Integration of Communication and Learning Material

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Integration of Communication and Learning
Material a Guide for the Design of
Collaborative Learning EnvironmentsThomas
Herrmann Andrea KienleUniversity of Dortmund
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Overview

• Theory A context-oriented communication model
• Functionality and process of the Collaborative
  Learning Environment KOLUMBUS
• Empirical results

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Communication model
B
A
receiving activity
conveying activity
expression
deve- loping ideas
inner context of A
inner context of B
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Communication model
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Communication and Context

• Context supports the development of the
  communication concept
• Context helps to find out what is meant
• Context helps to detect misunderstandings
• Context supplements the expression
• Context provide anchors to others activities and
  experience
• Context influences the extent of explicitness
• ? Maximal explicitness leads to minimal
  understanding

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Requirements for Collaborative Learning
Environments

• Provide the information space to work on a
  mutual, problem-oriented task
• Seamless integration of
• Individual AND joint learning (incl. agreement)
• Research and learning
• The context-oriented model implies
• Integration of context (the represented material)
  and current communicative contributions
• Individual and flexible presentation and
  extendibility of the content (e.g. links, hide
  show)
• Awareness features

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Requirements for Collaborative Learning
Environments

• The task has to initiate a process of
  investigation and research
• The system has to support and to intertwine
  different phases of this process
• Individual learning
• Work with others material
• Collaboration and identification of consensus and
  disagreement
• to stimulate the exchange between students and
  their delivering of a mutual result

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Collaborative LearningProcess
group of students
teacher
student
working with the material of others
working with own material
preparing
collaborating
negotiating
collaborative learning environment
Information sources
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Collaborative LearningProcess
group of students
teacher
student
working with the material of others
working with own material
preparing
collaborating
Research together with Gerry Stahl
negotiating
collaborative learning environment
Information sources
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The Concept of KOLUMBUS

• The process of collaborative learning is
  supported
• Web-based, only webbrowser necessary
• Easy upload of material (as context information)
• Distinction between individualwork and the
  resultsof a teamworkby differentiated access
  rights
• Annotations to the basic itemsof the available
  material (as communicative contributions)
• Joint results through negotiations

working with the material of others
working with own material
collaborating
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KOLUMBUS Functionality
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Annotations in KOLUMBUS
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Treeview
Paperview
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Different roles in KOLUMBUS

• Items in the system are assigned to
• Co-Authors
• Take responsibility for their content
• Specify the group of recipients
• Are allowed to modify their items
• Recipients
• Get hints (new-icon)
• Should read the content, use it, make annotations
  
• Can become authors if proposed

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Negotiation why?

• To learn from each other by reflecting on others
  results and relating them to the own work in
  terms of agreeing or disagreeing or seeking for
  understanding
• Therefore students should be encouraged
• to take over responsibility for a mutual result
  (as co- authors)
• agree on a set of recipients
• Problem How to determine the authors or the
  recipients of a document in a larger group?
• Solution support of voting and commenting as
  part of a negotiation process

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Co-Authoring Negotiation Agreeing on mutual
results
authors
Bob
Alice
Chris
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Experience with KOLUMBUS Seminar case study

• Mandatory course IuG-FIT (4/01-9/01)
• Involved 16 students and 2 organizers
• Task individual preparation of a detailled
  outline for a presentation commenting the
  outlines of others to improve consistence and to
  avoid overlapping presentations
• Type of evaluation
• Logfiles
• 18 semi-structured interviews after the usage of
  the system

• Research questions were focused on material and
  annotations
• Which functions were used?
• How did the exchange of knowledge suceed?

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Experience with KOLUMBUS workgroup case study

• Experiments on Workgroups (12/01)
• Participants 4 workgroups, each 3-5 persons
• Task reflecting the state of work in the
  research center and finding of topics which
  should be discussed on a meeting of all the
  groups
• Type of evaluation
• Observation of the usage
• 4 group interviews

• Main Question concerning negotiation
• How far is it possible to find a consensus with
  the help of Kolumbus?

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Experience with KOLUMBUS Communication with
annotations

• Benefits
• Less explanation by selecting a contextualizing
  position
• Discussion threads were developed
• Problems
• - Missing functionality for links between
  discussion threads (if annotations were related
  to each other but located in different branches
  of the tree)
• Insufficient perceptibility of new
  communication contributions (author and date
  should always be immediately perceptible)
• - Discussion threads were not sufficiently
  comprehensible (alternatives for the ordering of
  annotations were demanded)

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Dealing with the integration of communication and
material
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• ? at first, the integration was perceived as
  unusual
• ? The more it was used the more functionality was
  expected
• Benefits
• The archive of former seminars was used
• Tree- and paper-view
• To see the work of others
• Problems
• Creation of an appropriate content structure
• Discussion let to uncontrollable growth of the
  content areas

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Negotiation

• Benefits
• Proposals were made and partially accepted
• Problems the simplicity was not appreciated
• voters should not be anonymous
• It should be comprehensible how others have voted
• Overview over the ongoing negotiations and their
  state
• votes should be changeable in the course of
  negotiation
• Comments should be directly connectable to the
  votes (e.g. to explain a vote, to argue against
  it)

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Co-Authoring Negotiation Agreeing on mutual
results
Potential Co-authors
authors
Bob
Alice
Chris
propose Co-authors
vote
KOLUMBUS
statement
negotiation
evaluate
Set rights
x
Discussion of the statement
comments
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Co-Authoring Negotiation Agreeing on mutual
results
Potential Co-authors
authors
Bob
Alice
Chris
propose Co-authors
vote
KOLUMBUS
statement
negotiation
evaluate
Set rights
x
Discussion of the statement
comments
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Administration of the access rights

• Benefits
• The group of the recipients of a contribution
  can be reduced/extended
• The group of authors of an contribution is
  extendable
• If -of-authors gt 1, the additional recipients
  have to be negotiated
• Problems
• Flexible building of groups was not used
• ? The assigning of access rights must be more
  seamlessly integrated into the process of
  creating an item

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Relevance of communicative facilitation and
transparence of the collaborative process I

• the intended process has to be continuously
  explained
• Providing an appropriate structure into which the
  content can be sorted in
• giving hints what can happen next, on which
  contributions should someone react, when should
  s.th. be proposed, should the voting start
• Role models are needed (in the seminar case the
  organizers)
• The interaction between students has to be
  stimulated
• Summarizing the state of the discussion

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Relevance of communicative facilitation and
transparence of the collaborative process II

• All participants also the students should have
  the possibility to play the role of a facilitator
• Differentiation between communicative
  contributions should be possible organizational
  hints vs. content related contributions

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Summary

• Design rationale of KOLUMBUS
• Task- and process-oriented
• Integration of individual and joint learning
  material and communication
• Negotiation for mutual results
• Further development and research
• Taylorable functionality for negotiation
• Support for facilitation
• Distinction between content- and
  facilitation-oriented communication
• Improved structuring of content and annotations