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Stahl, G. (2001) W
EB
G
UIDE
: Guiding Collaborative Learning on the Web with
Perspectives. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1)
[www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1
]
Published
14 June, 2001
W
EB
G
UIDE
: Guiding Collaborative Learning
on the Web with Perspectives
Gerry Stahl
Center for LifeLong Learning & Design
and Institute of Cognitive Science
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO
USA
Gerry.Stahl@Colorado.edu
www.cs.colorado.edu/~gerry
Abstract:
We are developing a Web-based tool called W
EB
G
UIDE
to mediate and
structure collaborative learning. This software uses an innovative mechanism to define
a flexible system of perspectives on a shared knowledge construction space.
W
EB
G
UIDE
provides an electronic and persistent workspace for individuals and teams
to develop and share distinctive points of view on a topic. We are designing the
software and associated usage practices by trying it out in a middle school classroom
and an advanced graduate seminar. Our experience in these use situations has raised a
range of questions concerning theoretical and practical issues, which are driving our
research. This paper is a reflection on what we are learning collaboratively about how
software artifacts can mediate learning and shared cognition.
Keywords:
perspectives, collaborative learning, computer support, knowledge
building, artifact
Commentaries:
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W
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G
UIDE
: Guiding Collaborative Learning on the Web with Perspectives Stahl
Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1) [www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1] 2
1. Introductory Narrative
For some years now I have been interested in how to
personalize the delivery of information from knowledge
repositories to people based on their preferred
perspectives on the information (Stahl, 1995; 1996). For
instance, designers often critique an evolving design
artifact from alternative technical points of view;
different designers have different personal concerns and
styles, requiring considerations based upon access to
different rules of thumb, rationale, constraints, standards
and other forms of domain knowledge. Computer design
environments should support these important interpretive perspectives (Stahl, 1993a;
1993b). I am now primarily interested in applying similar mechanisms of perspectival
computer support within contexts of collaborative learning (Stahl, 2000).
Last year, Ted Habermann – an information architect at NOAA who makes
geophysical data available to school children over the Web – suggested to me that we
try to develop some computer support for a project at his son’s middle school. Dan
Kowal, the environmental sciences teacher at the Logan School for Creative Learning
in Denver, was planning a year-long investigation of alternative perspectives on the
issue of “acid mine drainage” (AMD) – the pollution of drinking water supplies by
heavy metals washed out of old gold mines. The fact that Dan and I were interested in
“perspectives” from different perspectives seemed to provide a basis for fruitful
collaboration. Ted obtained NSF funding for the project and we all spent last summer
(1998) planning the course and its perspectives-based software. Each of us brought in
colleagues and worked to create a Java application (W
EB
G
UIDE
), a set of auxiliary web
pages, a group of adult mentors representing different perspectives on AMD and a
course curriculum.
The class started in September and the software was deployed in October. The students
in Dan’s class were aware of the experimental nature of the software they were using
and were encouraged to critique it and enter their ideas into W
EB
G
UIDE
. Feedback
from these twelve-year-old students provided initial experience with the usability of
W
EB
G
UIDE
and resulted in a re-implementation of the interface and optimization of the
algorithms over Christmas vacation.
In January 1999, I organized an interdisciplinary seminar of doctoral students from
cognitive, educational and computational sciences to study theoretical texts that might
provide insight into how to support collaborative learning with perspectives-based
software. The seminar uses W
EB
G
UIDE
as a major medium for communication and
reflection, including reflection on our use of the software. This provides a second
W
EB
G
UIDE
: Guiding Collaborative Learning on the Web with Perspectives Stahl
Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1) [www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1] 3
source of experience and raises a number of issues that will need to be addressed in
software redesign this summer.
In this paper I would like to begin a reflection on the issues that have arisen through
our W
EB
G
UIDE
experiences because I think they are critical to the ability to support
collaborative learning with computer-based environments. The potential for computer
mediation of collaboration seems extraordinary, but our experience warns us that the
practical barriers are also enormous. Certainly, our experiences are not unique, and
similar projects at the universities of Toronto, Michigan, Berkeley, Northwestern,
Vanderbilt, Georgia Tech, etc. have run into them for years. Indeed, we observed many
of these issues in a seminar last year prior to the implementation of W
EB
G
UIDE
(dePaula, 1998; Koschmann & Stahl, 1998). However, I believe that perspectives-
based software addresses or transforms some of the issues and raises some of its own.
Now let me describe how computer support for perspectives has evolved in
W
EB
G
UIDE
. I will first discuss the preliminary implementation as used in Dan’s
middle school environmental course and explain how perspectives are supported in that
version. A number of design issues led to an extended attempt to bring theory to the
aid of reflection on practice. This included a graduate seminar that used a revised
version of W
EB
G
UIDE
. Finally, following this paper is a slightly condensed version of
the dialog that took place between the JIME reviewers and the author, where responses
from Winter 2000 and Spring 2001 bring in reflections from subsequent design
iterations.
2. Practice I: Environmental Perspectives
An early implementation of W
EB
G
UIDE
is in use in Dan’s
classroom at the Logan School. For the past five years, his
class of middle school students has researched the
environmental damage done to mountain streams by “acid
mine drainage” from deserted gold mines high in the Rocky
Mountains above Denver. The students actually solved the
technical problem at the source of a stream coming into
Boulder from the Gamble Gulch mine site by building an
artificial constructed wetlands area to filter out heavy metals.
This year they are investigating the broader ramifications of
their success; they are looking at the social issue of acid mine
drainage from various alternative – and presumably conflicting – perspectives. The
students interview adult mentors to get opinions from specific perspectives:
environmental, governmental, mine-owner and local landowner. Then, working in
teams corresponding to each of these perspectives, they articulate the position of their
perspective on a set of shared questions.
W
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G
UIDE
: Guiding Collaborative Learning on the Web with Perspectives Stahl
Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1) [www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1] 4
The “Gamble Gulch” application of
W
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G
UIDE
serves as the medium through which
the students collaboratively research these issues with their mentors and with
teammates. Each student and mentor has their personal display perspective, and their
display perspectives each inherit from one of the content-based team perspectives
(environmental protection, governmental regulation, etc.), depending upon which
Figure 1. The Gamble Gulch version of W
EB
G
UIDE
viewed in a Web browser. The
top part is a Java applet displaying an outline view of note titles. The content of the
s
elected note is displayed in an HTML frame below. To the right are buttons fo
r
navigating the outline and changing the content in the shared knowledge space.
The view shown is from the personal perspective of one student.
W
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G
UIDE
: Guiding Collaborative Learning on the Web with Perspectives Stahl
Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1) [www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1] 5
intellectual perspective they are working on constructing.
Figure 1 shows one student’s (Blake) personal perspective on the class discourse. The
tree of discussion threads was “seeded” with question categories, such as
“Environmental Analysis Questions.” Within these categories, the teacher and I posted
specific questions for the students to explore, like, “Do you believe that AMD is a
serious threat to the environment?” Here, Blake has sent an email to a mentor asking
for information related to this question. Email interactions happen through W
EB
G
UIDE
and are retained as notes in its display perspectives. When replies are sent back, they
are automatically posted to the discussion outline under the original email. When
someone clicks on a title, the contents of that note are displayed in an HTML frame
below the applet (as is the body of the student’s email in Figure 1).
Blake is working in his personal perspective, which inherits from the Class, Student
team and Landowner team perspectives (see the red arrows in Figure 2). Note that the
display of his personal perspective (in Figure 1) includes notes that Dan and I entered
in the Student perspective to structure the work of all the students. Blake can add, edit
and delete ideas in his perspective, as well as sending email in it. Because he is a
member of the landowner team and the student group as well as the class, he can
browse ideas in the Student comparison, the Landowner comparison and the Gamble
Gulch class perspective
Mine owner
P8
Mines
comp
Gulch class comparison
Environmental
Landowner
Government
P9
P7
P6
P5
Blake
P3
P1
P2
P10
P11
P12
Government
comparison
Landowner
comp
Environ
comp
Mentor
Teacher
Student
Student
comp
Mentor
comp
Class
perspective
Team
perspective
Personal
perspective
Team
com parison
Class
com parison
Figure 2. The web of perspectives in Gamble Gulch. Information is automaticall
y
inherited downward in the diagram. Blake’s perspective includes all the notes entere
d
in the Gulch class, Landowner and Student perspectives. His notes also show up in the
Landowner, Student and Gulch class comparison perspectives.
W
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G
UIDE
: Guiding Collaborative Learning on the Web with Perspectives Stahl
Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1) [www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1] 6
Gulch class comparison perspectives (see list of perspectives accessible to him on the
right of Figure 1).
For this application, the teacher has decided that perspective comparing and
negotiation will take place in live classroom discussions, rather than in W
EB
G
UIDE
.
After a team or the whole class reaches a consensus, the teacher will enter the
statements that they have agreed to into the team or class perspective.
The goal of the year-long course is not only to negotiate within teams to construct the
various positions, but also to negotiate among the positions to reach consensus or to
clarify differences. Dan designed this class – with its use of W
EB
G
UIDE
– to teach
students that knowledge is perspectival, that different people construct views,
compilations of facts and arguments differently depending upon their social situation.
He hopes that his students will not only learn to evaluate statements as deriving from
different perspectives, but also learn to negotiate the intertwining of perspectives to the
extent that this is possible.
3. Computer Support of Perspectives
The term “perspectives” is over-loaded with
meanings; this frequently produces confusion
even when it is intended to tacitly exploit
aspects of the perspectives metaphor from one
domain into another. It may be helpful at this
point to distinguish three types of perspectives:
literal, figurative and computational.
•
Literal perspectives are optical or
perceptual orientations: one sees objects
from the specific angle or vantage point of the physical location of one’s eyes.
•
Figurative perspectives take metaphorical license and refer to, for instance,
different ways of conceptualizing a theme, as in adopting a skeptical view of a
conversational claim.
•
Computational perspectives are the result of software mechanisms that classify
elements in a database for selective display. In W
EB
G
UIDE
, for example, if I
enter a note in my personal perspective then that note will be displayed
whenever my perspective is displayed but not when someone else’s personal
perspective is displayed.
W
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G
UIDE
: Guiding Collaborative Learning on the Web with Perspectives Stahl
Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1) [www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1] 7
W
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G
UIDE
implements a system of computational (i.e., computer-supported,
automated) perspectives designed to exploit the perspective metaphor in order to
support characteristics of collaboration and collaborative learning. It is unique in a
number of ways that distinguish it from other software systems that may use the term
“perspectives”:
•
Other systems refer to different representations of information as perspectives.
They might have a graphical and a textual view of the same data. In
W
EB
G
UIDE
, different data is displayed in different perspectives – using the
same representation, hierarchically structured titles of textual notes.
•
In W
EB
G
UIDE
, the perspectives mechanism is neither a simple tagging of data
nor a database view, but is a dynamic computation that takes into account a
web of inheritance among perspectives. Thus, Blake’s perspective includes not
only information that he entered in his perspective, but also information
inherited from the Class, Student and Landowner perspectives.
•
Furthermore, the web of perspectives can be extended by users interactively
and the inheritance of information is always computed based on the current
configuration of this web.
•
In addition, the information in a perspective has a user-maintained structure in
which each note has one or more parent notes and may have children notes,
creating a web of notes within each perspective. The order of children
displayed under a parent note is user-defined and maintained so that
W
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G
UIDE
can be used to organize ideas within outline structures.
The idea of perspectives on the Web traces its lineage to ideas like “trail blazing”
(Bush, 1945), “transclusion” (Nelson, 1981), and “virtual copies” (Mittal et al., 1986) –
techniques for defining and sharing alternative views on large hypertext spaces. At the
University of Colorado we have been exploring this approach to computational
perspectives in desktop applications for the past decade (McCall et al., 1990; Stahl,
1993b). W
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G
UIDE
is our first truly Web-based version. The core of W
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G
UIDE
consists of a perspectives server named POW! (Perspectives On the Web), which
communicates with Java, Perl or HTML interfaces.
