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Technological Supportfor

Educational Communities

Michael Bieber

Information Systems Department

College of Computing SciencesOctober 10, 2001

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On-Line Support forEducational Communities

• More efficient– ubiquitous access (anytime, anyplace)– information/opinions recorded for future

reference– streamlined administrative meetings

• More effective (“sense of community”)– makes people feel part of a group– all inclusive, regardless of location

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Four Educational Communities

• IS Graduate Students (advising)

• IS Co-op Students

• IS Department

• individual IS Courses

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side note: NJIT has a lot of Community Research Expertise

• Deek: educational communities• Hiltz, Turoff: educational, governmental, business,

research communities• Bieber et al.: virtual community infrastructure• Whitworth: legitimacy and ethics• department-wide: counter-terrorism• outside IS: many others... • Gurstein (SOM): community informatics

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On-Line Community Components

• people

• shared-purpose

• policies– conduct within the community

(rituals, rules, guidelines, norms)

– tacit expectations

• computer support

* from Jenny Preece: On-line Communities [2000]

IS Graduate Students(Advising)• people

– potential applicants, current students, graduate advising office

• shared-purpose: advising, course feedback

• policies– you can always visit the advisor, but– check Web site first– then ask questions in discussion forum

(so everyone can benefit from answers)– provide course feedback (may be anonymous)

• computer support– Web Site: http://is.njit.edu/msis/– Discussion Forum: http://webboard.njit.edu:8080/~GISadvise/

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Conferences All Messages | 2 New | 0 Attn

+Entry Request Conference (5)+ Necessary MS IS Information (1)+ Necessary IS Ph.D. Information (32)+ Necessary Distance Learning Information (9)— MS Applicants Questions (66, 1 New)

GMAT score (senthil chenniappa) 10/4/01 + IS vs. CS / GMAT or GRE? 9/24/01 (4) + Part-Time Course Scheduling 9/21/01 (2) + Is GMAT, GRE, etc. Required? 9/18/01 (2) + Last Minute Questions 9/9/01 (2) + Admission with a low undergrad GPA 9/7/01 (2) + Question about Credits from India 8/30/01 (2) + General Question 7/17/01 (2) + Bridge courses - CIS 465 & CIS 505 6/8/01 (6) Do NOT post your Student ID/SSN here (Michael Bieber) 5/17/01 Next Bottom

+ Ph.D. Applicants Questions (1)+ Current MS Students Advising Questions (54, 1 New) + Current Ph.D. Students Advising Questions (6)+ Distance Learning Advising - Questions (1)+ Comments by Others (1)+ Administrative Conference (2)+ Course Evaluations (44)+ Suggestions and Feedback (2)

Graduate Advising

WebBoard Conferences

(showing number of comments in each)

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Computer Support

• Discussion --> Discussion Forum

WebBoard– create a comment– reply to a comment– see all new comments– create a conference

(similar functionality on WebCT)

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Computer Support

• Discussion --> WebBoard Discussion Forum(what information to include)

• Information --> MS IS Web site

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Co-Op Community• people

– co-op students, professor, co-op office, supervisors

• shared-purpose: learning during the co-op experience

• policies/assumptions– participants should introduce themselves

– students must post 1 comment and 2 replies bi-monthly

– students can ask for advice with any kind of problem

– separate private areas for students and for supervisors

• computer support– Discussion Forum: http://webboard.njit.edu:8080/~SP2001CIS590-591-592-IS/

(italics) planned additions after Spring 2001

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Conferences All Messages | 0 New | 0 Attn

+ Co-op Administration (10)+ Questions, Problems, Advice, Misc. (1)+ Getting to Know You (45)— Work Discussion (A-L) (128)

Work experience with different projects (Vauhini Vakati) 5/10/01 + Discussion#3 4/13/01 (2) Jane Liao-Panasonic (DISCUSSION 3) (Zhen Liao) 4/12/01 Jane Liao-Panasonic (DISCUSSION 2) (Zhen Liao) 4/12/01 + Status Report 3/27/01 (10) + Discussion 3/26/01 (6) + Status report and Issue 3/26/01 (2) Discussion#2-Kartik Bayyareddy (ADP) (Kartik Bayyareddy) 3/25/01 + Guru Ramnath Kathiresan - Work Description 3/19/01 (5) + Kartik Bayyareddy-ADP 3/13/01 (9) + Dipal Gandhi- ADP Inc. 3/12/01 (13) + Work Description (Sridhar Anne) 3/12/01 (15) + Ramnish Gupta (netForensics) 3/12/01 (8) + Madhu S Kolla(ADP) 3/10/01 (9) + Amit Lalwani (NeST Technologies) 3/10/01 (8) + Work Description - Vijay Babaria 3/9/01 (10) + Information System & infrastructure 3/7/01 (9) + ePlanets 3/5/01 (10) + Jane Liao--Panasonic 2/23/01 (8)

+ Work Discussion (M-Z) (87)+ Final Report (12)

ISCo-Op WebBoard

Conferences

(showing number of comments in each)

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IS Department• people

– faculty, Ph.D. students, research fellows, invited guests, dean

• shared-purpose– creating a close-knit community for conducting education, research, and

