Effects of tagcloud-anchored group discussions on pre-service teachers’ collaborative knowledge construction

Group discussions are critical for students constructing new understanding and knowledge in both classroom and distance education. Tagclouds can provide an intuitive overview about the group’s collective knowledge and could potentially be used as an anchor for group discussions. The effect of using tagclouds as anchors for group discussions was examined. Thirty-two pre-service teachers were randomly assigned into six groups, and they blogged for five weeks. At the end of the blogging activity, three groups were randomly selected to participate in tagcloud-anchored discussions. Evidence of knowledge construction was collected from participants’ concept maps, individual blog tags and group tagclouds. The result indicates tagcloud-anchored group discussions facilitated and enhanced the quality of knowledge construction as exhibited in their concept maps.