Collaborative knowledge-building

This book takes a collaborative approach to communication studies. It does so in two ways:

1. The book is the result of a collaboration between myself and a group of students who have each contributed a case study based on research conducted during their Master of Communication studies. (You met one of these contributors, Diana, in the previous section). We have used our collective intelligence to produce something greater than the sum of its parts: an exploration of communication from a range of different cultural and professional perspectives.

2. As an open textbook, this book lends itself to collaboration because it is licensed in a way that allows – and encourages – modification. It is an open educational resource, or OER, which UNESCO defines as “educational resources… that are openly available for use by educators and students, without an accompanying need to pay royalties or license fees” and that incorporate “a license that facilitates reuse, and potentially adaptation” (Butcher et al. 2011: 5). The ability to remix or adapt content is a key aspect of OER, and this enables collaboration, as Butcher et al explain:

By publishing this textbook under a Creative Commons license, we are participating in a broader “open” movement that advances universal access to knowledge and culture. And while I’m writing these words as I collate the manuscript in late 2023, I’m aware that the knowledge shared here will be adapted and reused by others. I have also consulted other open textbooks and Creative Commons-licenced material while researching and writing the book.

In their strategy for 2021-2025, the non-profit organisation Creative Commons states that open sharing “fosters creativity, innovation and collaboration, thereby enabling progress in addressing global challenges, especially when it facilitates connections between people with diverse perspectives” (Pearson et al. 2020: 3, my emphasis). In my mind, it is therefore deeply appropriate to write an open textbook about communication, which is such a complex and multifaceted concept that it does indeed benefit from “diverse perspectives”. My co-authors – all students in the postgraduate unit ACX701 Communication Concepts – bring knowledge to this project that is far beyond my own, drawn from their industry experience as well as their cultural backgrounds. The collaborative aspects of writing this book have allowed us to explore communication concepts in action but also to trouble these concepts, to think about their limits.

Photo by Kei Scampa from Pexels

Collaboration and learning

In this chapter, we’ve seen that collaboration is deeply part of our communication practices and processes. But collaboration is also an important aspect of how we learn. Scholars in the learning sciences have recognised that knowledge is discursively and collaboratively constructed through acts of communication – a process referred to as “collaborative knowledge-building” (Scardamalia and Bereiter 2006). From this perspective, knowledge is a “product of social communication”, as Stahl puts it (2000: 72).

There is some resonance here with our definition of communication as the sharing of meaning. But as Hmelo-Silver and Barrows contend, knowledge-building discourse “is more than knowledge sharing. In this kind of discourse, participants engage in constructing, refining, and transforming knowledge” (2008: 49). Similarly, when we communicate we are not just sharing something – we are collaboratively transforming meaning and knowledge.

Collaborative knowledge-building is also an apt descriptor for the way information is shared and circulated across media channels. For example, Lacassin and co-authors (2020) use the concept of collaborative knowledge-building to describe the way information can be rapidly shared, developed, and transformed by teams of scientists interacting on Twitter in the aftermath of natural disasters. These researchers looked particularly at two earthquake-related events occurring in Indonesia and the Indian Ocean in 2018. They analysed Twitter threads about the events to show how the sharing of data by scientists and citizens led to rapid co-building of knowledge. In both cases, exchanges of information between seismologists and other specialists helped a knowledge community appraise and understand each event, its location, size, geographic origin, and after-effects. Journalists quoted these Twitter threads when reporting on the events, and there was a rapid interaction between journalists and scientists to ensure facts were checked and accuracy was achieved (Lacassin et al. 2020: 134).

This example is a noteworthy one. As a site of collaborative knowledge-building, Twitter (now “X”) is a tool for the public dissemination of scientific information, as well as a source of news for journalists – importantly, it is also a space where professional and citizen scientists can interact. It also seems that, where one message could misinform (spread false or inaccurate information), collaborative communication allows for information to be confirmed, checked, refuted, developed, and for consensus to be built.