Collaboration and co-learning
Pat Parslow ([email protected])
OdinLab ([email protected]) –
Shirley Williams, Karsten Lundqvist, Richard Hussey,
Patrick Hathway, Sarah Fleming
Collaborative systems and eLearning
24 March 2009
S. Kleanthous and V. Dimitrova 2006Towards a Holistic Personalised Support for
Knowledge Sharing in Virtual Learning Communities
E. Tomadaki and P. Scott (Eds.): Innovative Approaches for Learning and Knowledge Sharing, EC-TEL 2006 Workshops Proceedings, ISSN 1613-0073, p. 333-344, 2006.
The ‘science bit’
Community/Enterprise
24 March 2009
"The key for a transactive memory system to function is that the divergence of information held in members’ heads must be known to the others."
Transactive memory (TM)
Community/Enterprise
24 March 2009
Consensual reality - the agreed representation of the environment, despite differing subjective filters
Agreement on concepts (and the processes used to gain agreement)
Shared Mental Models (SMM) & Cognitive Consensus (Ccon)
24 March 2009
Members' positions within the community and the roles they play
Cognitive Centrality (Ccen)
Community/Enterprise
24 March 2009
TM: Search, feeds, "missing" ontology (relationships between knowledge) but hyperlinks and crediting fill gap to some degree (and build trust)
SMM: Visualisations help build common understanding. Missing from most SNS, but tag clouds a primitive form. Topic maps etc. can be used. Also communal bookmarking helps + Cohere (cohere.open.ac.uk and MeAggregator)
CCon: Categories and tagging, ontologies and folksonomies
CCen: Doing some work on tool to help people recognise their position in a community, based on feeds. Early days. Also an aspect of DI work
Fit with Social Networks
24 March 2009
Connectivism tenet - knowledge has short half-life; not what you know but how quickly you can assimilate and use knowledge perhaps the “Social Network” *is* the learning
from this viewpoint...
Issues today
24 March 2009
50% of our students report learning through using FacebookIt has no learning materials in it! (Facebook v
Blackboard study, 2007)Students appear to value a ‘safe environment’
But for them this means not having oversight by staff
Control of who sees whatOpen discussion in self-defined peer groups
Facebook as a learning platform
24 March 2009
Collaborative tools to capture the knowledge for later use - wiki, ontology, folksonomy
Cost effectiveness, speed of deployment, mentoring, local experts
These tools support learning, but also straight forward collaboration – they enable a more distributed virtual office than traditional means of communication and group work permit
Tools and benefits
24 March 2009
Static web contentSupports Transactive memorySlight support for Shared mental modelsNo real support for cognitive consensusNo support for cognitive centrality
Also true of content management systems (generally)
Tools – web pages
24 March 2009
Forums Slight support for Transactive memorySupport for Shared mental modelsSlight support for cognitive consensusSlight support for cognitive centrality
Also true, to a degree, for email lists
Tools - forums
24 March 2009
Wikis Support for Transactive memorySupport for Shared mental modelsSupport for cognitive consensusNo real support for cognitive centrality
Mode of use tends to imply a ‘correct’ view decided by consensus, with majority drowning out ‘fringe’ views
Tools - wikis
24 March 2009
Blogs Slight support for Transactive memory
If you have an aggregated viewSlight support for Shared mental modelsNo real support for cognitive consensusSome support for cognitive centrality
With aggregation – blogs emphasise the individual view over the consensual view
Tools - blogs
24 March 2009
Social BookmarkingE.g. Delicious, clipmarks, amplify, citeulikeSlight support for Transactive memory
More of an index into TM than a form of TM itselfSlight support for Shared mental models
Tagging provides a slight insight into others mental models
No support for cognitive consensusSome support for cognitive centrality
You can build a view of where you ‘sit’ within the bookmarking community
Tools – social bookmarking
24 March 2009
Online office toolsSuch as Google Docs, Office Online, Zoho et alSupports Transactive Memory
Though in a fragmented wayNo real support for Shared mental models
Without ‘meta’ level documents being generatedSupport for cognitive consensusNo real support for cognitive centrality
Most documents are private to small groups (though, see scribd)
Tools – online office tools
24 March 2009
Concept mapping toolsSuch as Mindmeister, Cmaptools, CohereSupports Transactive Memory
Though as a ‘high level view’ Support for Shared mental models
Almost by definition!Support for cognitive consensus
Though generally not for the processes involved in achieving it
No real support for cognitive centralityIndividual maps possible + community maps, but
seeing a view of how yours fits into the whole is ‘missing’
Tools – concept mapping tools
24 March 2009
SNSSome support for Transactive memory
Depending on use, but shared files for groups etc.Some support for Shared mental models
But would be improved by having mind mapping/concept/topic/ontology tools built in
Some support for cognitive consensusEmbedded forums (including ‘wall’ and comments)Groups which can have ‘rules’ defining behavioural
normsSome support for cognitive centrality
View of group membershipsLists of interests
Tools – Social Networking Services
24 March 2009
Corporate culture - does it clash?If “yes” then
Change_culture! || do_things_your_own_wayEnd if
Accreditation - how do you prove soft-knowledge gained through SNS use? (trust networks, ePortfolios)
Open - can staff/students take their ePortfolio with them?
One size fits all? ‘wiki-wars’ etcPeople prefer different systems for valid
reasons
Problems?
24 March 2009
When using any collaborative systemYour use says something about youMost require an ‘account’To benefit from ‘network effect’ you need to be
findableProfiles convey information about you
What do you want to portray?How persistent is information about you?Can you create a good impression without a
DI?This Is Me – http://thisisme.reading.ac.uk
Funded by Eduserv
Identity
24 March 2009
Diversity is not a bad thingBut keeping track of materials used in different
systems is hard workRe-using content is not as easy as it should be
MeAggregator is a service oriented, agent based system based on a folksonomical file systemTag your resourcesTag your friends/colleaguesApply permissions to resourcesAggregate and re-publish content
Funded by JISC
MeAggregator
24 March 2009
open-learner models (OLM) + domain ontologies -> difference engines -> individual learning plans
Topic/concept maps + domain ontologies -> differece engines -> work-flow, research plans etc.
OLM aggregation + behaviour logs -> recommender systemsRecommend learning stylesRecommend learning resourcesRecommend mentors
Futures
24 March 2009
Questions?
24 March 2009
Recommended