The computational perspectives mechanism we have been exploring incorporates the
following features for a community of users (Stahl, 1993a):
•
Individual community members have access to what appears to be their own
information source. This is called their personal perspective. It consists of
notes from a shared central information repository that are tagged for display
W
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G
UIDE
: Guiding Collaborative Learning on the Web with Perspectives Stahl
Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1) [www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1] 8
within that particular perspective (or in any perspective inherited by that
perspective).
•
Notes can be created, edited, rearranged, linked together or deleted by users
within their own personal perspective without affecting the work of others.
•
Another student, Annie, can integrate a note from Blake’s perspective into her
own personal perspective by creating a link or virtual copy of the note. If Blake
modifies the original note, then it changes in Annie’s perspective as well.
However, if Annie modifies the note, a new note is actually created for her, so
that Blake’s perspective is not changed. This arrangement generally makes
sense because Annie wants to view (or inherit) Blake’s note, even if it evolves.
However, Blake should not be affected by the actions of someone who copied
one of his notes.
•
Alternatively, Annie can physically copy the contents of a note from Blake’s
perspective. In this case, the copies are not linked to each other in any way.
Since Annie and Blake are viewing physically distinct notes now, either can
make changes without affecting the other’s perspective.
•
There is an inheritance web of perspectives; descendants inherit the contents of
their ancestor perspectives. Changes (additions, edits, deletions) in the ancestor
are seen in descendent perspectives, but not vice versa. New perspectives can
be created by users. Perspectives can inherit from existing perspectives. Thus,
a team comparison perspective can be created that inherits and displays the
contents of the perspectives of the team members. A hierarchy of team, sub-
team, personal and comparison perspectives can be built to match the needs of
a particular community (Figure 2).
This model of computational perspectives has the important advantage of letting team
members inherit the content of their team’s perspective and other information sources
without having to generate it from scratch. They can then experiment with this content
on their own without worrying about affecting what others see. This is advantageous as
long as one only wants to use someone else’s information to develop one’s own
figurative perspective. Such “perspective-making” is important in thinking about and
judging issues from particular perspectives.
However, if one wants to influence the content of other team members’ perspectives
through “perspective-taking” (Boland & Tenkasi, 1995), then this approach is limited
because one cannot change someone else’s content directly. Moreover, for supporting
collaborative work it is important that the perspectives maintain at least a partial
overlap of their contents in order to reach successful mutual understanding and
W
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G
UIDE
: Guiding Collaborative Learning on the Web with Perspectives Stahl
Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1) [www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1] 9
coordination. The underlying subjective opinions must be intertwined to establish
intersubjective understanding (Tomasello et al., 1993). We are interested in exploring
how to support the intertwining of perspectives with our computational perspectives
mechanisms. We will return to this issue after describing the types of perspectives used
in our applications.
4. Types of Perspectives
W
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G
UIDE
provides several levels of perspectives (see
Figure 2) within a web of perspective inheritance to help
students compile their individual and joint research:
•
The class perspective is created by the teacher to start
each team off with an initial structure and some
suggested topics. It typically establishes a framework
for classroom activities and defines a space used to
instantiate the goal of collecting the products of
collaborative intellectual work.
•
The team perspective contains notes that have been accepted by a team. This
perspective can be pivotal; it gradually collects the products of the team effort.
•
The student’s personal perspective is an individual’s work space. It inherits a
view of everything in the student’s team’s perspective. Thus, it displays the
owner’s own work within the context of notes proposed or negotiated by the
team and class – as modified by the student. Students can each modify (add,
edit, delete, rearrange, link) their virtual copies of team notes in their personal
perspectives. They can also create completely new material there. This
computational perspective provides a personal workspace in which a student
can construct his or her own figurative perspective on shared knowledge.
Other people can view the student’s personal perspective, but they cannot
modify it.
•
The comparison perspective combines all the personal perspectives of team
members and the team perspective, so that anyone can compare all the work
that is going on in the team. It inherits from personal perspectives and,
indirectly, from the team and class perspectives. Students can go here to get
ideas and copy notes into their own personal perspective or propose items for
the team perspective.
W
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: Guiding Collaborative Learning on the Web with Perspectives Stahl
Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1) [www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1] 10
Of course, there is not really a duplication of information in the community memory.
The perspectives mechanism merely displays the information differently in the
different perspectival views, in accordance with the relations of inheritance.
To design software for collaborative learning in schools means to design curriculum
and classroom process as well (Stahl et al., 1995a; 1995b). Computer support has to be
matched with appropriate content (typically stored in W
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G
UIDE
or on the Web) and
with constructivist practices for knowledge-building communities (Scardamalia &
Bereiter, 1991). The design of the W
EB
G
UIDE
interface and the perspectives
mechanism must be adapted to individual application situations, with appropriate
seeding of content, structuring of the perspectives web and establishing of access
policies.
In Logan School, for instance, students each enter notes in their personal perspectives
using information available to them: from the Web, books, encyclopedia, discussions,
interviews of mentors or other sources. Students can review the notes in the class
perspective, their team perspective and the personal perspectives of their teammates.
All of these contents are collected in comparison perspectives, where they are labeled
by their perspective of origin. Students extract from the research those items that are of
interest to them. Then they organize and develop the data they have collected by
categorizing, summarizing, labeling and annotating. The stages of investigating,
collecting and editing can be iterated as many times as desired. Team members then
negotiate which notes should be promoted to the team perspective to represent their
collaborative statement of their team’s perspective on acid mine drainage.
5. Issues for Perspectives
As an initial field testing of the W
EB
G
UIDE
system, the Logan
School trial is generating valuable experience in the practicalities
of deploying such a sophisticated program to young students over
the Web. The students are enthusiastic users of the system and
offer (within W
EB
G
UIDE
) many ideas for improvements to the
interface and the functionality. Consequently, W
EB
G
UIDE
is
benefiting from rapid cycles of participatory design. The differing
viewpoints, expectations and realities of the software developers,
teachers and students provide a dynamic field of constraints and
tensions within which the software, its goals and the
understanding of the different participants co-evolve.
The first issues to hit home when we deployed W
EB
G
UIDE
were the problems of
response time and screen real estate. The student computers were slower, had smaller
monitors, lacked good Internet connections and were further from the server than the
W
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G
UIDE
: Guiding Collaborative Learning on the Web with Perspectives Stahl
Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1) [www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1] 11
computers of the developers. We were, of course, already familiar with these issues
from other Web applications, but one never knows quite how things will work out and
how they will be accepted until one tests them under classroom conditions.
A pre-release prototype of W
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G
UIDE
used dynamic HTML pages. This meant that
each time one expanded a different part of the outline of titles one had to wait for a
new page to be sent across the Internet. It also greatly constrained the interface
functionality. However, when we moved to a Java applet, we had to wait several
minutes to download the applet code to each student computer. Furthermore, it entailed
running all the perspectives computations on the slow student computer. In order to
reduce the download time significantly, we first rewrote the interface using standard
Java Swing classes that can be stored on the student machines. Then we split the applet
into a client (the interface) and a server (the perspectives computations and database
access). By downloading only the client part to the classroom, we not only reduced the
download time further, but also ran the time-consuming computations on our faster
server computers.
Such technical problems can be solved relatively easily, by optimizing algorithms or
by adjusting tradeoffs based on local conditions. Issues of social practice are much
more intransigent. There seem to be two major issues for software like W
EB
G
UIDE
,
that is, software for threaded discussions and collaborative knowledge construction:
1. Lack of convergence among the ideas developed in the supported discussions.
2. Avoidance of system use in favor of email, face-to-face conversation or
inaction.
W
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G
UIDE
introduces its computational perspectives mechanism as a structural
feature to facilitate the articulation of convergent ideas and even incorporates email. In
attempting to address the above problems, it raises a new set of issues:
3. Is the perspectives metaphor a natural one (or can it be made natural) so that
people will use computational perspectives to construct their figurative
perspectives?
4. Can the web of perspectives be represented in a convenient and understandable
format?
In our trials of W
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G
UIDE
we have tried to create learning situations that would
encourage the use of the software, yet we have observed low levels of usage and
under-utilization of the system’s full functionality. This raises the following additional
issues:
W
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: Guiding Collaborative Learning on the Web with Perspectives Stahl
Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1) [www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1] 12
5. How can learning situations be structured to take better advantage of the
presumed advantages of the software?
6. How can the system’s various capabilities be distinguished, such as its support
for threaded discussions and for perspective-making?
In order to answer questions of this magnitude it was necessary to gather more
experience, to be more closely involved in the daily usage of the system and to develop
a deeper theoretical understanding of collaborative learning and of computer
mediation. Having defined these goals, I announced a seminar on the topic of
“computer mediation of collaborative learning,” open to interested researchers from a
number of disciplines – primarily education, cognitive psychology and computer
science. The goal of the seminar was explicitly stated to be an experiment in the use of
W
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G
UIDE
to construct knowledge collaboratively, based on careful reading of
selected texts. The texts traced the notion of computer mediation (Boland & Tenkasi,
1995; Caron, 1998; Hewitt et al., 1998; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1996; Stahl, 1999)
back to situated learning theory (Bruner, 1990; Cole, 1996; Lave, 1991; Lave, 1996;
Lave & Wenger, 1991) – and from there back to the notion of mediated consciousness
in Vygotsky (1930/1978) and its roots in Hegel (Habermas, 1971; Hegel, 1807/1967;
Koyeve, 1947/1969) and Marx (1844/1967; Marx, 1845/1967; Marx, 1867/1976).
In Section 8 of this paper I will comment on our current understanding of the six issues
listed above. But first it is necessary to describe the ways in which the seminar
attempts to make use of W
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UIDE
and the conceptualization of the theory of
computer mediation that is arising in the seminar.
6. Practice II: Theoretical Perspectives
The seminar on computer mediation of collaborative learning is
designed to use W
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in several ways:
•
As the primary communication medium for internal
collaboration. The seminar takes place largely on-line.
Limited class time is used for people to get to know each
other, to motivate the readings, to introduce themes that
will be followed up on-line, and to discuss how to use
W
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G
UIDE
within the seminar.
•
As an example collaboration support system to analyze.
Highly theoretical readings on mediation and
collaboration are made more concrete by discussing
them in terms of what they mean in a system like
W
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: Guiding Collaborative Learning on the Web with Perspectives Stahl
Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1) [www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1] 13
W
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G
UIDE
. The advantage of using a locally-developed prototype like
W
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UIDE
as our example is that we not only know how it works in detail,
but we can modify its functionality or appearance to try out suggestions that
arise in the seminar.
•
As an electronic workspace for members to construct their individual and
shared ideas. Ideas entered into W
EB
G
UIDE
persist there, where they can be
revisited and annotated at any time. Ideas that arise early in the seminar will
still be available in full detail later so that they can be related to new readings
and insights. The record of discussions over a semester or a year will
document how perspectives developed and interacted.
•
As a glossary and reference library. This application of W
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G
UIDE
is seeded
with a list of terms that are likely to prove important to the seminar and with
the titles of seminar readings. Seminar members can develop their own
definitions of these terms, modifying them based on successive readings in
which the terms recur in different contexts and based on definitions offered by
other members. Similarly, the different readings are discussed extensively
within W
EB
G
UIDE
. This includes people giving their summaries of important
points and asking for help interpreting obscure passages. People can comment
on each other’s entries and also revise their own. Of course, new terms and
references can be added easily by anyone.
•
As a brainstorming arena for papers. The application has already been seeded
with themes that might make interesting research papers drawing on seminar
readings and goals. W
EB
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UIDE
allows people to link notes from anywhere in
the information environment to these themes and to organize notes under the
themes. Thus, both individuals and groups can use this to compile, structure
and refine ideas that may grow into publishable papers. Collaborative writing
is a notoriously difficult process that generally ends up being dominated by
one participant’s perspective or being divided up into loosely connected
sections, each representing somewhat different perspectives. W
EB
G
UIDE
may
facilitate a more truly collaborative approach to organizing ideas on a coherent
theme.
•
As a bug report mechanism or feature request facility. Seminar participants
can communicate problems they find in the software as well as propose ideas
they have for new features. By having these reports and proposals shared
within the W
EB
G
UIDE
medium, they are communicated to other seminar
participants, who can then be aware of the bugs (and their fixes) and can join
the discussion of suggestions.
