Knowledge Synthesis Graph: An LLM-Based Approach for Modeling Student Collaborative Discourse

TL;DR

This paper introduces the Knowledge Synthesis Graph, a novel LLM-based method for visualizing and modeling the development of ideas in student discourse to enhance collaborative learning.

Contribution

It presents a new approach using LLMs to construct Knowledge Synthesis Graphs that represent epistemic relationships in student discussions.

Findings

KSGs reliably constructed across different models

Feasibility demonstrated with authentic student data

Supports further inquiry and idea development

Abstract

Asynchronous, text-based discourse-such as students' posts in discussion forums-is widely used to support collaborative learning. However, the distributed and evolving nature of such discourse often makes it difficult to see how ideas connect, develop, and build on one another over time. As a result, learners may struggle to recognize relationships among ideas-a process that is critical for idea advancement in productive collaborative discourse. To address this challenge, we explore how large language models (LLMs) can provide representational guidance by modeling student discourse as a Knowledge Synthesis Graph (KSG). The KSG identifies ideas from student discourse and visualizes their epistemic relationships, externalizing the current state of collaborative knowledge in a form that can support further inquiry and idea advancement. In this study, we present the design of the KSG and evaluate the LLM-based approach for constructing KSGs from authentic student discourse data. Through multi-round human-expert coding and prompt iteration, our results demonstrate the feasibility of using our approach to construct reliable KSGs across different models. This work provides a technical foundation for modeling collaborative discourse with LLMs and offers pedagogical implications for augmenting complex knowledge work in collaborative learning environments.