The Synthesis Lab

Xinran Zhu

completed CSCLSocial Annotation

Overview

The Synthesis Lab is a web-based application developed by the lab director in collaboration with a team of researchers and a developer in 2023 at the University of Pennsylvania. The app was designed to support students’ knowledge synthesis in collaborative learning, particularly by helping them integrate peer ideas from online discussions such as social annotation.

This project is complete. Its AI-augmented successor is the Synthesis AI Lab (SAIL).

What is Knowledge Synthesis

Knowledge synthesis is a critical cognitive process in knowledge creation — defined as the process of connecting, analyzing, and integrating ideas to foster conceptual innovation, generate novel knowledge, and develop creative solutions (Deschryver, 2014; Morabito & Chan, 2021; Qian et al., 2020). Unlike summarizing, synthesis involves rising above current levels of explanation to reach understanding on a higher plane (van Aalst, 2009).

The Synthesis Lab supports this process by deconstructing it into smaller, manageable building blocks, guiding students through key steps such as distilling, connecting, analyzing, and elevating ideas to a higher level.

Try the Synthesis Lab | Tutorial

Publications

[design] Zhu, X., Shui, H., & Chen, B. (2023). The Synthesis Lab: Empowering collaborative learning in higher education through knowledge synthesis. In Companion Publication of the 2023 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (pp. 245–248).