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: Guiding Collaborative Learning on the Web with Perspectives Stahl
Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1) [www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1] 14
The seminar version of W
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UIDE
incorporates a built-in permissions system that
structures the social practices surrounding the use of the system. Seminar participants
each have their own personal perspective in which they can manipulate notes however
they like without affecting the views in other perspectives. They can add quick
discussion notes or other kinds of statements. They can edit or delete anything within
their personal perspective. They can also make multiple copies or links (virtual copies)
from notes in their personal perspective to other notes there. Anyone is free to browse
in any perspective. However, if one is not in one’s own perspective then one cannot
add, edit or delete notes there (as in Figure 3). To manipulate notes freely, one must
first copy or link the note into one’s own personal perspective. The copy or link can
optionally include copying (or virtual copying) all the notes below the selected note in
the tree as well. These rules are enforced by the user interface, which checks whether
or not someone is in their personal perspective and only allows the legal actions.
Students in the class can form sub-groups either within or across their different
disciplines. They develop ideas in their personal perspectives. They debate the ideas of
Figure 3. The version of W
EB
G
UIDE
used in the seminar. Note that some of the contro
l
buttons on the right are not functional when the logged-in author is not working in his
own personal perspective. This enforces certain social practices. Also note that man
y
headings have been inserted to structure the discussion space.
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other people by finding notes of interest in the class comparison perspective (or in a
subgroup comparison perspective) and copying these notes into their own personal
perspective, where they can comment on them. The clash of perspectives is visible in
the comparison perspectives, while the personal perspectives allow for complete
expression and organization of a single perspective. This supports the “taking” of other
people’s perspectives and the use of shared ideas in the “making” of one’s own
perspectives (Boland & Tenkasi, 1995).
Students in the class can form sub-groups either within or across their different
disciplines. They develop ideas in their personal perspectives. They debate the ideas of
other people by finding notes of interest in the class comparison perspective (or in a
subgroup comparison perspective) and copying these notes into their own personal
perspective, where they can comment on them. The clash of perspectives is visible in
the comparison perspectives, while the personal perspectives allow for complete
expression and organization of a single perspective. This supports the “taking” of other
people’s perspectives and the use of shared ideas in the “making” of one’s own
perspectives (Boland & Tenkasi, 1995).
The seminar application of W
EB
G
UIDE
stresses the use of perspectives for structuring
collaborative efforts to build shared knowledge. The goal of the seminar is to evolve
theoretical views on computer mediation – and to do so within a medium that supports
the sharing of tentative positions and documents the development of ideas and
collaboration over time. A major hypothesis investigated by the seminar is that
software environments with perspectives – like W
EB
G
UIDE
– can provide powerful
tools for coordinated intellectual work and collaborative learning. It explores how the
use of a shared persistent knowledge construction space can support more complex
discussions than ephemeral face-to-face conversation. Many of the desires and
concerns in this paper arose in notes in W
EB
G
UIDE
as part of the seminar. In particular,
the seminar’s focus on theory as our practice has problematized our understanding of
the role of theory.
7. Theory in Practice
Our initial application of W
EB
G
UIDE
in the middle school
environmental course raised a number of issues that led us
to seek theoretical understanding through a seminar,
which is serving as a second application of W
EB
G
UIDE
.
We have begun to see our research differently as a result
of the theories we are incorporating in our reflections
within the seminar. One thing that has changed is the
relation we see of this theory to our research practice.
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In my paper proposal to AERA – the first draft of this paper – written prior to our
recent explorations, I described our approach by following the narrative order implied
by conventional wisdom about the relation of theory to practice. After stating the goal
or purpose of the work, I provided a theoretical framework, followed by sections on
techniques, evidence, conclusions and educational / scientific import. The assumption
here was that when one had a problem one turned first to theory for the solution and
then “applied” the theory to some situation – either the problem situation or an
experimental test context. After designing the solution based on the pre-existing theory
and applying it to the test situation, one gathered evaluative data and analyzed the data
to measure success. The evaluation then implies whether or not the solution has
generalizable import.
But such an approach is in keeping neither with our current experience nor with our
emerging theory. We started last summer with an opportunity to explore some vague
notions we had about something we called “perspectives”. We experimented with ever-
evolving techniques through a complex collaborative process involving many people,
each with their own concerns, understanding and insights. As part of this process some
of us turned to theory – but the selection of theoretical texts and our interpretations of
them were determined by the processes and issues we observed in our practical
strivings.
So in this draft of the paper – still not considered a static final document, but a
recapitulation from one particular moment in an on-going process – I am trying to
narrate a different story about how theory and practice have been co-mingled in our
research. We began with an idea for a concrete classroom curriculum and worked on
designing tools and structures to support the practical needs of that curriculum. Once
we had a working software prototype that could be used over the Web, we deployed it
in the middle school classroom. We immediately confronted the realities of issues of
response speed and monitor screen real estate that we had been worried about from the
start. Students started asking for new functionality and it became clear that they were
not using the implemented functions the way they were designed to be used. A dance
commenced between the technicians, the educators, the students, the curriculum and
the software; as we circled each other, we changed and became more compatible with
each other.
There was no point in trying to evaluate the success of our experiment by gathering
data under controlled conditions. It was clear that we needed to figure out how to make
things work better, not to measure precisely how well they were (or were not) already
working. Beyond the relatively clear technical usability issues there were deeper
questions of how software can mediate interpersonal and cognitive relations within
collaboration (Hewitt et al., 1998). This led us to look for a theory of computer
mediation – and for that matter a theory of collaborative learning – in the graduate
W
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seminar. Of course, it turned out that there are no theories on these topics sitting on the
bookshelf adequate for us to simply apply. Rather, we had to undertake the
construction of such theory, building upon hints strewn around in texts from many
disciplines and guided by the problematic in which we are involved first hand.
Trusting in our intuition that software like W
EB
G
UIDE
could facilitate group theory
building, we set out to use W
EB
G
UIDE
in our theoretical investigations, and thereby
drive the further development of the software through additional practical experience
even as we were developing theoretical justifications for our design. In reflecting on
our experience, I have tried to organize this draft of the paper in accordance with a
non-traditional theory about the relation of theory and practice – an understanding of
this relationship more in keeping not only with our practice but with our hermeneutic,
dialectical, socially situated activity theory.
Thus, we started out from our vague, only partially articulated background
understanding of perspectives as an interesting and promising concept for learning and
for computer support (Stahl, 1993b). We set up a real-world situation in which we
could explore what happens. In this situation we nurtured a process of “structural
coupling” (Maturana & Varela, 1987) in which the different actors evolve toward a
workable synthesis or homeostasis. Rapid prototyping cycles and participatory design
sessions help facilitate this process. As breakdowns in how things were intended to
work are recognized, we engage in reflection-in-action (Schön, 1983) to make our tacit
pre-understanding explicit, to understand what has happened and to project corrective
actions. This process of explication raises generalizable issues and calls for theory. But
despite the generality of the issues, the theory is not understood in a completely
abstract way, but in terms of its relevance to our situation and to the specific barriers
we have uncovered in that concrete situation.
Theory – like everyday thought – often arises after the fact (or well into the complex
process of practical investigations) in order to justify situations that would otherwise
be too messy to comprehend and remember. Then, first chance it gets, theory reverses
the order of things and presents itself as a guiding a priori. As Hegel (1807/1967) says,
“the owl of Minerva flies only at night”: the wisdom of theory arrives on the scene
only after the practical events of the day (which theory captures in concepts) have been
put to bed. Theory is a cherished way to capture an understanding of what has been
learned, even if it distorts the picture by claiming that the practice out of which theory
arose was a simple application of the theory’s pre-existing abstract principles.
But, as the analyses of mediated cognition our seminar is studying point out, there are
other artifacts (Cole, 1996) in which experience can be captured, preserved and
transmitted. Narrative is one (Bruner, 1990). In this paper I have tried to project a
voice which does not redefine the temporality of the experience I am reporting.
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Sculpture is another way in which people impose meaningful form on nature and, as
Hegel would say, externalize their consciousness through the mediation of wood, clay,
plaster or stone – sharing it with others and preserving it as part of their culture’s spirit.
The sculptures decorating this paper are such artifacts, which create spaces that project
their own perspectives while being perceived from observational vantage points. Of
course, my sculptures are not the result of some primordial experience of self-
consciousness interacting with unmediated nature. They are late twentieth century
explorations of form and material. Here, organic three-dimensional forms are
showcased to contrast with socially prevalent two-dimensional representations and
with the geometric shapes produced by machinery. The characteristics of the materials
of nature are brought forth, in contrast to the plastic substances that retreat from our
consciousness in commodities. Also, the pragmatic representational function of
symbolic objects is sublimated in the study of their abstracted physical forms and
materiality. In negating the commonplace characteristics of signs – which point away
from themselves – the non-representational sculptures obtrusively confront their
creator and viewers with the nature of the artifact as intentionally formed material
object.
Polished software is a very different way of objectifying experience. Buried in the
source code and affordances of a software artifact are countless lessons and insights –
not only those of the particular software developer, but of the traditions (congealed
labor) of our technological world upon which that developer built (Marx, 1867/1976).
This is true of the current version of W
EB
G
UIDE
, as it is of any software application.
So the software application is an artifact that mediates classroom collaboration. But
W
EB
G
UIDE
strives to preserve insights explicitly as well, within the notes displayed in
its perspectives and within their organization, including their organization into
personal and group perspectives. So the discussions that evolve within this medium are
also artifacts, captured and organized by the perspectives. Perhaps when we understand
better how to use W
EB
G
UIDE
in collaborative learning contexts it will maintain the
knowledge that people construct through it in a way that preserves (aufheben) the
construction process as well as the resultant theory. Then we may have a type of
artifact that does not reify and alienate the process by which it developed – that permits
one to reconstruct the origin of collaborative insights without laboriously
deconstructing artifacts that are harder than stone. Eventually, collaborative practice
and software design may co-evolve to the point where they can integrate the insights of
multiple perspectives into group views that do not obliterate the insights of conflicting
perspectives into the multifaceted nature of truth.
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Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1) [www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1] 19
8. Issues for Mediation
We conclude this paper with an attempt to sort out
what we are collaboratively learning through our use
of W
EB
G
UIDE
. The six issues for perspectives-based
software like W
EB
G
UIDE
that arose during the
middle school application (Section 5) appeared in
the graduate seminar’s usage of the software as well
– and were articulated by seminar participants in
their notes in W
EB
G
UIDE
. These are important and
complex issues that other researchers have raised as
well. They are not problems that we have solved, but
rather foci for future work. They define central goals
for our redesign of W
EB
G
UIDE
this summer and
goals for structuring the mediation of collaborative
practices next year.
Here is a summary of our current understanding of these issues, based on our two
practical experiences and our reflections on the theory of computer mediation of
collaborative learning:
8.1 Divergence among ideas
In his review of computer mediated collaborative learning, dePaula (1998) identified
divergence of ideas to be a common problem. He argued that the tree structure imposed
by standard threaded discussion support was inappropriate for collaboration. The idea
of a threaded discussion is that one contribution or note leads to another, so that each
new idea is connected to its “parent” in order to preserve this connection. The problem
is that there is often no effective way to bring several ideas together in a summary or
synthesis because that would require a particular note to be tied to several parent notes
– something that is typically not supported by discussion software. The result is that
discussions proceed along ever diverging lines as they branch out, and there is no
systematic way to promote convergence. It seems clear, however, that collaboration
requires both divergence (e.g., during brainstorming) and convergence (e.g., during
negotiation and consensus).
W
EB
G
UIDE
tries to avoid this common structural problem of threaded discussion
media at three levels: (1)The note linking mechanism in W
EB
G
UIDE
allows notes to be
linked to multiple parents, so that they can act to bring together and summarize
otherwise divergent ideas. As in threaded discussions, every note is situated in the
workspace by being identified and displayed as the child of some other note. However,
W
EB
G
UIDE
allows multiple parents, so that the web of notes is not restricted to a tree.
