Education Commons^™

From Theory To Platform: Designing Software To Support Online Wisdom Communities, Casey Frechette, Charlotte Nirmalani Gunawardena, Ludmila Layne

University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Online wisdom communities provide virtual spaces for diverse learners to discover collaborative solutions to real-world problems. Working for the common good, communities based on wisdom encourage both individual and collective growth. Based on sociocultural theory, we developed an instructional design framework, “WisCom,” that guides educators in cultivating culturally inclusive online environments, such as courses and web-based training sessions. Within the WisCom framework, practitioners can tailor existing tools and platforms, such as Moodle and Sakai, to encourage collaborative discussion and problem-solving. However, a platform created with the tenets of WisCom in mind has not yet been designed. Based on our previous …