It was interesting to do this experiment. Although I've studied for so many years, I never thought about how this process happened. What I did and what I want when I'm learning ?
In the individual study, my mainly aim was finding the correct answer for the question -- maybe not exactly correct but at least an almost correct answer. In terms of epistemic cognition aim, it should belong to the level 1 -- minimally justified belief. I copied the definition in Wikipedia for the question 1. Without any examination, I tend to believe the answer from Wikipedia should not be wrong.(figure 1.)
Besides the epistemic aim, there are also some other differences between these two process. Firstly it is the structure of knowledge. When we do the process of gaining knowledge, in fact, we are using our existed knowledge and experience to try to understand the new information. In the activity one, my knowledge structure is simplex. However, it is become complex when I discuss and share idea in the activities two. Due to the difference of our major, we got different conclusion from the same information. (figure 2.)
Secondly, it is the difference in Certainty, sources, and justification of
knowledge. In the activity one, I rarely thought about the certainty of my information. But in the part two, I have to certificate the resource I got because all these information will be shared with others. So there is an interesting question -- why I pay more attention to the reliability of resource in the activity two than that in activity one? I think it may because of the third difference in two process and I will talk it later. What's more, with the information interaction in the discussion in activity 2, I got more resource, so I need to spend more time on reflecting others information. At the same time, my information was also checked and reflected by others. In this process, all the information we have become strong and reliable and the weak information was eliminated.(figure 4.)
The third part is the difference of epistemic virtue and responsibility. In the activities I feel more responsibility than activity one which mixture the responsibility of knowledge and responsibility of group. I think it is why I spend more time to check my information's reliability in the activity 2. I guess this phenomenon could be explained by sociology and psychology.
The final part is the Reliably and processes. Compared with activity 1, we did more inference in the activity 2. For example, I directly got the definition of Semantic Web on the Wikipedia in activity 1, but the definition we got in activity 2 was based on many evidence and fact and we had a process of inference, reasoning and analogy. Although the definition we got finally looks similar with that in Wikipedia, but the group members got a better understanding of what we learned.
Another interesting thing about the activity 2 is how to guarantee the efficiency of cooperation and discussion. We made some rules and advise for the discussion.(Figure 3.)
For example, we make a particular area in the document for members to discussion .(FIgure 4.)
And the group leader give advise about how to combine all our answer into one. It is a fact that not every member played the same role in the discussion. But I think due to the difference from individuals make the discussion more efficient.