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Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1) [www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1] 20
(2) Similarly, the graph of perspectives allows for multiple inheritance, so that
“comparison” perspectives can be defined that aggregate or converge the contents of
multiple perspectives. The Logan School application was seeded with comparison
perspectives corresponding to the class and subgroup perspectives, so that the overall
perspectives graph has a structure in which the inheritance of notes first diverges from
the class to the subgroup and then the personal perspectives, and then converges
through the subgroup comparison perspectives to the class comparison perspective, as
shown in Figure 2. The web of perspectives forms a directed acyclical graph rather
than a strict hierarchy. (3) Another effective way to encourage a well-structured
discussion is to seed the workspace with a set of headings to scaffold the discourse. By
introducing carefully conceived headings high in the perspective inheritance network,
a facilitator (such as a teacher) can define an arrangement of topics that will be shared
by the participants and will encourage them to arrange related ideas close to each other.
Although W
EB
G
UIDE
provided these three convergence mechanisms in both of our
usage situations, most participants were not adept at using any of them. This is
probably related to the other issues below and is something that needs to be explored
further in the future.
8.2 Avoidance of system use
Media competition poses a barrier to acceptance of new communication software.
People are naturally hesitant to adopt yet another communication technology. In a
world inundated with pagers, cell phones, voicemail, email, fax, etc. people are forced
to limit their media or be overwhelmed. They must calculate how much of a burden the
new medium will impose in terms of learning how to use it, acquiring the equipment,
checking regularly for incoming messages and letting people know that they are
communicating through it. Clearly, a critical mass of adoption by one’s
communication partners is necessary as well.
In a classroom context, some of these problems are minimized: all one’s partners are
required to use W
EB
G
UIDE
and the hardware is made available. Yet, it is not so simple.
The Logan School students have to communicate with mentors who may not have
Internet access or the proper hardware. Communication with classmates is much easier
face-to-face then typing everything (knowing it has to be carefully done for grading).
In the graduate seminar, most participants do not have convenient access to the
necessary equipment and have to go out of their way to a special lab. This means that
they are lucky to communicate through W
EB
G
UIDE
once a week, and therefore cannot
enter into lively on-going interchanges.
This summer we will have to make W
EB
G
UIDE
more accessible by increasing the
number of platforms/browsers that it can run on and making it work over slow modems
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UIDE
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from home. Further, we need to improve its look-and-feel to increase people’s comfort
level in wanting to use it: speed up response time, allow drag-and-drop rearrangement
of notes, permit resizing of the applet and fonts for different monitors and different
eyes, support searching and selective printouts, provide graphical maps of the webs of
perspectives and nodes.
8.3 Naturalness of the perspectives metaphor
Despite the fact that W
EB
G
UIDE
has been designed to make the perspectives metaphor
seem natural and simple to navigate, people express confusion as to how to use the
perspectives. What perspective should I be working in, browsing for other people’s
ideas or entering for discussions? The metaphor of perspectives as a set of alternative
(yet linked and over-lapping) textual workspaces is a new notion when operationalized
as in W
EB
G
UIDE
.
The fact that an individual note may have different edited versions and different
linking structures in different perspectives, that notes may have multiple parents within
the discussion threads, that new perspectives can be added dynamically and may
inherit from multiple other perspectives sets W
EB
G
UIDE
apart from simple threaded
discussion media. It also makes the computations for displaying notes extremely
complex. This is a task that definitely requires computers. By relieving people of the
equivalent of these display computations, computer support may allow people to
collaborate more fluidly. This is the goal of W
EB
G
UIDE
. Although the software now
hides much of the complexity, it is not yet at the point where people can operate
smoothly without worrying about the perspectives.
8.4 Representation of the web of perspectives
One problem that aggravates acceptance of the perspectives metaphor is that the web
of inheritance of content from perspective to perspective is hard to represent visually
within W
EB
G
UIDE
. The W
EB
G
UIDE
interface relies on an outline display. This has
many advantages, allowing users to navigate to and view notes of interest in an
intuitive way that is already familiar. However, an outline display assumes a strictly
hierarchical tree of information. Because the web of perspectives has multiple
inheritance, its structure is not visible in an outline, which always shows a perspective
under just one of its parents at a time. Thus, for instance, there is no visual
representation of how a comparison perspective inherits from several personal
perspectives.
The same is true at the level of notes. A note that has been linked to several other notes
that it may summarize is always displayed as the child of just one of those notes at a
time.
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Two solutions suggest themselves for future exploration. One is to provide an
alternative representation such as a graphical map in place of the outline view. As
appealing as this sounds, it may be technically difficult to do on-the-fly. A bigger
problem is that graphical maps are notoriously poor at scaling up. Already in our two
trial situations – in which there are on the order of twice as many perspectives as
participants – it would be hard to clearly label a graphical node for every perspective
within the applet’s confined display area. The second alternative is to indicate
additional links with some kind of icon within the outline view. This would require
more understanding on the part of the users in interpreting and making use of this
additional symbolic information.
8.5 Structuring of learning situations
We have argued based on previous experience that the crucial aspect of supporting
collaborative learning has to do with structuring social practices (Koschmann et al.,
1998). Practice in the sense of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus (Bourdieu, 1972) is the
set of generally tacit procedures that are culturally adopted by a community. In
introducing W
EB
G
UIDE
into its two user communities, we have tried to establish
certain usage practices, both by instruction and by enforcement in the software.
Looking back at Figure 1, you can see that Logan students are only allowed to navigate
to certain perspectives – namely their personal perspective and those group
perspectives that inherit from that perspective. Seminar participants were originally
given permission to navigate throughout the system and to make changes anywhere.
That was subsequently modified (as shown in Figure 3) to restrict their abilities when
not in their personal perspective. The governing principle was that everyone should be
able to do anything they want within their personal perspective, but no one should be
able to affect the display of information in someone else’s personal perspective.
When the ability to enter notes everywhere was restricted, facilities for copying and
linking notes from other computational perspectives into one’s own computational
perspective were introduced. This was intended to encourage people to integrate the
ideas from other figurative perspectives into their own figurative perspective by
making a conscious decision as to where the new note should go in their existing web
of notes. However, this added a step to the process of communication. One could no
longer simply select a note that one wanted to comment on and press the “add
discussion” button.
In order to facilitate discussion of notes that one did not necessarily want to integrate
into one’s own perspective, the “add discussion” button was then made active in all
comparison perspectives. This led to minor problems, in that one could then not edit
discussion notes that one had contributed in these perspectives. This could be fixed at
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the cost of additional complexity in the rules by allowing the author of a note to edit it
in comparison perspectives.
More significantly, our experiments with changing permission rules pointed out that
people were using W
EB
G
UIDE
primarily as a threaded discussion medium and rarely as
a knowledge construction space. Furthermore, their ability to construct shared group
perspectives on discussion topics was severely hampered by the lack of support for
negotiation in the system.
8.6 Distinguishing the system
’
s capabilities
In iterating the design of W
EB
G
UIDE
it became increasingly clear that what the system
“wanted to be” was a medium for construction of knowledge. Yet, users were more
familiar with discussion forums and tended to ignore the perspectives apparatus in
favor of engaging in threaded discussion. These are very different kinds of tasks:
collaborative knowledge construction generally requires a prolonged process of
brainstorming alternative ideas, working out the implications of different options and
negotiating conclusions; discussion can be much more spontaneous.
This suggests that more clarity is needed on the question: what is the task? If people
are going to use W
EB
G
UIDE
for collaborative knowledge construction then they need
to have a clear sense of pursuing a knowledge construction task. The Logan students
have such a task in articulating positions on acid mine drainage. However, much of
their knowledge construction takes place in classroom discussion. They use
W
EB
G
UIDE
largely as a repository for their ideas. The seminar has been concerned
with understanding a series of readings, so its participants have been more interested in
exchanging isolated questions or reactions than in formulating larger integrative
positions. For the remainder of the seminar, we will be trying to develop ideas for a
collaborative paper on the nature of computer collaboration. This may provide the kind
of focused task needed to exercise more of W
EB
G
UIDE
’s potential.
Our experience to date already suggests the complexity of trying to support
collaborative learning. We should probably distinguish within the software interface
functions that support discussion from those that support knowledge construction. But
this should be done in such a way that spontaneously discussed ideas can later be
readily integrated into longer-term knowledge construction processes. Similarly,
additional functionality – most notably support for group negotiation – must be added,
differentiated and integrated. New capabilities and uses of W
EB
G
UIDE
can increase its
value, as long as confusions and conflicts are not introduced. For instance, providing
facilities for people to maintain lists of annotated Web bookmarks, things-to-do,
favorite references, up-coming deadlines, etc. within their personal perspectives might
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not only give them familiarity with using the system, but would also build toward that
critical mass of usage necessary for meaningful adoption.
It has become a cliché that computer mediation has the potential to revolutionize
communication just like the printing press did long ago. But the real lesson in this
analogy is that widespread literacy required gradual changes in skills and practices in
order to take full advantage of the technological affordances. In fact, the transition
from orality to literacy involved a radical change in how the world thinks and works
(Ong, 1982). Although social as well as technical changes can be propagated much
faster now, it is still necessary to evolve suitable mixes of practices and systems to
support the move from predominantly individual construction of knowledge to a new
level of collaborative cognition.
Our investigation of the above six issues will guide the next stage of our on-going
exploration of the potentials and barriers of computer mediated collaborative learning
on the Web with perspectives.
9. Dialog with JIME reviewers
In Fall 2000, the preceding part of this
paper was reviewed through the JIME on-
line review process. I thought the reviews
nicely brought out what the paper was
trying to do. They added, in a generally
supportive way, confirmation of one
person’s experiences from much broader
backgrounds. The reflections on key issues
significantly enriched the discussion.
Rather than disrupting the narrative flow
of the report above, situated as it was in its particular phases of W
EB
G
UIDE
development, responses to the reviewer comments and inquiries will be presented in
question/response format below. This may serve as another layer of reflection, from a
somewhat later vantage point.
Since the reviewers did not take much advantage of the hypertext linking of reviews to
paper sections, the comments of the three reviewers will be presented linearly below,
interspersed by the author’s responses. Stylistic issues that have been addressed
through revisions to the body of the paper have been suppressed, leaving a sense of
each reviewer’s perspective on the substantive issues.
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Helen Chappel-Hayios:
As the author describes, part of the unfolding story of the development of
W
EB
G
UIDE
was that “A dance commenced between the technicians, the
educators, the students, the curriculum, and the software: as we circled each
other, we changed and became more compatible with each other” (Section 7).
Within the dance the software was “polished” in the process of objectifying the
experience. In these times of mass commercialization of online collaborative
software, proprietary, customized/ built for purpose collaborative learning
software seems likely to increasingly be replaced as a matter of
cost/convenience. In such a climate, it is both exciting and refreshing to read
that specific learners and learning contexts can still sometimes lead the dance of
software development! The point made by the author that “buried in the source
code and affordances of a software artifact are countless lessons and insights”
(Section 7), is a very timely and important one indeed.
As to originality, the complex linking and retrieval systems to shared resources
seems highly original and very impressive. A slight doubt, which I think it would
be hard to understand without using the system for a while, would be if it could
feel/be restrictive. The point is made quite strongly referring to dePaula
’
s work
(Section 8) that “standard threaded discussion support was inappropriate for
collaboration,” and this because it promoted divergence. This is quite true, but
on the other hand standard CMC leaves convergence to the users and this is a
basic underpinning of the learning within such systems. When CMC is “well
used,” users systematically attend to convergence, (using the divergent
discussion as a resource) by writing summaries and essays based on the
shared material. Would
W
EB
G
UIDE
confine learner freedom to
synthesize/converge because of the complexity of it
’
s complex linking
systems… just a doubt.
Response:
While W
EB
G
UIDE
’
S
interface has improved considerably since its first usage,
problems remain of trying to think about ideas on a computer monitor. It is still a less
convivial environment to play with complexly inter-related ideas than is paper. There
is also the difficult trade-off between simplicity and clarity of the interface and the
desire to support complicated functionality. The mechanisms to support convergence
are only partly automatic, transparent and natural. And yet, if we want to think and
write collaboratively then paper will not suffice.
Helen Chappel-Hayios:
Briefly (and I hope not overly simply stated)
W
EB
G
UIDE
is a tool for organizing
text resources around a given subject. It uses a Java meta-structure, linked to
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archived material. The user defines a personal perspective and can edit it
’
s
shape and content freely. The perspective is physically represented by a
“hierarchical tree of information” (Section 8). The user also has access to
perspectives defined and controlled by other people and groups in the
collaboration, and can call these into the
W
EB
G
UIDE
interface to examine them.
