Active Knowledge Generation by University Students through Cooperative Learning

Abstract

Social and cultural transformations caused by the globalisation have fostered changes in current universities, institutions which, doing an intensive and responsible use of technologies, have to create a continuous improvement-based pedagogical model consisting on communities. To this end, we propose here the adoption of the so-called hacker ethic, which highlights the importance of collaborative, passionate, creative as well as socially-valuable work. Applying this ethic to higher education, current universities may become Net-Academy-based universities. Therefore, these institutions require a new digital culture that allow the transmission of hacker ethic's values and, in turn, a Net-Academy-based learning model that enable students transform into knowledge generators. In this way, wiki-technology-based systems may help universities to achieve the transformation they need. We present here an experiment to check whether these kind of resources transmit to the students the values of the hacker ethic allowing them to become active knowledge generators. This experiment revealed the problems of such technologies with the limits of the scope of the community created and the non-so-active knowledge-generator role of the students. Against these shortcomings, we address here a Wikipedia-based methodology and discuss the possibilities of this alternative to help current universities upgrade into Net-Academy-based universities.