Beyond Usability Improving Sociability for Teaching and Learning in Sakai

1
Beyond UsabilityImproving Sociability for
Teaching and Learning in Sakai

• Paul Turner
• Social Computing Research Group
• University of Missouri-Columbia

2
Outline

• Usability versus Sociability?
• Is Sakai really Social? A CLE?
• What can we learn from other Social Software?
• Improving Increasing Sociability in Sakai
• For learners
• For teachers researchers
• Social and Contextual Awareness is Important!
• CANS and CANSAware Project
• Where do we go next?

3
Usability

• Usability
• An important issue for Sakai development
• Other sessions here focus on this important
  element of Sakai development
• The User Experience (UX)
• The Information Experience (IE)
• What about the Social Experience?
• to promote collaboration
• to encourage learning
• to assist teaching research

3
4
Lets Get Social!

• Social
• The term "social" is derived from the Latin word
  "socius", which as a noun means "an associate,
  ally, business partner or comrade"
• concerns interactions between people
• Sociable
• A party of people assembled to promote
  sociability and communal activity
• Sociability
• The relative tendency or disposition to be
  sociable or associate with one's fellows
  (Princeton Wordnet)

4
5
Social Computing

• Social computing is based on creating or
  recreating social conventions and social contexts
  online through the use of software and technology
  (Wikipedia)
• Microsoft, IBM do Social Computing RD
• research and develop software that contributes
  to compelling and effective social interactions
  (MS)
• it is possible to design digital systems that
  provide a social context for our activities.
  (IBM)

6
Social Teaching Learning

• Social Learning
• occurs as a function of observing, retaining and
  replicating behavior observed in others
• (SL Theory, Bandura et. al)
• Social Teaching
• Usually labeled Collaborative Learning
• the act of shared creation and/or discovery
• cooperative learning, collaborative learning,
  collective learning, learning communities, peer
  teaching, peer learning, reciprocal learning,
  team learning, study circles, study groups, and
  learning groups.

6
7
Social Software

• IM
• Blogs
• Wikis
• Social Bookmarking Info Exchange
• del.icio.us digg.com slashdot
• Social images, video, audio, .....
• Flickr YouTube
• Social Networking
• Facebook MySpace Linked In
• Social Learning?

8
Social Information

• The Social Life of Information
• (Brown Duguid, 2000)
• human sociability plays an
• important role in the world of bits
• Information acquires meaning only through social
  context
• Examines how information technology interacts and
  meshes with the social fabric.

8
9
Sociability in CLE

• Pitfalls
• An assumption that social interaction can be
  taken for granted and that it will automatically
  happen in the CSCL environment.
• forgetting the social-psychological/social
  dimension of social interaction -- social
  interaction does not always happen naturally in
  primarily task-based contexts

The Sociability of Collaborative Learning
Environments Educational Technology Society
5(1) 2002 Karek Kreijns, Paul Kirschner, Wim
Jochems Open University of the Netherlands Heerlen
, The Netherlands
10
The Problem

• Existing CLE (i.e. Sakai) lack sociability
• Instructors and learners tend to view online
  courses through the narrow pedagogical lens, or
  technology tools, afforded by contemporary
  learning management systems (i.e. )
• Lack of social interaction is a factor that
  depresses student satisfaction in online learning
  (Arbaugh, 2000)

11
How do we cope?

• Expert online instructors try to make up for this
  social deficit, or lack of sociability
• with engaging tasks and emphasizing the social
  and collaborative nature of learning
• But in general CMS/CLE are deficient in many of
  the cues that are important to human motivation
  and for having observable activity available to
  help shape learning.

12
Could there be more to it?

• We need a framework and mechanism for infusing
  these cues into online learning
• Laffey, J., Amelung, C. (June, 2007). Cues and
  Mechanisms for Improving the Social Nature of
  Online Learning. ED-MEDIA 2007. Vancouver, BC,
  Canada.
• 3 cues of sociality
• presence
• co-presence
• social navigation

13
Presence

• A persons sense of self and how they are
  represented and understood in the online
  environment.
• It may be important how the system represents
  back to members what they are like and how they
  are doing as how well the system projects members
  identities out to others. (think Users Present
  box in Sakai)
• The ways a system allows individuals to represent
  themselves and the ways that actions and actors
  are associated influence the sociality of the
  environment (or a course) and the social nature
  of online activity.

14
Co-presence

• Co-Presence Social Presence
• How well does the system
• Help students have a sense of being there with
  others
• Afford the immediacy of teacher presence to the
  learners (or the illusion of teacher presence)
• Provide tools or mechanisms which help foster a
  sense of community with other students
• Help the teacher build group cohesion, trust,
  communication, collaboration, etc.

15
Social Navigation

• What others are doing as a primary guide for
  ones own actions
• Research on social navigation has shown that
  people move in an information space based on
  where other people are, what they have done, or
  what they have looked at!
• (Benford, et al., 1995 Bodker, 1991 Dourish
  Bellotti, 1992 Gutwin Greenberg, 1998).
• So make actions observable and reportable!
• Integrate the functionality to produce, gather
  and redistribute information from everyday
  activities with facilities to make the
  information publicly available

15
16
What If?

• Infuse the presence, co-presence, and social
  navigation cues into online learning environment
  (Sakai)
• Could provide users contextually relevant
  information about their own actions
• Alert users to the actions of others
• the instructor (what did he or she do yesterday?)
• fellow group members
• me versus everyone else?
• Provide information visually and historically to
  influence future actions!

17

• Context-aware Activity Notification System
• http//www.cansaware.com
• CANS is based on the importance of social context
  and user preferences
• An events data collection tool
• A notification engine
• A research tool -- it allows for exploration,
  analysis, and visualization of user actions in
  Sakai

17
18
(No Transcript)
19
CANS External Notifications
20
CANS Visualizations
The social e-mail digest -- lets you see YOUR
participation versus high performers versus
class average.
21
Student Activity Over Time
21
22
Compare Student Activity By Context
23
Micro-analysis of Discusions
24
Why CANS?

• CANS is a system that can be used both by
  educational leaders and researchers to advance
  our practices and knowledge base for improving
  the social nature of online learning
• It is the missing link in Sakai between
• System Activity Usage
• designing in sociability into the CLE

25
Current Work
http//www.cansaware.com
26
26
27
Future Work

• Join us in our efforts!
• http//www.cansaware.com
• Source Code
• Prototypes
• Publications
• Discussions
• Testing in your Institutional Sakai

28
Thanks!

• Paul Turner (turnerp_at_missouri.edu)

http//www.cansaware.com