Essentially though, the system supports the building of individual or group
perspectives, which users then share (through permissions) within the specific
learning community.
It is easy to see how this could be a valuable tool in the Middle School
environment for which it was first created and where much of their knowledge
construction takes place in classroom discussion (Section 8)... issues of time
and complexity apart. From the description given in the article however, I don
’
t
see where there is designed space for online collaborative discussion of the sort
more familiar in CMC systems. We are told that “users… tended to ignore the
perspectives apparatus in favor of engaging in threaded discussions” (Section
8). To do this, despite a possibility that this might have required a fairly
convoluted procedure makes one wonder. Does this
W
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software
provide a more straightforward discussion area to be used alongside of the work
on perspectives? Have I missed something here?
Somewhere here there seems to be a confusion between a virtual collaborative
discussion space and a tool to aid collaborative work. This confusion is also
underlined by the convergence/divergence discussion which directly compared
this software with standard (doubtful expression) CMC software.
Another point which confused me was the idea of the software as artifact in the
same way as a piece of sculpture or a narrative... even if as the author points
out, software “represents a very different way of objectifying experience”
(Section 7). I
’
m less certain that we can say this… isn
’
t it possible that the real
artifact is the perspective as represented in the interface; i.e., artifact = any one
perspective, or the sum of all the perspectives?
A narrative has a plot, characters, suspense, all designed and woven by the
storyteller... these are the underlying elements which dictate the shape of the
narrative as told. The outward form of the sculpture is similarly dictated by the
nature of the materials used, the softness or hardness of the marble, or the type
of wood and direction of grain etc. These are the inner structures. Materials
selection represents human choices as surely as does software, and they lead
to the external expression. In the same way the software (arguably) leads to an
external expression, but here it is in the form of a perspective which appears in
the
W
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interface. I think it matters to examine the metaphor here
because it is very central to the problems being discussed.
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The artifact or not issue, plays into the question of whether various perspectives
can be represented with a single graphical image... the theme maybe; isn
’
t this
the total of all perspectives for these purposes? Perhaps Cubist painting rather
than sculpture makes a better analogy?
Response:
As detailed in response to Hans below, I have subsequently added a discussion
perspective that provides a space for threaded discussion. Previously, threaded
discussion took place directly in the comparison perspectives – leading people to
ignore their personal perspectives and aggravating the conflict between discussion and
construction. One of the hardest things I have had to figure out as a designer is how to
integrate this into the perspectives framework, so that ideas entered one place would be
available for the rest of the knowledge-building process. I have just now implemented
this and have not yet released it to my users. I have still not implemented the sorely
needed negotiation procedures. Discussion with Thomas Herrmann and his colleagues
in Germany have helped me to understand the issues related to these new perspectives
– and why the system should include explicit discussion and negotiation perspectives.
An artifact is never a simple object. A sculpture, for instance, creates a rich world: it
not only structures physical space and offers a sensuous surface, it also evokes other
objects, meanings and works. Software is yet harder to characterize: what is its form
and substance, where are its resistances and affordances? A communication and
collaboration artifact like W
EB
G
UIDE
makes possible new forms of interaction and
knowledge-building – but how do people learn how to take advantage of this without
being overloaded? The artifact here is not so much the buttons and windows of the user
interface as the discussion content that gets built up through the interface. These issues
have led me to another iteration of theory with a seminar in Fall 2000 on how artifacts
embody meaning and subsequent analysis of empirical data on how people learn to
understand and use meaningful artifacts.
I like the cubist image. But sculptures also encourage and facilitate being viewed from
different visual perspectives. I have thought of replacing the mono-perspectival
pictures in the paper with video clips that could be run in the JIME publication.
Perhaps I could just use animated gifs of each sculpture, that cycle through several
views – creating an effect that cubism anticipated before perspectival technology was
available.
Helen Chappel-Hayios:
This article does give us a lot of good, clear, qualitative description of the two
situations in which this software is being looked at. At some point though, there
seems to be a need for firmer ground and a few numbers. Credibility comes from
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the ability to imagine a situation, doesn
’
t it? It is not just a matter of standard or
not methodology; above and beyond that, it is a simple communication issue.
And here we have too few specifics in relation to the use.
There are figures that might have been available which could have some
meaning, like the number of students, the number of messages which each
student posted in an academic year, comparisons between years, ways of
showing how fully or otherwise they employed the various perspectives, how
much time and training either group was given in understanding this quite
complex approach. Any such figures could help one to get a stronger sense of
what this experience all might mean for learners and learning. Figures don
’
t tell
us a great deal at the depth at which this article takes on the subject, at least not
without a great deal of qualification, but they do tell us some concrete things. I
would prefer a few more here.
Response:
The middle school classroom had 12 students. During the several months of sporadic
usage, 835 notes were entered (including revisions of old notes). This count includes
guiding questions and organizing headings that the teacher and I entered.
The graduate seminar had 8 active students. During the semester, 473 notes were
entered.
This semester (which is half over as I draft this response), there are 11 active
participants. We have entered 497 notes already, but many of these are headings,
modifications or entry of data to be shared. This probably represents an average of two
entries per week per student. While I work on some technical problems that have
arisen, I am not encouraging heavy use of W
EB
G
UIDE
. Mostly entries are comments
and questions on the class readings, with some follow-on discussion. If I defined some
collaborative tasks, we might get much higher usage.
I try to hold class in a computer lab at the beginning of the semester so that we can
learn the systems together and students can help each other. Most students can now
access W
EB
G
UIDE
from home, although this remains problematic. When we all use
W
EB
G
UIDE
at the same time in the lab, the worst technical problems come up (multi-
user issues that are hard to test without class usage). Also, problems of how the entries
are organized (how to find what your neighbor just said she put in) and how discussion
relates to one’s personal perspective. The main beneficiary of class usage of
W
EB
G
UIDE
is still the designer, who sees what problems need to be solved and what
new functionality is desirable. For the students this is a glimpse into the future, but not
yet a powerful cognitive and collaborative tool. In each class that uses W
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the
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students participate in reflecting on the process of designing the software artifact – and
this is integral to the course curriculum as an experiment in collaborative learning.
Hans van der Meij:
Methodology – teach as you preach. Overall I am fairly positive about this article.
The author explicitly defies the traditional path of experimentation/design in set-
up of the work itself, as well as in set-up of the article. This is courageous. It also
makes for much more interesting reading materials and enhances the author
’
s
credibility. With regard to methodology I wholeheartedly agree with the author. I
find the notion of “reflection in action” quite valuable and virtually absent in lots
of journals. This is a wonderful exception, showing much more of the realities of
design where – at least in my experience too – deeper insights often come after-
the-fact.
Technical issues. Does the reader get enough action-reflection insights? I think,
from a technical point of view, the answer clearly is “Yes”. Lots of times I found
myself agreeing with choices that, to me, seemed to make sense. Just a few
examples: I agree, from a technical point of view it must be vexing to have to
rely on an outline display when one wants to visualize different perspectives
(and routes, I guess). I agree, the look-and-feel should create a comfort zone for
users. I agree, the notion of “inheritance” is useful, especially when I recall all
the problems of tagging concepts or notions from several vantage points. I
agree, the person is a key factor. Hence, the user can copy, write and rewrite
etc. in a personalized workspace and see but not modify other people
’
s work.
This also ties in nicely with social rules regarding how to deal with one
’
s own
and other people
’
s stuff. I disagree about roles. I see an advantage of being
able to see the work of other roles in progress. Figure 2 shows that joining of
perspectives takes place way (too) late, namely in Gulch class comparison. It
means students are not having enough time to prepare counterarguments and it
also means that students miss out on constructing their perspectives along the
same lines as that of other groups. In addition, I doubt whether it is desirable to
have students think only about their own role or perspective since this is rather
unrealistic (I may have this wrong, I am not sure how the system actually was
used in practice).
User-based scenarios: use-in-action & reflection. The paper can be
strengthened considerably with additional information on user scenarios.
Although two usability tests are reported, I miss two issues with regard to the
way in which the perspective of the actual user of the system is described: (1)
Concrete examples of use in action. The paper is very abstract and technical.
The author nicely narrates a design(er) story. I would be very happy if the author
could also narrate a user story, including examples of, say, how notes from
others are being turning into personalized notes, etc. This would afford us to
“see” a little bit of what happens in actual use. (2) More elaborate notions of
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valued use in action. The user perspective perspires mainly at the end where
vital questions of system usability (from the user
’
s perspective) are introduced
and briefly discussed. Here, for me, the BIG questions are advanced, the ones
that I wondered about while reading. I accept the author
’
s explicit desire to
“project a voice which does not redefine the temporality of the experience I am
reporting.” I also think it is not too late to flesh out some initial answers to these
questions in the closing sections of the paper. In short, I would like the author to
substantiate his reflections (e.g., by showing and discussing some how certain
“repositories of ideas” have come into being).
Response:
I fear there is still some confusion on how perspectives work. The inheritance
diagrammed in Figure 2 takes place continually as notes are added, not just when
perspectives are somehow complete. Every user of W
EB
G
UIDE
can visit every
perspective and read what is there at any time. The restriction is that you can only
modify (edit, delete, rearrange) notes in your own perspective. Recently, I have added
“private” notes that you can add in any perspective but are only viewable by you. This
way, you can annotate any notes in the system privately.
I have also added “discussion” notes that you can add in any perspective; rather than
staying in that perspective (and thereby modifying someone else’s perspective) the
discussion note and the note it is discussing are copied to a new “discussion
perspective”. The new discussion (and a new negotiation) perspective provides a space
for inter-personal discussions to take place. Your contributions in the discussion
perspective are also copied into your personal perspective so that you have a complete
record of all the ideas you have entered into W
EB
G
UIDE
and so that you can integrate
these ideas with others in your working perspective.
These changes are part of a rather radical re-design – or at least extension – of the
W
EB
G
UIDE
perspectives system that has not yet been tried out by users. However, it is
worth presenting here in some detail because it shows my response to the worrisome
issues that have come up about conflicts between discussion and knowledge building
(as discussed especially in point 5 of Section 8 above). It brings the presentation up to
date as of Spring 2001.
Figure 4 shows the new interface of W
EB
G
UIDE
. It now consists of two separate
windows, a Java applet interface and an HTML window. Previous interfaces included
the HTML window within a fixed size main interface window. The user can now resize
and overlap the two windows to optimize and personalize use of screen real estate. The
main interface consists on (a) an expandable hierarchy of notes (either their titles or the
first line of their content is displayed in the hierarchy – the full content of the currently
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selected note is displayed in the HTML window), (b) a bar of buttons for selecting a
perspective across the top and (c) a control panel of function buttons on the right side.
Figure 5 shows a close-up of the perspectives buttons, providing direct access to the
most common perspectives and a pull-down list of all defined perspectives in the
current database. Note that in addition to the group (or class) perspective, the current
user’s personal perspective and the (group or class) comparison perspective, there are
now perspectives for discussion, negotiation and archive. We will see how these are
inter-related in Figure 7 below.
Figure 6 shows a close-up of the function controls, with restricted options grayed-out.
The comment button allows a user to enter a quick comment below the selected note.
The new note button is similar to the comment, but allows the user to choose a label for
the kind of note and to position the new note after (i.e., at the same level of hierarchy)
the selected note rather than indented below it (i.e., as a child of it). Subsequent buttons
Figure 4. The new interface to W
EB
G
UIDE
2000.
Figure 5. The new bar of perspectives buttons in W
EB
G
UIDE
2000.
