Alumni Member
Simon Knight (Alumni) 
PhD Research Student
I'm interested in epistemic beliefs - beliefs about the source, structure, justification and stability of knowledge - and their relationship to actions by individuals and organisations.
On the latter, I wrote my MA thesis in philosophy of education on the implications of one perspective on mind (the Extended Mind thesis) for our understanding of knowledge and its assessment. There I focussed particularly on the use of external tools, and an experiment in Denmark which allowed students access to the internet during their exams (which to my knowledge is still ongoing) and the different notion of 'knowledge' implicated in that sort of system from the UK system. There I was supervised by the Institute of Education's/London Knowledge Lab's Jan Derry http://www.lkl.ac.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=86
My MPhil explored these beliefs in action, looking at how children talk about their information needs when engaged in collaborative information retrieval activities in the classroom, and finding that these 'epistemic beliefs in action' were - unsurprisingly - related to the quality of information they retrieved. This work also found that their use of 'exploratory talk' - talk in which reasons are explained, ideas respected, etc. - was related to search success. This work was supervised by Neil Mercer at Cambridge http://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/people/staff/mercer/.
My PhD research will explore these beliefs in the context of mapping user epistemic beliefs as linked to their information retrieval behaviours, and working to scaffold the development of these beliefs through the use of learning analytics and collaborative platforms. I will track a group of students engaged in a collaborative subject-based task which requires sourcing and information retrieval. In contrast to more traditional quantitative cognitivist approaches, my focus will be on behaviours in action, and the discursive properties of epistemic acts “to do”, rather than attempting to uncover underlying “belief” structures. I'm now being supervised by KMI's Simon Buckingham Shum and CREET's Karen Littleton.
* http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/member/simon-buckingham-shum
* http://www8.open.ac.uk/education-and-languages/main/people/k.s.littleton&samsredir=1349358009
I am sjgknight on most platforms, and my KMi blog is http://people.kmi.open.ac.uk/knight/
Keys: Cohere, evidence hub, discourse analytics, learning analytics, collaborative information seeking
News
Publications
Knight, S., Viberg, O., Mavrikis, M., Kovanović, V., Khosravi, H., Ferguson, R., Corrin, L., Thompson, K., Major, L., Lodge, J., Hennessy, S. and Cukurova, M. (2024). Emerging technologies and research ethics: Developing editorial policy using a scoping review and reference panel. PLOS ONE, 19(10), https://oro.open.ac.uk/100851/.
Cerratto Pargman, T., McGrath, C., Viberg, O., Kitto, K., Knight, S. and Ferguson, R. (2021). Responsible learning analytics: creating just, ethical, and caring. In: 11th International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge (LAK21), Workshop 12 Apr ; conference 12-16 April, Online. https://oro.open.ac.uk/75925/.
Knight, S. and Littleton, K. (2018). A Discursive Approach to the Analysis of Epistemic Cognition. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 16 pp. 55–69. https://oro.open.ac.uk/52670/.
Knight, S., Rienties, B., Littleton, K., Tempelaar, D., Mitsui, M. and Shirag, C. (2017). The Orchestration of a Collaborative Information Seeking Learning Task. Information Retrieval Journal, 20(5), pp. 480–505. https://oro.open.ac.uk/49303/.
Knight, S., Rienties, B., Littleton, K., Mitsu, M., Tempelaar, D. and Shah, C. (2017). The relationship of (perceived) epistemic cognition to interaction with resources on the internet. Computers in Human Behavior, 73 pp. 507–518. https://oro.open.ac.uk/49139/.
Knight, S. and Littleton, K. (2017). Socialising Epistemic Cognition. Educational Research Review, 21 pp. 17–32. https://oro.open.ac.uk/48860/.
Knight, S.J.G. (2016). Developing Learning Analytics for Epistemic Commitments in a Collaborative Information Seeking Environment. [Thesis] https://oro.open.ac.uk/46143/.
Knight, S., Allen, L., Littleton, K., Rienties, B. and Tempelaar, D. (2016). Writing Analytics for Epistemic Features of Student Writing. In: 12th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS), 20-24 Jun 2016, Singapore. https://oro.open.ac.uk/45401/.
