Collaboration in Emerging Ecological Practice

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• Collaboration in Emerging Ecological Practice
• Human-Computer Interaction in
• Biodiversity Informatics Workshop
• June 2, 2005
• Bonnie A. Nardi
• Department of Informatics
• School of Information and Computer Science
• University of California, Irvine

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My background

• Anthropologist
• Computer-supported collaborative work
• Science studies (how does science work?)
• Activity theory (culture and cognition)

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Research on collaborative tools for ecologists
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Why Ecology?

• Pressing needs to understand environmental change
• Moment in time ecology transforming to big
  science
• Activity theory asks how such transformations
  happen
• Interesting issues of changes in
  collaborative
• technologies and practices during such
  transformations

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General approach to my work

• Ethnographic studies of work practices
• Design of new tools
• Prototype, test new tools to evaluate their
  usefulness and usability
• working with technical people

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Research on emerging practice in ecology

• Current practice single investigator or small
  teams
• Emerging practice larger teams, more data, more
  technology
• Transforming to big science (or trying to)

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Big science

• Broad, problem-directed goals
• Interdisciplinary teams of scientists, engineers,
  technicians
• Work is often distributed
• Extensive instrumentation (such as NEON sensor
  network)
• Processing of large volumes of data
• Projects are professionally managed

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Drivers of move to big science in ecology

• Long Term Ecological Research Network (LTER)
• EcoVisions Project of Ecological Society of
  America
• NEON, CUAHSI (hydrology), CLEANER, and others
• Availability of terabyte scale datasets from
  NASA, DOE, EPA,
• USGS and other government agencies
• Individual scientists discovering these
  datasets

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Collaboration in Ecology

• As ecology scales up to big science, need for
  different
• kinds of collaboration
• interdisciplinary
• distributed
• involves sharing and interpreting large volumes
  of data
• What kinds of technologies will sustain such
  collaboration?
• Are the problems similar to those of other
  fields?

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Something that might be unique to ecology

• Combination of
• Data from heterogeneous sources, including
  historical
• field-based data which can be quite old
• Very complex interactions among variables
• living things in complex contexts

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What Ive done so far
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Collaboration in Ecology Workshop at UC Irvine,
October, 2004

• Karen Baker (data manager)
• Stephen Bocking (historian who studies ecology)
• Scott Collins (ecologist)
• Paul Dourish (computer scientist)
• Cliff Duke (ESA)
• Anna Gold (librarian)
• Bryan Heidorn (librarian)
• Vivian Hutchison (USGS)
• Roberta Lamb (computer scientist)
• Renee Miller (computer scientist)
• Gary Olson (psychologist)
• Diane Pataki (ecologist)

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Collaboration in Ecology Workshop

• Mark Schildhaeur (NCEAS)
• Katie Suding (ecologist)
• Bill Tomlinson (computer scientist)
• Ferdinando Villa (ecologist)
• Ann Zimmerman (librarian and co-organizer)

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What else

• NSF Grant submitted Collaboration in
  Transformational Science
• (with Ann Zimmerman at U Michigan and Susan Sim,
  UCI)
• Ongoing interviews with ecologists at UC Irvine
• Participation in NEON
• Member NEON (National Ecological Observatory
  Network)
• Design Consortiums Information Technology and
  
• Communication Subcommittee (Cyberinfrastructur
  e)

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What else

• Ph.D. student will study seismologists at UC San
  Diego this
• summer
• How they work with technicians and engineers to
  configure
• distributed sensors and design experiments

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Preliminary ideas on collaboration problems of
interest

• Dating
• Design
• Data

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Dating

• Problem
• Find collaborators with special expertise in
  a
• particular area of ecology or in another
  field
• As in dating, half the problem is locating
  the right person and the
• other half is getting the relationship to
  work
• Possible Solution
• Online directory (like Friendster)
• Service for linking people to collaborate in
  small
• light-weight projects to get to know each
  other

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Design

• Problem
• Experiments with large sensor network
• Or analyses with government databases
• How to design large experiments, analyses,
  observations?
• Solutions ??
• Need ethnographic work here

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Data

• Problem
• NCEAS et al. working on data problems of data
• integration, metadata
• How to interpet data scientists did not
  collect,
• especially when there are large volumes of
  data

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Interpreting data

• Data are not simple carriers of meaning.
  Converting raw data
• into scientific or social meaning is an active,
  context-dependent
• process (Birnholtz and Bietz, 2003)
• Solution
• Talk to others about their experiences with
  the data

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People talk about data to interpret it

• Zimmerman interviewed an ecologist who was
  formerly an
• economist
• In economics, typically people are working with a
  shared data set.
• There are hundreds of people that work with the
  current population
• survey, for example, and you can go and find out,
  Well, what are
• the problems with this data set? Everyone can
  tell you, Oh yeah,
• 79 was a really bad year, and theres a glitch,
  and you are going to
• have to reprocess this field if you want to use
  it.

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Solution Data Conversations

• Communications research has shown that
  conversation is
• efficient for clarification, coordination,
  updates, brainstorming,
• interpretation, critiquing and elaboration of
  complex ideas.
• Harvest electronic conversations in instant
  messaging, wikis,
• blogs, chats, listservs.
• Make available to wider group of scientists
• Tools for summary and presentation needed

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Conclusion Outputs of research

• a. New understandings of transformational science
• b. New collaborative tools for ecologists working
  toward
• transformational science
• c. Testing of ideas about collaboration in
  activity theory
• (which involve a and b).