Congratulations to Dr. Izabel Meister on a successful defence of her PhD in Brazil. She achieved the highest score on the evaluation! Izabel was a KMi visiting student for a year under the co-supervision of Dr. Ale Okada here. She also participated in the KMi group of the European Project – OpenScout. Her research programme was a partnership with KMi’s the Centre of New Media group lead by Peter Scott and Dept. Educação, Arte e História da Cultura – Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie Brazil lead by Maria de los Dolores Jimenez Peña.
Her thesis – “The weaving of knowledge in social networks habitat of collective intelligences” – focused on social networks, which can be configured as a space of creation and acquisition of knowledge. Her research indicates that knowledge in the network is constructed from the overlap between the knowledge and collective intelligence. This connection-based process, denominated “the weaving of knowledge”, comprises the relationship between convergence and expansion determined by the “state of relevance” in addition to interacting agents and contexts.
Dr Meister’s research took a multidisciplinary approach guided by three principles: knowledge, collective intelligence and complexity. The method used was virtual ethnographic research for observing and tracking records of some social networks: The Colearn Community (lead by Ale Okada), whose interactions were analysed in the OpenScout-Tool Library based on ELGG platform and on Facebook, as well as “the Filtros Educação & Aprendizagem XXI” group (lead by Paula Ugalde) who is interconnected to Colearn due to some of its same members.The Tool Library – part of the European Project: OpenScout – was developed by KMi team: Dr. Alexander Mikroyannidis and Dr. Suzanne Little, as a social network space for communities sharing stories and tools for adapting OER.
According to Dr. Peña, her supervisor in Brazil, the viva panel were impressed with the scientific rigour with which it had been approached. Her innovative work also presented originality, particularly in bringing together very topical themes such as social networks, collective intelligence and Open Educational Resources.
Dr. Meister, well done!