Knight, S. and Mercer, N. (2017). Collaborative Epistemic Discourse in Classroom Information Seeking Tasks. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 26(1), pp. 33–50. https://oro.open.ac.uk/43562/.
Knight, S. and Littleton, K. (2015). Dialogue as Data in Learning Analytics for Productive Educational Dialogue. Journal of Learning Analytics, 2(3), pp. 111–143. https://oro.open.ac.uk/39255/.
Newman, K., Knight, S., Hansen, P. and Elbeshausen, S. (2015). Situating CIS – The importance of Context in Collaborative Information Seeking. In: Hansen, Preben; Shah, Chirag and Klas, Claus-Peter eds. Collaborative Information Seeking: Best practices, New Domains, New Thoughts. Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Springer International Publishing, pp. 37–54. https://oro.open.ac.uk/41883/.
Knight, S. and Littleton, K. (2015). Learning Through Collaborative Information Seeking. In: Hansen, Preben; Shah, Chirag and Klas, Claus-Peter eds. Collaborative Information Seeking: Best practices, New Domains, New Thoughts. Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Springer International Publishing, pp. 101–116. https://oro.open.ac.uk/41882/.
Knight, S. and Littleton, K. (2015). Thinking, Interthinking, and Technological Tools. In: Wegerif, Rupert; Li, Li and Kaufman, James C. eds. The Routledge International Handbook of Research on Teaching Thinking. Routledge International Handbooks of Education. Abingdon, New York: Routledge, pp. 467–478. https://oro.open.ac.uk/39309/.
Knight, S. and Littleton, K. (2015). Discourse-centric learning analytics: mapping the terrain. Journal of Learning Analytics, 2(1), pp. 185–209. https://oro.open.ac.uk/41712/.
Knight, S., Wise, A.F., Chen, B. and Cheng, B.H. (2015). It’s About Time: 4th International Workshop on Temporal Analyses of Learning Data. In: 5th International Learning Analytics & Knowledge Conference (LAK15): Scaling Up: Big Data to Big Impact, 16-20 Mar 2015, Poughkeepsie, NY, USA. https://oro.open.ac.uk/41713/.
Knight, S. and Littleton, K. (2015). Developing a multiple-document-processing performance assessment for epistemic literacy. In: 5th International Learning Analytics & Knowledge Conference (LAK15): Scaling Up: Big Data to Big Impact, 16-20 Mar 2015, Poughkeepsie, NY, USA. https://oro.open.ac.uk/41711/.
Knight, S., Wise, A.F., Arastoopour, G., Williamson Shaffer, D., Buckingham Shum, S. and Kirschner, P.A. (2014). Analytics for learning and becoming in practice. In: International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS 2014), 23-27 Jun 2014, Boulder, Colarado. https://oro.open.ac.uk/39733/.
Hassler, B., Hennessy, S., Knight, S. and Connolly, T. (2014). Developing an open resource bank for interactive teaching of STEM: perspectives of school teachers and teacher educators. Journal of Interactive Media in Education https://oro.open.ac.uk/39308/.
Knight, S., Arastoopour, G., Williamson Shaffer, D., Buckingham Shum, S. and Littleton, K. (2014). Epistemic networks for epistemic commitments. In: International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS), 23-27 Jun 2014, Boulder, Colarado. https://oro.open.ac.uk/39254/.
Knight, S. (2014). Finding knowledge – what is it to ‘know’ when we search? In: König, René and Rasch, Miriam eds. Society of the Query Reader: Reflections on Web Search. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, pp. 227–238. https://oro.open.ac.uk/39307/.
Tech Reports
Epistemic Networks for Epistemic Commitments
Techreport ID: kmi-13-03
Date: 2013
Author(s): Simon Knight, Golnaz Arastoopour, David Williamson Shaffer, Simon Buckingham Shum, Karen Littleton
Learning Analytics for Epistemic Commitments in a Collaborative Information Seeking Environment
Techreport ID: kmi-13-04
Date: 2013
Author(s): Simon Knight