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let the user edit, delete, move, copy or link a selected note. Copy to home or link to
home is used when one has selected a note that is not in one’s personal perspective and
wants to create a physical or virtual copy of it there. Email lets one send an email and
have the content of the email and its responses inserted below the selected note. Search
conducts a simple string text search across all notes (their author, title and content) in
the database and displays the resulting notes in the HTML window (where they can be
easily printed out). Private note is similar to comment – except that one can insert it in
any perspective and that it will only be displayed when the author is logged in as the
current user. Discuss and promote create notes in the discussion and negotiation
perspectives; they will be described in the next paragraph. The vote, website and
graphic buttons are for adding votes on negotiation issues, live links to URLs and
graphic (multimedia) URLs to be displayed
in the HTML window – these functions are
not yet implemented. The print displayed
button causes all notes whose titles are
currently displayed in the hierarchy display
to have their content shown in the HTML
window for printing. The print selected
button lets a user select multiple notes in the
hierarchy display and have their content
displayed in the HTML window. Finally, the
print recent button displays in the HTML
window the content of all notes that were
created in the past N days, where N is
selected below this button. These search and
print buttons are an important step toward
providing tools for more effective
knowledge management – offering
convenient access to selected notes.
How should the discuss and propose buttons
work? A user should be able to start a
discussion based on any other user’s note
found in the system. The resulting
discussion should be available to everyone
in the group. The two perspectives available
to everyone are the group and the
comparison perspectives. The comparison
perspective quickly becomes over-crowded
and confusing, so I decided to create a new
discussion perspective derived from the
group perspective. Similarly, proposals for
Figure 6. The new knowledge
management control panel in
W
EB
G
UIDE
2000.
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negotiations should be able to build on anyone’s notes and should be generally
available, so I also created a negotiation perspective linked to the group perspective.
Recall that the group (or class) perspective contains notes agreed to by the group at
large (or seeded by the teacher to provide a shared starting point). The group
perspective therefore provides an over-all context for collaborative discussion and
negotiation, as well as for individual efforts at knowledge building. So, while we do
not want discussion and negotiation notes that have not yet been adopted by the whole
group to show up directly in the group perspective (and therefore to be inherited into
all other perspectives), we do want to have the discussion and negotiation perspectives
inherit from the group perspective so that the group context provides some structure.
Moreover, we want the negotiation to inherit from the discussion so that a note in a
discussion thread can be proposed for negotiation and so that discussion threads can be
viewed in relation to negotiation proposals. As shown in Figure 7, individual personal
perspectives should inherit from the group but not from the discussion or negotiation
perspectives.
The trick with putting notes in the discussion and negotiation perspectives is to situate
them meaningfully in the hierarchy with at least some context. Suppose you have
entered a note that I want to comment on and to present for group discussion. Your
note is in your personal perspective and I may have found it in the comparison
perspective. So I either select your note in the comparison perspective or go to your
group
perspective
individual
perspective
comparison
perspective
archive
perspective
group
perspective
discussion
individual
perspective
comparison
perspective
archive
perspective
negotiation
private
viewer’s
perspective
viewer’s
perspective
Figure 7. The old inheritance structures for perspectives in W
EB
G
UIDE
(on the left)
and the new structures (on the right).
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personal perspective and select it there. I click on the discuss button. The system then
wants to start a discussion thread in the discussion perspective starting with your note
followed by my note. To do this, the system sees what note your note is threaded
below in the hierarchy in your personal perspective – let us call that the anchor note. If
the anchor note happens to already appear in the discussion perspective (which inherits
the whole group perspective), then everything is simple and the system simply makes a
copy of your note below the anchor in the discussion perspective and then attaches my
note below that. Alternatively, if an ancestor of the anchor in the notes hierarchy
appears within the discussion perspective then that closest ancestor is used as the
anchor. Otherwise, the system attaches a copy of your note to a special “Discussions”
heading note in the discussions perspective and then attaches my note below that. Then
we have a discussion thread that anyone can add to in the discussions perspective.
In addition to setting up the new thread in the discussions perspective, the system
makes a copy of your note with mine attached to it below the anchor note (which I
inherit from the group) in my own personal perspective. This is so that my personal
perspective contains all of my contributions to discussions and negotiations. That way,
I see all of my ideas and I can conveniently manipulate them in my own workspace.
The dotted line in Figure 7 from negotiation to viewer’s perspective indicates that these
entries will appear in my perspective when I am viewing it.
Similarly, Figure 7 indicates that private notes that I created with the private note
button will appear in whatever perspective I created them in when – and only when – I
am viewing them. Finally, the archive perspective is simply the group comparison
perspective, including notes that have been deleted. This is primarily for the
convenience of researchers who want to view old versions of work. Figure 7 shows
how the inheritance structure has changed with the recent addition of the discussion,
negotiation, private and archive perspectives. The possibility of extending the
perspectives metaphor and the underlying computational mechanism to include new
perspectives like these confirms the power and generality of the approach.
Figure 8 summarizes the relationships of the buttons and display modes to the different
perspectives. The top of the chart (“buttons”) indicates the perspectives in which each
of the buttons is active (i.e., not grayed out).
The bottom of the chart (“displays”) indicates which notes are displayed in each type
of perspective (and in some cases to whom it is displayed). Statements are notes
created with the comment or new note button; Discussions are created with the discuss
button; Proposals with the propose button; Decisions with the vote button; and Privates
with the private note button. The viewer is the currently logged in user; the owner is
the person to whom the personal perspective belongs.
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Yes, this is obviously the designer’s story. I think it is premature to give a user’s story.
For a number of reasons that are my fault (technical problems and poor definition of
tasks), W
EB
G
UIDE
has been at best used as a threaded discussion forum. I hope that the
new structures of Negotiation, Discussion and Private perspectives will help users to
engage in personal and group knowledge building. Perhaps then we will see some
insightful user scenarios.
modes: group
perspective
discussion
(group)
negotiation
(group)
personal
perspective
other’s
perspective
comparison
perspective
archive
(deleted)
buttons:
discuss X X X X X X
propose X
vote X
private
note
X X X X X X X
new note X
edit X
delete X
move X
copy X
link X
copy
home
X X X X X
link home X X X X X
email X
search X X X X X X X
print X X X X X X X
displays:
Statement X X X X X X w.
deleted
Discussion X X viewer’s owner’s X w.
deleted
Proposal X viewer’s owner’s X w.
deleted
Decision X viewer’s owner’s X w.
deleted
Private viewer’s viewer’s viewer’s viewer’s viewer’s viewer’s viewer’s
Figure 8. Table of permissions for W
EB
G
UIDE
2000 buttons and displays.
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Hans van der Meij:
What are the strengths and weaknesses of
W
EB
G
UIDE
? In Section 3 the author
compares
W
EB
G
UIDE
with other systems. I have two important difficulties here.
1. For me as a reader this is too early, I
’
m still having a hard time understanding
the various ways in which users can work the system. 2. No names of
“competitive” others are mentioned. Surely, a true and fair comparison of
systems is a rather complex task, well beyond the present paper. So, I do
understand the choice that was made. Yet, I could not help asking myself
wherein the user might find strengths and weaknesses as they derive from the
technical choices that were made. Each system typically affords some
processes and outcomes better than others. Often, if not always, this is traded
off by weaknesses in other realms of usage and learning. The author could help
the reader enormously by offering his insights here because it can advance the
discussions about these systems into the theoretically interesting issues of what
the system really affords. A comparison invites the author into suggesting which
forms and outcomes of knowledge building are best catered for by
W
EB
G
UIDE
(probably thanks to its x, y, z combination of design choices). The result will be a
more refined notion of how design choices impact on usage (as seen by the
user rather than technician). The gain is also likely to be theoretical when the
author attempts to advance ideas of various types of knowledge building
discourse (I think this can even take place when people build a repository of
ideas).
Which perspective? It
’
s not very clear which perspective the author wishes to
advance most strongly. Clearly his paper implies that designing requires a multi-
disciplinary effort. Although the major part of the paper discusses the technical
issues of designing
W
EB
G
UIDE
, the final part shifts towards arguing in favor of
the chosen design methodology and advances some ideas that relate to the
user perspective. The latter mean a fairly big shift away from technical issues
towards conceptual issues and use in practice.
What design really is? In this respect I think the article is a real gem. I
’
ve seen
very few studies that have dared to challenge so openly the idea of theory-led
designs. All good designs require adaptations as theories typically give guidance
only in a very general sense. Gradually as the work evolves, theory is articulated
either by reading or by design or both in combination. The author does a fine job
in outlining his choice in this respect.
Which ideas led to
W
EB
G
UIDE
? Obviously, the author has not started to work on
W
EB
G
UIDE
with zero theory. Unfortunately, the author does not make his
starting notions (theory) very clear in the design narrative. I think this is an
omission that should be corrected. If I presume correctly, the author has
detected some real-life problem for which there was no adequate solution. This
triggered
W
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G
UIDE
development. As a reader I would very much like to be
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informed of what the author considered to be the problem and about his design
ideas or philosophy. In that way the reader can “grow” or build knowledge in the
same sense as the author intends through (relived) action and reflection.
Response:
As for the competition, I make no claims that W
EB
G
UIDE
is superior to other research
prototypes or even commercial systems for supporting collaborative learning. It is
consciously based on Scardamalia and Bereiter’s extensive theoretical, technical and
pedagogical work on knowledge-building communities and their CSILE (now
K
NOWLEDGE
F
ORUM
) system that is used in schools around the world. W
EB
G
UIDE
’s
only attempted innovation is perspectives. The idea of perspectives grows out of my
dissertation work with Ray McCall and is based on ideas cited in the paper.
Where did the original impetus for W
EB
G
UIDE
itself come from? This is another story,
told sketchily elsewhere. While introducing other software in another local middle
school, I observed problems of students collecting and retaining website addresses as
part of their Web research projects. I thought it would be nice to let them save these
addresses on the Web, rather than on harddisks or floppies that never seemed to be
available when they needed them. So W
EB
G
UIDE
was originally conceived of as their
personal guide to the Web, with their collected website links. Then I wanted them to be
able to share their links and negotiate class-adopted lists of links. Then I added the idea
of annotating and eventually discussing the links, and finally categorizing and
reorganizing them. Soon, the superstructure took over and I have still not made it easy
to store links in W
EB
G
UIDE
. The W
EB
G
UIDE
interface has always included an HTML
window as well as the Java applet display. The content of notes is displayed in the
HTML window – specifically so that website links can be live and one can click on
them and go to the site. This also means that graphics and other media can be stored in
W
EB
G
UIDE
and viewed, and that HTML markup can be used in the content. As for the
philosophy behind W
EB
G
UIDE
, the notion of perspectives goes back to a former life
when I studied Heidegger and hermeneutics, as well as to my more recent (1993a)
computer science dissertation that argued for this kind of software perspectives
mechanism – warranted by reference to ideas of design theorists Rittel, Alexander,
Schön. So persistent questioning pushes the horizon of context further and further back
through forgotten cycles of practice and theory, complexly evolving trajectories of
inquiry that had no clean starting point ex nihilo.
Hans van der Meij:
System underutilization. The problem of system under-utilization is worldwide
and well known. Under usage of
W
EB
G
UIDE
therefore does not surprise. The
software industry has yet to find a solution to this vexing problem. There are at
least two different types of under usage – inefficiency and ignorance.
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Inefficiency occurs when people use a rather cumbersome method to achieve a
goal. Usually, they follow a learned (insightful) routine that they never abandon
even when better (i.e. faster) alternatives are easy to access (e.g. function keys
versus menu choices). Ignorance comes from not knowing that a certain function
exists. The problem may be that the user has never had the time to explore the
system in any depth, or that the user
’
s knowledge doesn
’
t map onto the design
of the system. The mismatch between user knowledge and system design may
come from not knowing (recognizing) that the system offers a solution for a
problem, or from not seeing how a known method offers a solution to a user
problem.
Over-utilization takes place when people spend too much time using technical
possibilities to improve what is already good or adequate. A prototypical
example is the styling of documents that I see when all the students are asked
to do is create a good text. When students should be concentrating on writing a
good text, they should not waste time on fancying it up.
Underutilization of a system in its general meaning is not an issue at all. Who
cares if people are using “only” about 15% of all the system
’
s options when it
affords them to do their job effectively and efficiently? Not me. Underutilization
becomes critical only when people do not use functions that impact immediately
and importantly on the tasks they must perform. Typically, inefficiency problems
hardly ever fall within this category, only the ignorance problems do.
1. Which functionalities that you consider to be key functions did users
underutilize? 2. Can you give some examples of troublesome inefficiencies and
ignorance of the system? An answer to these questions, as well as to the earlier
mentioned point of users scenarios, can make the paper much stronger because
they show how design and use interact, which is precisely the point the author
tries to make.
