Developing and Comparing Indices to Evaluate Community Knowledge Building in an Educational Research Course

This paper implements a novel approach to analyzing the degree of Collective Cognitive Responsibility (CCR) in a Knowledge Building community, based on socioeconomic and scientometric measures. After engaging in Knowledge Forum (KF) discussions for one semester, 36 students identified impactful ideas in their portfolios, which were then used to develop their impact scores. These scores were then transformed and plotted along the Lorenz Curve and the Gini coefficient to visualize the degree of equidistribution of recognition in the community and, by extension, the degree of collective responsibility shared by members of the community. Additionally, students were classified into member roles …