Digital Divide Policy

1
Digital Divide Policy Adaptive System
DesignUCLA/Pacific Bell Initiative for 21st
Century Literacies

• Howard Besser
• UCLA School of Education Information
• http//www.newliteracies.gseis.ucla.edu/
• http//www.gseis.ucla.edu/howard

2
UCLA/Pacific Bell Initiative for 21st Century
Literacies-

• Background
• The Problem and Issues
• Project Dates Staff
• The User
• Summit
• Policy
• Design Issues Adaptive Systems

3
21st Century Literacies

• Information Literacy
• Visual Literacy
• Media Literacy
• Cultural Literacy
• ...

4
The Problem and Issues

• If we solve Access Problem (technology,
  bandwidth, training), other impediments to an
  informed citizenry still remain
• Need critical evaluation of resources
  (reliability, authoritativeness, thoroughness,
  recency)
• Need skills to pare down from information
  overload
• Need critical thinking skills
• Need to deal with different users having
  different backgrounds and capabilities

5
Project Dates Staff

• Summer 2000-Summer 2002
• 1 million
• Co-Directed by Aimée Dorr and Howard Besser
• October 21, 2000 Summit (planning involved 20
  people from Pacbell UCLA)
• Adaptive Design Project with CDL (2002)
• Rest of project primarily UCLA
• Coordinator Sheila Afnan-Manns (afnanmanns_at_gseis.u
  cla.edu)

6
The User

• Evaluative bibliography of literature and
  projects
• Analysis of what we know thusfar from several
  different perspectives (curriculum design,
  library services, critical theory, information
  retrieval, user-centered design, )
• Examining model curriculum (train trainer)
• Teachers
• Librarians

7
Summit (1/2)Oct 21, 2000

• Bring widespread attention to the underlying
  issues
• 360 professionals from education, librarianship,
  public policy, and industry
• 15 Higher Ed faculty, administrators, librarians
• 28 K-12 teachers, principals, superintendents
• 14 public and K-12 librarians
• 33 future practitioners, policy makers,
  librarians, educators
• 8 business community
• 3 government (governors office, state dept of
  Educ, )

8
Summit (2/2)Oct 21, 2000

• Snappy video to highlight the problems (25
  unsolicited requests to show video in 1st month
  after Summit)
• Over 2 dozen exhibits and poster sessions
  explaining related projects throughout the
  country
• Guest speakers (Alan Kay, Marcia Bates, Pat
  Breivik, Kathleen Tyner, Anna Deavere Smith, Tal
  Finney)

9
Policy

• Identify existing and near-future Digital Divides
  (social/ethical view)
• Gather and summarize what we know about measuring
  the various Divide gaps
• Bring together Policy experts, Evaluators, and
  Community leaders to identify indicators for
  measuring the broadening or narrowing of each
  Divide

10
The Various Divides

• Technological (including bandwidth, processor
  speed, etc.)
• Intelligent Effective Use
• info lit
• delivery systems geared to users with a
  particular bkgrnd capability
• Producers vs Consumers
• Access to Appropirate Content-

11
Access to Appropriate Contentmajor issues

• Licensing and the effect on walk-ins
• Authentication systems and granularity
• Best-sellers may be first digitized and easiest
  to obtain
• IP restrictions and a narrowing Info Commons
• Content that may not be the right language,
  discourse level, age level, etc.
• Disparity btwn those w/resources to pay for
  content and those w/o

12
Access to Contentmajor implications

• Favoring of content that is most easily
  accessible
• Economics will favor organizations with more
  resources for digitizing, metadata creation,
  aggregation, user interfaces
• Users will favor particular content sources
• wont search lots of diff sources if cant use
  the images seamlessly
• Easily accessible info will get used often, while
  hard to access info will be marginalized

13
Divide Indicator Project

• Spring 2002 meeting to generate indicator list
  for each Divide area (useful for planning, study,
  analysis)
• Possible follow-ups
• Use findings to produce analytic study of Divide,
  where it stands, how one might be able to
  evaluate programs crafted to address it, what
  kinds of approaches are likely doomed, etc.
• Follow-up meeting of key policy and funding
  people, examining ways we might use indicators to
  craft and/or evaluate programs/projects more
  likely to be successful
• Partner w/one or more groups to engage
  in/evaluate a project to address 1 or 2 small
  areas, ...

