Improve

"I enjoyed the improving. Reading an interesting topic and expanding and leaving more and more questions was fun and interesting."

T.W. - High School Student

"I liked how we were able to build off of each other's work to all add our own ideas and researched knowledge to get a deeper understanding.

A.G. - High School Student

History has taught us that knowledge and ideas never rest. Knowledge Building's greatest strength and purpose is to prize the act of improving the knowledge and ideas of others.

During Knowledge Building the action of improving knowledge and ideas of others introduces students to what it means to make "advances" in understanding toward a shared goal. An identifiable result of idea improvement is to have made something better - whether knowledge, an idea or physical object - and making it more useful to more people in a Knowledge Building community.

Listen to the reaction of these elementary students on what it means to work with ideas with efforts to improve them. You can see and hear how they have worked together as a community to advance their understanding.

What to Do

Improving upon the knowledge and ideas of others requires explicit encouragement from the teacher during Knowledge Building. When using Knowledge Forum or other non-technology space (see the action to Share), the sentence starters - or scaffolds - should reflect encouragement to build on the work of others. For example, "Building on your knowledge" or "Building on your idea" or "Putting our Knowledge together" are scaffolds that indicate the build-on to follow is believed to improve what has already been posted.

To encourage an idea improving mindset, students should work with this question in mind:

"What new knowledge, question, or idea can I share that improves on what is already present?"

Students are to be the judge on what they feel are improvements to knowledge and ideas. That said, the teacher should monitor on-line conversation so that they may guide the community toward promising questions that are posted but go unrecognized as promising, suggest a course of research focus, or remind students of their goals if they stray too far off topic.

To continue the conversation toward ever deeper improvement, encourage students to wonder and leave further questions behind. This will help continue the online conversation in the same way that questions help continue face-to-face conversations as well.

Below is an example from Knowledge Forum where students shared their knowledge, questions and ideas in a series of notes that encompass the Four Actions for Knowledge Builders. As you read, focus on the interactions and not so much the topic under discussion.

It is worth restating: encouraging idea improvement is one of the more powerful teacher actions during Knowledge Building. Idea improvement is likely to be new to most students and teachers. But it is here the teacher can find themselves most useful. They act as the coach and cheerleader to help guide idea improvement. If necessary, the teacher may suggest a new question for research or encourage deeper discussion surrounding a question or idea already posted. It may be time for a hands-on activity that clarifies a concept or as a generator of new questions and ideas or an alternate line of inquiry. As a result, the teacher needs to be on top of the conversations the students are having. This way the teacher can provide support if online conversations begin to fade or produces unproductive advances not related to the community's goal.

Create - new knowledge

Wonder - leaves question behind

Wonder - leaves

question behind

Improve - improves

previous knowledge

Create - new idea

Wonder

Create & Improve - improves previous idea

with a new idea

Questions for Moving Forward

Has there been a time in your classroom teaching where activities had similar features of idea improvement that you could showcase to your students?

Can you create a small activity that might be used to help students see the value and execution of the Four Actions for Knowledge Builders, especially idea improvement?