledge Base
Collaborative
Knowledge
Construction

9. Iteration 1: Human Physiology
Lesson on Internal Systems
(respiratory, circulatory,
digestive)
Students used web to create
wiki pages using “Disease
Page” script

10. KCI: Collaborative Knowledge Construction
Embedded instructional
prompts to target curriculum
expectations
All 102 students contributed
to the same community
resource

11. Knowledge Community and Inquiry (KCI) Model
(Slotta, 2007; Slotta & Peters, 2008)
Community Knowledge Base
Collaborative Scaffolded
Knowledge Inquiry
Construction Activities
Emergent Themes Content Expectations
& Community Voice & Learning Goals

12. KCI: Scaffolded Inquiry
“Challenge Case”:
Fictitious medical case
study about patient and
physician
Created and solved cases
in different internal
systems

13. Knowledge Resource Base
Authors Page Revisions
50
45 Mean SD
40 Revisions 23.05 10.27
35 Word Count 1212.9 404.77
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Disease Pages (23)

14. Knowledge Community and Inquiry (KCI) Model
(Slotta, 2007; Slotta & Peters, 2008)
Community Knowledge Base
Collaborative Scaffolded Assessable
Knowledge Inquiry Learning
Construction Activities Outcomes
Emergent Themes & Content Expectations
Community Voice & Learning Goals

15. Student achievement on final exam
Physiology Score Rest of Exam
100
90
91.60 Physiology scores
80 82.42 83.35 significantly higher with
70 new curriculum
68.18 66.60 67.38
60 F(2, 96) = 7.236, p = .001)
50
Same teacher all 3 years
40
30 Similar open-ended
20 questions
10
0
2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007
Academic Year

16. Iteration 1 Design Challenges
Students used the community knowledge base when solving
challenge cases, but did not engage deeply with their peer’s
work.
Lack of any real connection between the scaffolded inquiry
activities and the community knowledge base.
Students were dissatisfied that their wiki disease pages were not
formally graded.

17. Iteration 2: Biodiversity
8-week unit on Canada’s
biodiversity (ecozones,
biomes, sustainability
issues)
Students used customized
“Ecozone Page” script
when creating Knowledge
Resource Base

18. KCI: Collaborative Knowledge Construction

19. Ecozone page assessment criteria
Components Criteria Value
Completion & Accuracy • Page includes all categories specified in 30%
template
Quality & Relevancy • Logical organization; clear navigation; 20%
relevant pictures/diagrams
Organization • Logical organization; clear navigation; 10%
includes pictures/diagrams
Sources Cited • All sources cited; consistent use of MLA 10%
or APA
Contribution to the page • Identify individual contributions; 10%
equitable participation
Value of contribution • Explain how edits contributed to 10%
development of wiki page
Written Communication • Scientific terminology; concise and on- 8%
topic
Links • Reduce redundancy 2%

20. Relationship between ecozone pages and final exam
scores
= Individual Score
100
90 Significant correlation
80 r(49) = .38, p = .0056
Ecozone Page Score
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Biodiversity Exam Score

21. Student achievement on final exam
Biology Score Rest of Exam
100
92.92
Biodiversity scores
90 85.56 84.24 significantly higher with
80 81.54 83.46 new curriculum F(2, 113)
79.68
70 = 7.133, p = .001)
60
One teacher taught all
50
3 years
40
30 Similar open-ended
20 questions
10
0
2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007
Academic Year

22. Ecozone page peer assessment comments
!

23. Peer Review Comments
Comment Type Example
“Maybe add a section on Bacteria? I’m pretty sure
1. Requests for additional content 28%
there must be lots of bacteria in this ecozone.”
“Does anyone know how to centre a pic without
2. Asking a question 2%
affecting the text?”
3. Reporting one’s own “Anyhoo, I was a primary contributor to the short
37%
contribution summary the part on root rot and pine beetles”
“Overall it was excellent and informative, we
4. Positive feedback 9%
enjoyed reading it!”
“That was me, the internet logged me off without me
5. Conversational 24%
knowing!”

24. Student achievement on final exam
Biology Score Rest of Exam
100
92.92
Biodiversity scores
90 85.56 84.24 significantly higher with
80 81.54 83.46 new curriculum F(2, 113)
79.68
70 = 7.133, p = .001)
60
One teacher taught all
50
3 years
40
30 Similar open-ended
20 questions
10
0
2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007
Academic Year

25. Teacher’s Comment:
“I was the person with the foot in the classroom - knowing
the curriculum well enough to know what’s going to meet
the needs, or if we’ll have enough time, or hey, cool idea how
can we implement that?”
“It’s kind of funny because this year I was setting up a wiki for
two other teachers. It’s as if you and I totally switched
roles… I don’t know what happened but all of a sudden I was
comfortable with it, comfortable enough to make mistakes in
front of the kids. And that to me is a real level of comfort,
because I know I can fix it up or say, okay, how can I fix this?”
- Kathy (Science teacher)

26. Student Comments:
“I thought this was a more interactive, more fun way to do
[the unit] instead of just getting the notes. Because that’s what
we usually do for pretty much every unit. We have the
projector up and it’s just notes we copy down.
- Jennifer (biology student)
“I don’t think the wiki was a one-time thing where you’re like,
“oh, I’m finished and I can stop working on it.” Like, for me, I’d
have to go back and edit it once in a while because I’d come
across some new piece of information.”
- Robert (biology student)

27. Iteration 2 Design Challenges
Students were overwhelmed with the amount of wiki
editing that was required. Teachers still uncertain how to
assess knowledge base.
Need more explicit scaffolding between knowledge base
inquiry activities.
Co-design meetings were more difficult to coordinate with
three teachers, not all teachers participated equitably.

28. Next Steps
Tracking knowledge flow: during collaborative knowledge
construction, and during inquiry activities (students’ access of
knowledge resources).
Analyzing resource base for individual and group contributions,
connections to ideas and growth of knowledge.
Determining the extent to which the curriculum addressed the
curriculum content expectations.

29. Knowledge “transactions”

30. Visualizing knowledge construction with Swimlanes

31. Thank you!
Vanessa L. Peters
vlpeters@gmail.com
Universiteit Utrecht, July 8, 2009