14
Design Issues

• Examine factors that inhibit efficient and
  effective use of an information system
• Examine how best to design systems to match the
  literacy levels, technological capabilities, and
  other characteristics of the user
• Principles, Practices, and Guidelines for Good
  Design for Facilitating Access (screen design,
  searching navigation, metadata description,
  info structures organization, usability
  testing, )
• Build Adaptive Systems

15
Good Design Principles

• Promote good design practices throughout the
  Design community
• Get the Design community to sign on to a set of
  Principles for Good Design-
• Create Guides Best Practices Documents-

16
Possible Good Design Principles

• Dont disenfranchise users who have slow
  processors, older browsers, low bandwidth, visual
  impairment, etc.
• Clearly note the recency of any information
  resource
• Make sure that a user can easily determine what
  organization/agency created or contributed to an
  information resource

17
Important Dimensions toGood Design Principles

• screen design
• searching navigation
• metadata description
• info structures organization
• usability testing

18
Our Resources related toGood Design Principles

• Screen Design - The visual design of the screen
  can impact usability. Color, font, the use of
  images, and layout of screen elements are
  essential design components.
• Searching and Navigation - Ease of navigation and
  search/browsing options are critical components
  of usability.
• Metadata and Description - Good metadata and site
  description will help users find the appropriate
  website.
• Information Structures and Organization - How
  information is organized and categorized shapes
  access. For systems with an underlying searchable
  database, the structure of the database itself
  will determine the outcome of searches.
• Usability Testing - Includes resources on how to
  evaluate sites and on testing for usability.

19
Build Adaptive Systems

• Build Systems that adapt the same back-end
  information to different user profiles (different
  knowledge bases, different technical
  capabilities, different cognitive structures)
• User profiles may include advanced researcher in
  a particular subject area, general undergraduate
  student, high school student,
• Different profiles will need different user
  interfaces, navigation, searching vocabulary,
  file formats and sizes, ...

20

• Design
• User Interface
• Navigation
• Browse
• Search
• Efficient bandwidth use

User Profiles Combination of dimensions and
purpose

• Content
• Mark-up
• Various metadata
• Protection features

knowledge base
Technological capibilities

• Design functional examples
• Differing screen arrangements
• Differing functional options
• Vocabulary mapping
• Diminishing image size

Age
language/culture
Dimensions

• Purpose
• Casual user
• K12 student, lifelong learner
• Information/hobby
• Scholar/preservation
• Business
• (Colorado Dig Proj)
• Cultural tourist
• Casual user
• Scholar
• (CIMI)

21
Adaptive Systemswhat theyll do

• Can serve different audiences (general public,
  purposeful inquirer cultural tourist, domain
  specialist)
• Each profile audience will
• see a level of discourse addressed to them
• experience a user interface appropriate to their
  profile
• use vocabulary they are familiar with
• Yet all will be using the same back-end set of
  information

22
Adaptive Systemshow theyll work

• Passing search terms through a thesaurus to map
  specialist vocabulary to/from vernacular
• Adapting vocabulary from curatorial language into
  common discourse development of markup
  extensions to EAD/CIMI/CIDOC to allow description
  for different audiences
• In general, specialized users will experience
  more text-based interfaces, while general users
  will experience more graphic/visual interfaces

23
Adaptive Systemsdevelopment plan

• Research and experimentation
• Profile 5-10 different user communities
• Mechanize 2-3 different information delivery
  systems
• Demonstrate the utility of this approach (proof
  of concept) for further research and design

24
Joint CDL/UCLA project

• Use OAC/MOAC and/or JARDA (concentrating on
  images and Finding Aids that include images)
• Profile and construct a series of different
  front-ends for different audiences
• Front-ends-
• Target Audiences-
• Evaluate

25
Profile and construct a series of different
front-ends for different audiencesFront-ends to
include

• Screen design for searching and for display
• Browsing, probably with some high-level
  categorization/grouping
• Searching
• Vocabulary mapped through thesauri

26
Profile and construct a series of different
front-ends for different audiencesTarget
audiences might include

• 4th grade students
• 12th grade students
• 4th grade teachers
• 12th grade teachers
• University faculty
• Some people outside the history/social studies
  sector

27
Adaptive Systems Tentative Timeline

• Winter 2002
• Explore literature on interface and searching
  issues (CO data, CIMI, kids)
• Begin working with 12th and 4th grade teachers
• Begin discussions with CDL programmers
• Spring 2002
• Pre-test various groups with conventional EAD
  interface
• Mock up and begin testing interface screens and
  searching strategies
• Summer 2002
• Preliminary implementation and pre-test
• Fall 2002
• Further implementation, full testing, and
  evaluation

28
What does this all mean forInfo Professionals?

• Good set of Design Guidelines
• Feasibility of Adaptive Systems that deliver the
  same back-end info tailored to different sets of
  user needs

29
Adaptive SystemsUCLA/Pacific Bell Initiative for
21st Century Literacies

• Howard Besser
• UCLA School of Education Information
• http//www.newliteracies.gseis.ucla.edu/
• http//www.gseis.ucla.edu/howard/
• Besser, Howard. The Next Digital Divides,
  Teaching to Change LA 12, Spring 2001,
  http//www.tcla.gseis.ucla.edu/divide/politics/bes
  ser.html