Information Measures of Knowledge Contribution: A New Method to Measure Knowledge Contribution in Collaborative Knowledge Building: An Information Theory Perspective

Abstract

The measurement of knowledge contribution in collaborative knowledge building is an important research topic in computer-supported collaborative learning. The information measures of knowledge contribution based on information theory are proposed in this study, which includes two measures: amount of information and information gain. Discourse data collected from a collaborative knowledge building activity were analyzed to validate these measures. The results showed that our information measures can complement the traditional behavioral. With the help of the two measures, community-level variation tendency and individual-level knowledge contribution characteristics could be analyzed in collaborative knowledge building activities. A log function was used to fit the community knowledge variation tendency to measure the convergence of knowledge building. Students were clustered into five types according to their behaviors and contributions in collaborative knowledge building. Both teachers and researchers can benefit from these two information measures by using them in practice.