Response:
Sure, I do not care if students do not use all the features of W
EB
G
UIDE
either – and I
do not provide a lot of formatting, etc. in the first place. But I would like to see them
get beyond mere threaded discussion – the superficial exchange of off-the-cuff
opinions – to deeper collaborative knowledge-building. Seriously taking up each
other’s ideas and formulations, worrying about terminological disagreements,
negotiation of innovative insights that merge multiple perspectives: these would be
exciting to see emerge from the more sophisticated use of W
EB
G
UIDE
’
S
functionality,
which allows notes to be modified, copied, rearranged, etc. across perspectives.
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Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1) [www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1] 39
Hans van der Meij:
I wondered whether the author has worked in a situation in which there were not
enough computers for all students forcing the formation of groups. (This is
typical in elementary school.) The group could then be Blake or P4 and operate
in the same way as Blake, except for the fact that the group has many members
(up to 4 or 5). This would pose another challenge to the system.
Response:
Periodically, students have teamed up on computers. This is nice for collaboratively
learning how to use the system. It is also useful if I want to videotape the usage and
analyze the discourse within the little group for a fine-grained view of what is going on
from the user perspective. The problem with doing this with W
EB
G
UIDE
is that it is so
text-based and only one person can type text into the shared computer at a time.
Hans van der Meij:
Perspectives? I am still struggling with the notion of perspectives. For example,
the definition of perspectives simply is another section named “xxx
perspectives.” And how should I fit in the notion of ‘role
’
(e.g. that of landowner)
within the typology of literal, figurative and computational (Section 3). And what
should I think about different points of view within roles? Are these perspectives
too (as seen from the designer
’
s point of view)? And what about class
perspective, team perspective?
Response:
The perspectives mechanism of automatic inheritance of content down the hierarchy is
very general. In some cases I have used it to define a hierarchy of domain knowledge
(my dissertation), of roles (the middle school Gulch project), of academic disciplines
(the interdisciplinary seminar), or just of different people (this semester). The group or
class perspective is supposed to display the state of knowledge that has been mutually
agreed upon, and thus requires the still-missing negotiation support. So now it contains
mostly what the teacher has defined by fiat as the shared knowledge structure in order
to get the process going in an organized way. Yes, this is all hard to explain or
comprehend, especially without actually using the system.
Gary Boyd:
1 AN ILLUMINATIVE LEVELS REVIEW
The approach I am taking in this review is based on my theory of nine
cybersystemic emergent levels of interaction and values (Boyd, 1997).
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Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1) [www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1] 40
2 GLOBAL DISCUSSION AND APPRAISAL (in terms of the nine highest
cybersystemic emergent levels
’
requisite-variety value criteria).
2.1 The paper and venture are both Good at the
‘
Symviability-hope inducing
’
highest ontological level:
The highest evolutionarily emergent level is that of eco-co-cultural symbioses.
The form of requisite variety required is whatever is plausibly hopeful towards
such symbioses.
Overall “
W
EB
G
UIDE
” is a really good, i.e. eco-co-culturally hopeful, form of Web-
based learning support. The kind of CMC/CSCL knowledge construction support
which Stahl and associates are developing is certain to be hope-sustaining (the
highest good) for groups of people who need to learn together, and for persons
who wish to adaptively select what they choose to learn/construct and what they
choose to teach / help others construct. In short Stahl
’
s venture is a good
strategic direction for Webucational technology to take. In contra-distinction to
bad directions, such as behaviorist CBT, which create dependencies, or such as
competitive instructional games which reinforce opportunistic individualism.
It is of course a hopeful venture for those of us in the CSCL R&D profession at
large (e.g. the JIME audience) and those in graduate seminars such as the one
held as part of the project.
It is also ecologically hopeful in this particular case where the Logan school test
venture brings together stakeholders
’
and experts
’
perspectives to seek to co-
construct understandings about workable solutions to the heavy-metal water
pollution from Colorado gold-mine tailings problem.
2.2 Progressive at the
‘
Scientosophic
’
(scientific methodology) level
2.2.1 Methodological contributions
There are two appreciable scientific contributions being made; one
methodological, and one substantive.
The main methodological contribution is the departure from both conventional
experimental work, and conventional case study, made possible by combining
the narrative research approach of (e.g.) Bruner, and the reflective practitioner
praxis approach of (e.g.) Schön. The
W
EB
G
UIDE
groupware greatly facilitates
this participatory and reflective research method by recording and re-ordering
transactions. This is the case however only insofar as learners and teachers can
be supported and persuaded to work through it. If the research and development
team were to use a parallel instance of
W
EB
G
UIDE
themselves for their own
work even better research possibilities could emerge.
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Although the reflective praxis narrative methodology is a real advance over
empirical experimental methods, it still reaches only halfway from conventional
empiricism toward Critical Realist scientific methodology (arguably the best
currently available; Bhaskar et al. at CCR@criticalrealism.demon.co.uk). Critical
realist science insists on trying to build (preferably executable) models of the
real underlying polycausal mechanisms which give rise to whatever can actually
be observed. The drawback of Critical Realist scientific methodology is that for
social and psycho-social systems it seems that it can be applied only
a
posteriori
. This is because to attempt to apply it as part of praxis leads to
paradoxical changes in the system
’
s/person
’
s actions being studied, including
the researchers
’
!
2.2.2 Applicable Theory?
Stahl writes in Section 7, Theory in Practice, “This led us to look for a theory of
computer mediation – and for that matter for a theory of collaborative learning….
Of course it turned out that there are no adequate theories on these topics.”
‘
Adequate
’
is left undefined. From the critical realist perspective an adequate
theory is one which enables the construction of a model of the underlying
generative processes which yields a good explanation of what happened, and
possibly even predictions of what is likely to happen if the work is continued.
There are a few quite interesting theories available which alone or combined
might become adequate:
With respect to the computer mediation of educative human interaction, Terry
Winograd
’
s Coordination Theory (197X), Mildred Shaw
’
s (198X) computer
mediated collaborative extension of George Kelly
’
s personal construct theory,
and Gordon Pask
’
s (1975) Conversation Theory - particularly as extended by
Shiela Harri-Augstein and Laurie Thomas (1991) Learning Conversations, are
what come to mind immediately. Then there is Snow, Corno & Jackson (1997)
on the overlap between cognition and conation. Also recent work by Chi,
Resnick, and Jacobsen.
With respect to the collaborative learning processes, although Habermas is
mentioned by Stahl, his theoretical prescription for conducting non-dominative
discourse to legitimately promote understanding (Habermas,1984-7) which
deals directly with the issue of conflict implicit in collaborative learning was
missed. Then again Gordon Pask
’
s Conversation Theory deals with
collaborative distributed cognition learning in terms of conversation among inter-
M-individual
‘
p-individuals
’
(vid. Scott, 2000). One might also usefully employ
Kenneth J. Gergen
’
s social constructionism theory. See his (1994) Realities &
Relationships book. Then there is the interesting treatment of collaborative
learning by Panitz (1996) on his website.
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Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1) [www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1] 42
None of the above handle motivation really well. Keller
’
s ARCS theory is
workable in practice but not very profound. Ryan and Deci
’
s (1999) Self-
determination theory is more profound and still useful. My own motivation theory
(The Ought That Is - vid. Boyd (2000)) is an extension of the biologically evolved
meme-complex propagation imperative (Lynch, 1998) which is preemptive and
universal, but the under-laboring required to unite it with collaborative learning
conversation theory has not alas yet been done.
In some sense then perhaps there is indeed as yet no simply usably “adequate”
integrated theory of computer/communications mediated WWW collaborative
learning.
2.2.3 Substantive contributions to knowledge
The main substantive contributions to practical scientific knowledge are still
apparently tentative: to wit that knowledge co-construction by learners can
(perhaps) be guided by appropriate multiple-perspective Web-based groupware,
and that collaborative learning can be facilitated by the types of multiple
perspective workspaces with automatic
‘
computational
’
inheritance linking
among objects in various spaces. Both these results remain tentative
confirmations due to the various logistical, social and technical difficulties which
have arisen, and which have constrained and reduced on-line participation. It is
however, to be expected that as such difficulties are overcome more definitive
narrative results will soon be forthcoming.
2.3 Good value at the
‘
Emancipative level
’
(liberating from both
‘
task robots
’
and
‘
learning robots
’
).
As a pre-requisite to scientific thinking it is necessary to release one another
from habitual ways of thinking and of learning, what Harri-Augstein and Thomas
call
‘
task robots
’
and
‘
learning robots
’
or what Pask calls
‘
cognitive fixity
’
or
more recently fashionable as
‘
limiting ontological beliefs
’
(Chi et. al. 1994).
W
EB
G
UIDE
appears to be promising groupware to support new ways of carrying
out knowledge construction tasks and developing the kinds of metacognition
which enable replacement of inappropriate learning strategies. This is so
because of the direct juxtaposition provided by the multiple “perspectives”
windows between various learners
’
and teams
’
ways of dealing with the domain
problems. Different strategies for choosing and evaluating sources and facts and
discussions about them are directly exhibited to all.
2.4 At the identity conjugative-propagative (The Ought That Is) level the paper is
quite interesting. (The actual examples involve cloning teacher & mentor
identity-memeplex chunks?)
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Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1) [www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1] 43
Stahl
’
s
W
EB
G
UIDE
paper is of course an example of his propagating part of his
own identity (qua researcher) meme-complex, and I think it will be successful in
finding others to acquire and re-propagate this narrative reflective praxis
approach as part of their researcher-identities (not just superficially).
The
W
EB
G
UIDE
environment itself offers teachers and pupils good opportunities
to acquire, construct and propagate parts of their meme-plex identities. The so-
called
‘
class perspective
’
provided by the teacher to start the class off being a
case in point. (It probably should be called “teacher perspective” or “Seed
Perspective” since the class did not construct it. If all goes well substantial parts
of it, and similarly other parts contributed by the expert mentors, will be re-
constructively cloned into the student and team perspectives – becoming parts
of their individual and collective human identities.
2.5 Moderately Good at the Negotiative level (Almost adequate funding seems
to have been obtained, and the need to negotiate development goals among
R&D project stakeholders is recognized and operationalized.
With respect to pupils the intention to support negotiation in knowledge
construction is there. The basic aspiration behind
W
EB
G
UIDE
is one of
promoting negotiation among points of view. In section 1 we read “… designers
often create an evolving design artifact from alternative technical points of view;
different designers have different personal concerns and styles, requiring
considerations based upon access to different rules of thumb, rationales,
constraints, standards and other forms of domain knowledge.”
These sorts of important interpretive perspectives were apparently supported in
the development of
W
EB
G
UIDE
. They are also supported by
W
EB
G
UIDE
for the
learners who are designer/constructors of their own knowledge. There is
therefore now the possibility of using a version of
W
EB
G
UIDE
in bootstrapping
fashion as Computer Aided Software Engineering groupware for designing new
versions of itself.
From a negotiative standpoint the main weakness is the assumption that the
important thing is to provide “good-openings” (see Orrin Klapp), without equal
emphasis on the also necessary “good closings”. Each participant needs a really
PRIVATE personal perspective space (to try re-arranging her hand in without
embarrassing oversight). There is also need for private side communications to
form coalitions etc. within
W
EB
G
UIDE
. As it is, one gathers that e-mail and other
modes of communication were used a lot. In general the Backstage vs.
Frontstage is important for all the classes of perspectives. For negotiating
resources and reputation, the whole class perspective might well have a
fontstage version open to anyone on the WWW.
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At first sight it appears that adequate financial, human and situational resources
were negotiated for developing
W
EB
G
UIDE
.
This is partly because of the
pathetically low funding which is the general norm for educational research.
Under scrutiny, only the human (researchers, software engineers, teachers,
mentor-experts) resources seem adequate. However with more ample funding
all learners could have been provided with state of the art large-screen laptops
and high-speed cable access so that they could have used
W
EB
G
UIDE
from
home at convenient times. That would also involve more negotiation with
parents etc. With better negotiation of situational resources and protocols the
break-down of CSCL into ordinary F-2-F classroom work might have been
avoided. That activity in turn could also have been facilitated by a larger
research budget.
