Team MembersPhong: phong[at]colorado[dot]edu Scotty: scott.allen[at]colorado[dot]edu Problem StatementCollaborative learning often occur in physical group interaction that allows for the active exchange of ideas by participants. Examples of this these types of systems include the EDC and classroom interactions. However, discussion and learning often extend beyond the physical location of collaborative planning and the classroom. In addition, not all stake-holders can participate in person. The EDC project would like to add asynchronous participation by allowing stake-holders to add information, comments, or questions to a web reflection space. The ability to support asynchronous interaction would also be useful to other systems. We would like to create an initial prototype of a wiki that would allow "conversations" between contributors to a wiki document. Specifically we would like to look at how tools such as discussion (threaded or not) and annotation tools (contextualized by users) would help to capture not only the information generated during a meeting but also some of the interaction context that would help those not at a meeting to interpret the information. Our intent is to use the EDC as specific context of our investigation into asynchronous interaction approach. We intent to incorporate what we learned into other systems and context where applicable. RationaleThe problem of asynchronous interaction is common to many systems. We briefly discussed the need of the EDC for asynchronous interaction capability but the same issue also surface in classrooms. As students with different schedules, both of us often need to collaborate across time and distance. To produce a common document we use a word processing program coupled with email, or if it is available, a class wiki. Many word processors, such as Microsoft Word, include a collaborate editing feature where different users may edit a document. The word processor will display each user's addition or changes in a different color and the original document owner may choose to accept or reject a suggested change. The feature is easy to use but we find its serial nature to be limiting. For instance, it is convenient for the document owner to review suggested changes, but if different reviewers have diverging suggestions, the document owner must resolve these differences on her own. In addition, reviewers do not have access to other reviewers' comments. As a result, this collaboration is a central star model where the document owner interacts with one reviewer at a time. The other approach of a class wiki promotes group interaction by enabling multiple users to collaboratively contribute to a common document. Although the wiki is better suited to group authoring we also find that its current implementations to be limiting. For instance, users cannot separate text intended for document's eventual content from comments regarding the production process (e.g. questions regarding what should be included or comments that provided needed info). In addition, users need provide their own user context by adding their name, an explicit time when the comment was added, and reference to specific place in the document that a comment addresses (e.g. anchoring). We believe that this asynchronous interactivity question has been addressed before, but their implementation may not fit users' preferred workflow or task sequence. By examining this issue we will learn to build online capabilities to will support collaborative learning through distributed cognition. Research / Implementation FocusThe wiki is a great start to promote collaboration but we propose to enhance its collaborative potential by making it easer for users to collaborate asynchronously by incorporating discussion and annotation tools. In addition, we propose to also simplify the process by which participants can capture some of the social context. For example, we would like to investigate if is feasible to capture context by separating document content from information regarding the collaborative and document production process and enhance users' ability to manage these "meta conversations"? Specifically we'd like to investigate the following questions:
Project Approach / Technical ImplementationWe propose to use a user and task centered design process to our implementation. We like to begin with a review of the research literature and investigate how researchers have conceptualize this question and how they have implemented solutions to help users manage meta information. Next, we would interview potential users, in this case, from this and other classes that have used a wiki, to get a sense of users' needs. Next, we would produce several low fidelity prototypes and a high fidelity prototype that would be tested via think-aloud protocols with users. For our implementation we propose to use mediaWiki, the open source software that supports Wikipedia, and create extensions to implement our meta conversation capability. We had considered using swiki but neither of us are fluent in Squeak. We consulted with Hal and he indicated that it would be acceptable to use mediaWiki for our prototype given the amount of time available to us to complete the project. Hal would then implement a connector to our prototype should he find it appropriate. At this time our main anticipated challenge is to understand mediaWiki and how to create extensions for this open source software. However, our familiarity with PHP (the language used to implement mediaWiki) should provide us with a head start. Relationship to CourseOur proposed project directly addresses the theme of design for collaboration. We hope to integrate both a conceptual approach in understanding collaborative editing and to implement some of what we learn in an initial prototype.Initial ReferencesArias, E. G., Eden, H., Fischer, G., Gorman, A., & Scharff, E. (2000) "Transcending the Individual Human Mind—Creating Shared Understanding through Collaborative Design," ACM Transactions on Computer Human-Interaction, 7(1), pp. 84-113. Fischer, G., Lemke, A.C., McCall, R., and Morch, A. 1996. Making Argumentation Serve Design. In T. Moran and J. Carrol (eds), Design Rationale: Concepts, Techniques, and Use. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Hillsdale, NJ. Moran, T.P., Carroll, J.M. (eds) 1996. Design Rationale: Concepts, Techniques, and Use. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Hillsdale, NJ.
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