Investigating knowledge creation technology in an engineering course

The aim of the present study was to examine the technological affordances of a web-based collaborative learning technology, Knowledge Practices Environment (KPE), for supporting different dimensions of knowledge creation processes. KPE was used by engineering students in a practically oriented undergraduate engineering course. The study concentrated on students’ usage and selfreported experiences of the tool, and student-adopted strategies for spatially arranging items in KPE’s main knowledge space. According to the results, students used KPE mainly to share and organize project documentation. KPE appears to offer an advantage over traditional folder-based learning environments by providing a structured visual overview of the process and materials in the content view, thus facilitating pragmatic and epistemic dimensions of knowledge creation at the same time.

► students used shared content view to manage documentation during a design project.
► spatial organization facilitated getting a structured overview of materials.
► students used perceptual similarity and hierarchy to group materials in content view.