2.6 Only weak use of viral information/memes was made via
W
EB
G
UIDE
.
The name
‘W
EB
G
UIDE
’
is a nice bit of viral information (meme) in itself.
Perhaps the generic form should be
‘W
EB
G
UIDE
’
and this one be trade-marked
as
‘W
EB
G
UIDE
(tm)
’
if that has not already been done. The interface screen
design seems reasonably memorable, although compared with that of e.g.
‘
The
Brain (tm)
’
not very sexy for school youth.
The main weaknesses at the memetic level seem to be:
a) that the chunks chosen are “notes” whereas the real chunks of a knowledge
construction conversation, particularly of threaded discourses which seemed to
be what were occurring spontaneously in the
W
EB
G
UIDE
ventures, are “repartee
chunks.” Short exchanges of information query and response which confirm
structures or mark new distinctions (vid. Pask
’
s CT). Attempts to analyze CSCL
using single messages have not worked out, because the single message is
usually not the important executing semantic unit. (vid. Claude Ricardi-Rigault
NOMINO TELUQ). So it should be possible to have linking and inheritance of
‘
repartee-chunk
’
objects not just notes.
b) Visual diagrams, pictures, and audio speech/sounds, and video clips, are very
memorable and informative, and should ideally be provided for, if this has not
already been done.
2.7 Good at the
‘
Sustenantial information level
’
(info-resources, mentors, help).
The use of the cross disciplinary graduate seminar working in
W
EB
G
UIDE
to
explore theoretical perspectives and also to reflexively improve
W
EB
G
UIDE
is an
excellent sustenantial aspect of this whole project. At the Logan School also,
sustenantial resources and multiple ‘perspectives
’
were made available to pupils
and teachers which otherwise would not have been available to them.
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An important question is: Are objects from the WWW directly importable into
W
EB
G
UIDE
? I did not notice examples of imports from the Web, but maybe this
is possible? However some kinds of obviously sustenantial objects for
knowledge construction do not appear to be deployable within
W
EB
G
UIDE
.
Directed-graphs and their matrix duals, and various executable objects such as
spreadsheets, MathCad worksheets, Stella models etc. should be held and
linked in the object bases of future
W
EB
G
UIDE
s.
The somewhat odd use of the term
‘
perspective
’
for a socially (person, team,
class) owned workspace is nicely rationalized, and so I guess it is OK.
I do object however to the peculiar use of the (normally mathematical) term
‘
computational perspective
’
- here used to mean merely inheritance linked text
objects. Would not something like
‘
auto-linked perspectives
’
do better?
2.8 Fair at the Deterministic Automata Level (computer application, server &
telecomms levels). The questionably adequate DB/object-base system, Web
client-server task-partitioning problems, and severe view-space design
limitations, constrain functionality due to limited availability of state-of-the art
hardware & communications for pupils etc.
3 CANONICAL REPRESENTATION & VIEWS
3.1 Available Survey of other Web tools for learning support. An excellent survey
being done by the BC Institute of Technology, and supported by the Canadian
and British Columbia Governments is currently in progress and is available at
http://www.ctt.bc.ca/landonline/evalapps.html.
4 REFERENCES for Boyd
’
s commentary
Bhaskar, Roy (1978)
A Realist Theory of Science
. Hemel Hempstead, Harvester Press.
Bhaskar, Roy (1989)
Reclaiming Reality: A Realist Theory of Science
. London, Verso.
Boyd, G. (2000) Toward the Webversity: Managing to Clone Scholars and Researchers
via the Web. In Mann Bruce (ed.)
Perspectives in Web Course Management
. Toronto,
Canadian Scholars Press.
Boyd, G. (1997) The Identification of Levels of Action Through the Use of Stratified
Computer Communications Media.
The Thought Actorium Ssystemic
. 13,1.
Boyd, G. (1993) Educating Symbiotic P-individuals through Multi-level Conversations.
Systems Research.
10, 113-128.
Boyd, G. (1987) Emancipative Educational Technology.
Canadian Journal of Educational
Communications
.16, 2, 168-173.
Chi, M., Slotta, J., de Leeuw, N. (1994) From Things to Processes: A Theory of
Conceptual Change for Learning Science Concepts.
Learning and Instruction
, 4, 27-43.
W
EB
G
UIDE
: Guiding Collaborative Learning on the Web with Perspectives Stahl
Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2001 (1) [www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1] 46
Coombs, S. J. & Smith, I. D. (1998). Designing a self-organized conversational learning
environment.
Educational Technology
, 38 (3), 17-28.
Deci, E. & Ryan, R. (1999) Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic
motivation, social development and well-being.
American. Psychologist.
Duchastel, P. (1997) A Web-Based Model for University Instruction.
Journal of
Educational Technology Systems
, 25, 3, 221-228.
Habermas, J (1987)
The Theory of Communicative Action
. Boston, Beacon Press.
Harre, Rom, Clarke, David, & DeCarlo, Nicola (1985)
Motives & Mechanisms
. London,
Methuen.
Harri-Augstein, S. & Thomas, L. (1991)
Learning Conversations
. Routledge London.
Kelly, George A. (1955)
The Psychology of Personal Constructs
. (vol. 1). N.Y., W.W.
Norton & Co.
Laurillard, D. (1995)
Rethinking University Teaching: A Framework for the Effective Use
of Educational Technology
. London, England: Routledge.
Lynch, A (1998) Units, Events, and Dynamics in Memetic Evolution.
Journal of Memetics-
Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
. at http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-
emit/vol2/lynch/a.html.
Luhmann, N. (1986)
The Autopoiesis of Social Systems
. London, Sage Pub
’
ns.
Landon,
A Web Tool for Comparative Analysis of educational Web tools. at
http://www.ctt.bc.ca/landonline/evalapps.html
.
Panitz, T. (1996) A Definition of Collaborative vs. Cooperative Learning. at
http://www.lgu.ac.uk/deliberations/collab.learning/panitz2.html.
Pask, G. (1976)
Conversation Theory: Applications in Education and Epistemology
.
Amsterdam, Elsevier.
Scott, B.(2000) Cybernetics and the Social Sciences. Paper given at the ISSS World
Congress of the Systems Sciences, Toronto July 16-22. at bscott@dmu.ac.uk
.
Shaw, Mildred. (198?)
Kiss, Kitten, Nextra
papers.
Response
:
I found the JIME reviews very heartening. The reviewers clearly understood and
appreciated what I was trying to do with my narrative approach to reporting on recent
research. Furthermore, they added important critical perspectives – particularly the
preceding six page commentary by Gary Boyd. I feel that my concluding response to
the reviews should consist of a brief overview of the adventure of composing this
paper.
The paper grew out of a submission to AERA ‘99 (the annual conference of the
American Educational Research Association in Montreal). To have a paper accepted to
this conference, one simply submits an abstract. When my abstract was accepted, I felt
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free to write in whatever vein I chose. The freedom from having to write to traditional
reviewers with narrow paradigms of scholarly publication allowed me to experiment
stylistically as well as to think about what format would be most appropriate to the
level of experience with W
EB
G
UIDE
that I wanted to report.
The paper session at AERA was coordinated by Ricki Goldman-Segall, who served as
the discussant as well. I had just read her book, which has a “thick description” style of
interwoven themes and which precedes each chapter with one of her photographs. This
gave me the impetus to tell my story by talking about the diverse themes which were
important to me. I also decided to introduce a decorative element to the page like Ricki
did, and to tie my sculpture loosely to my content.
It was clear to me that providing a traditional analysis of the software usage would
have been wildly premature. While the use of W
EB
G
UIDE
by one teacher and his dozen
students over several months had made a number of technical and social issues
painfully clear to me and while the experience had been an experience for the students,
there was nothing entered into the database to illustrate the ultimate vision I had for the
software approach. Similarly, in my graduate seminar with about eight students for a
semester, W
EB
G
UIDE
served more as an example of what we were thinking about than
as a tool that let us think about it more deeply. What was interesting was not the
empirical data about the software usage, but the process (“dance,” “structural
coupling”) by which our understanding of what was needed developed in the
classroom settings where a crude version of W
EB
G
UIDE
was used.
The work on W
EB
G
UIDE
continues to be the focus of my activities. Many of the
weaknesses pointed out in the reviews are being gradually addressed in new software
functions, theoretical papers, and funding proposals. This evolving article remains my
fullest discussion of perspectives and their inheritance, a topic that is devilishly hard to
explain clearly. W
EB
G
UIDE
2000 is now being used in my seminar on CSCL. Every
month I produce a new version with additional improvements. However, while some
students are starting to use it regularly to formulate and discuss ideas, its use still falls
far short of the goal.
It has become clearer to me that W
EB
G
UIDE
needs to be a collaborative knowledge
management environment. It needs to better support the browsing, modifying, and re-
organizing of inter-related ideas. “Knowledge-building” has become a more central
concept for me and I am trying to understand how it proceeds or could proceed: what
activities are involved and what tools could support these interpersonal activities.
Talking about knowledge-building (a concept I attribute to Carl Bereiter) seems to be a
productive way to think about learning in a social and collaborative framework. The
subtle intertwining of group and personal perspectives is a central structure of
collaborative knowledge building.
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The notion of “artifacts” has become ever more central to my theoretical interests. My
seminar this semester is on the question of how artifacts – particularly computer-based
artifacts like W
EB
G
UIDE
– affect our cognitive abilities. How do artifacts embody
meaning and how do people design that meaning in to them and how do others learn
what that meaning is? What are the implications for designing new media to support
thinking and collaborating? This week we are reading Heidegger’s discussion of how
works of art (like my sculptures?) not only make explicitly visible their forms,
meanings and material, but actually open up whole new worlds in which human
activities can take place. What kind of world do we want to create for future
W
EB
G
UIDE
users? What kinds of intellectual worlds do we want students to
collaboratively construct for themselves?
The problems of getting communities of students to adopt Web media like W
EB
G
UIDE
are daunting. Look at our use of the JIME technology. None of the reviewers knew
how to use it effectively. They probably first typed up typical reviews in their word
processors and then pasted them into the top of the discussion hierarchy. Then they
broke them up and stuck some pieces under different headings, but never in the places
that were linked to article sections. Then, months later, the author had to respond in a
similar way. The editor of the reviews did not even post his thoughtful contributions to
JIME at first, but emailed them separately. The idea that the JIME medium might
support a back-and-forth knowledge-building discussion among the reviewers and with
the author – grounded in the artifact of the submitted article, section by section – was
not realized. Unfortunately, this is typical not only of JIME and W
EB
G
UIDE
, but more
generally. These are the pressing issues that need to be discussed at this stage, more
than details of technology and statistical assessment methodology.
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Acknowledgments
This paper grew out of the author’s Readings and
Research in Cognitive Science seminar, Spring 1999, on
“Computer Mediation of Collaborative Learning”, with
the following participants: Kirstin Butcher, John Caron,
Gabe Johnson, Elizabeth Lenell, Scott Long, Rogerio
dePaula, Paul Prestopnik, Tammy Sumner. The
W
EB
G
UIDE
research is a collaboration of the author
with Rogerio dePaula and other L
3
D members, Ted
Habermann and his group at NOAA, Dan Kowal and his
middle school students, the participants in my
W
EB
G
UIDE
seminars, Thomas Herrmann and his group
at Dortmund, and the researchers in the ICS “Articulate
Learners” project.
It is supported in part by grants from NSF IRI-9711951,
the McDonnell Foundation, NSF EAR-9870934 and
CU’s Lab for New Media Strategy and Design.
A presentation based on this paper was given at the American Educational Research
Association 1999 Annual Meeting (AERA ‘99), Montreal, Canada, April 19-23,
Division C (Learning and Instruction), Section 4 (Learning Environments).
Since publishing this paper, the author has relocated to the German National Research
Center for Information Technology (GMD-FIT) in Sankt Augustin, Germany. He can
be contacted at Gerry.Stahl@GMD.de
.
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Websites
The sculptures decorating this paper are documented at:
orgwis.gmd.de/~gerry/personal/recreation/form
/
Publications by the author are available at: orgwis.gmd.de/~gerry/publications/
Presentations and papers about W
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are listed at:
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