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in knowledge building. Idea improvement, central to knowledge building, indi-
cates that questions asked (I) in relation to problems of understanding and student
responses (R) presenting explanations (Hakkarainen, 2003; Lipponen, Rahikainen,
& Hakkarainen, 2002; Woodruff & Meyer, 1997; Zhang, Scardamalia, Lamon,
Messina, & Reeve, 2007) are central. “Explanation-seeking why and how ques-
tions are especially valuable for progressive inquiry, whereas fact-seeking questions
not embedded in genuine inquiry tend to produce fragmented pieces of knowl-
edge” (Hakkarainen, 2003, p. 1073). Zhang et al. (2007) refined the explanation
framework in ways that deepen the understanding of student responses (R). As
for the “E” (teacher evaluation), one of the knowledge-building principles extends
its meaning to (1) students providing responses to one another, ones found to be
lengthy at times, and, in some cases, explanation-oriented ones (see Lee, Chan, &
van Aalst, 2006).
For knowledge-building discourse to unfold an inquiry process must be triggered:
Chan & van Aalst (2008) referred to collaborative inquiry, and Hakkarainen (2003)
to “progressive inquiry”; Zhang et al. (2007) suggested the “inquiry thread” as a new
unit of analysis when tracing ideas across views. The collaborative inquiry process is
to be a lengthy one, centered on idea improvement and not task-centered and encom-
passing problems of understanding for knowledge building to occur (Scardamalia &
Bereiter, 2006).
Our hypothesis was that we would find evidence of an inquiry-oriented basic pat-
tern in Knowledge Forum databases. Contrary to synchronous classroom discourse
where either one person speaks at a time (I, R, F/E) or all students are expected to
provide the same answer (R), the asynchronous online discourse allows for multiple
and diversified responses (Rs). The online classroom discourse sequence, tentatively
conceptualized as IRFI, would then be the following one: an initiation question (I),
one that would spark responses (Rs) leading, in a number of instances, to further
inquiry (FI).
Participants
The presence of the IRFI pattern in the online discourse of classrooms using
Knowledge Forum as their main collaborative technology was analyzed in the
2007-2008 online discourse of twelve classrooms from rural schools part of the
Remote-Networked School initiative, sponsored by the Quebec Department of
Education, Leasure and Sport (Canada). This enduring initiative (2002-2010) aims
at enriching the learning environment of rural schools using advanced collabora-
tive tools. Knowledge Forum is used for written discourse within and between
schools and desktop videoconferencing for oral discourse. It is a multi-level inno-
vation (classroom, school, school district, university-school partnership, ministry
of education) in the context of a province-wide education reform informed by the
new science of learning. Among other collaborative activities, teachers engaged
students in online discourse on climate change mostly, but not exclusively, during