(streamlined) administration

• policies– a major collaboration forum: everyone should participate! – private discussions for certain groups (e.g., faculty meeting; recruiting; research

teams)

• computer support– Discussion Forum: http://fire.njit.edu:8080/~ISSeminar/– Web Site: http://is.njit.edu/

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Conferences All Messages | 282 New | 0 Attn

+ America Under Attack (24, 4 New) + experiment discussion (110, 66 New) + facultyresearchAgenda (69) + IS dept meeting 2001 (89) + New Faculty Orientation (14, 4 New) + Qualitative Research (54, 51 New) + Recruiting2001 (195, 2 New) + Seminar-Fall2001 (85) + Virtual Communities (93) + Seminarspr2001 (170)+ Introductions (64) + ISClubHouse (275, 1 New) + Events & Meetings (137, 30 New) + Article Reviews (91, 18 New) + IS website design (69, 24 New) + New Students (86, 9 New) + State of the art (2)+ PublicForum (163, 38 New) + Useful & interesting websites (45) + HICSS35 (24)+ Paper Fair (2, 1 New) + Webcenter project (221, 49 New) . . .

IS Department WebBoard

Conferences

(showing number of comments in each)

CIS677 (a course community)• people

– students (Newark, Mt. Laurel, Distance), professors

• shared-purpose: learning from each other

• policies– students from all sections mixed into small discussion groups– participants introduce themselves– 1 comment and 2 replies weekly– on-line project presentations

• computer support– Web Site: http://ccsweb.njit.edu/~bieber/CIS677S01/

– Discussion: http://webboard.njit.edu:8080/~ArchiveSP2001CIS677_All_Sections/

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Conferences All Messages | 0 New | 0 Attn

+ General Admin - all sections (24)+ General Admin - Distance sections (30)+ General Admin - Wednesday sections (20)+ Final Exam (545)+ Questions and Answers (202)+ General Discussion (16)+ Feedback (18)+ Interesting Weekly Materials (47)+ Other Interesting Stuff (19)+ Getting to Know You (102)+ Chunking A-C (166)+ Chunking D-I (262)+ Chunking J-Ma and Y (300)+ Chunking Mc-P and Z (251)+ Chunking R-W (249)+ Discussion A-G (Distance) (218)+ Discussion H-O (Distance) (293)+ Discussion P-Z (Distance) (266)+ Mentoring Teams Matchmaking (Distance) (41)+ Intermediate Grader Discussion (11)+ Individual Article Review Approval - Spring 2001 (242)+ Individual Article Review Approval - Fall 2000 (225)+ Individual Article Review Approval - Spring 2000 (361)+ mentoring team - ethics (distance) (43)+ mentoring team - strategic (distance) (9)+ mentoring team - vitual orgs (distance) (45)+ private (1)+ Testing Testing... (15)

CIS677 WebBoard Conferences

(showing number of comments in each)

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Learning & CommunitiesLearning is a constructionist, often social activity occurring through knowledge building (Vygotsky, 1962). Knowledge building activities include contributing to, authoring within, discussing, sharing, exploring, deploying a collective knowledge base (O’Neill & Gomez 1994; Perkins 1993). People learn as they navigate to solve problems (Koschmann et al, 1996). Learning requires cognitive flexibility (Spiro et al. 1991), and results from interaction with people having different experiences and perspectives (Goldman-Segall et al. 1998). Much learning between and within communities occurs with boundaries rich in interactions, whether formal, informal, or through a computer based system (Wenger 1998). Student-centered teaching theories (McCown & Driscoll 1995) state that students learn through collaboration.

* Bieber et al. (2002). “Towards Knowledge-Sharing and Learning in Virtual Professional Communities,” 35th HICSS Conference

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On-Line Support forEducational Communities

• More efficient– ubiquitous access (anytime, anyplace)– information/opinions recorded for future

reference– streamlined administrative meetings

• More effective (“sense of community”)– makes people feel part of a group– all inclusive, regardless of location

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References• Bieber, M., I. Im, R. Rice, R.Goldman-Segall, R. Paul, E. Stohr, S. Hiltz, J. Preece, M. Turoff. (2002). Towards

Knowledge-Sharing and Learning in Virtual Professional Communities. Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

• Goldman-Segall, R., Rao, Srinivasan V. (1998). A Collaborative On-Line Digital Data Tool for Creating Living Narratives in Organizational Knowledge Systems, Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), Hawaii.

• Koschmann (1996), CSCL, Theory and Practice of an emerging paradigm. 1-23.Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. • McCown, R. R. & Driscoll, M. P. (1995). Using Collaborative Writing and Problem-Based Learning in the College

Classroom. Proceedings of the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning Conference, 1995. • O'Neill, D. K., & Gomez, L. M. (1994). The collaboratory notebook: A distributed knowledge-building environment

for project-enhanced learning. Proceedings of Ed-Media '94, Vancouver. • Perin, C. (1991). Electronic social fields in bureaucracies. Comm. of the ACM, 34(12), 75-82. • Preece. J. (2000). Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability. Chichester, England: John

Wiley. • Spiro, R. J., Feltovich, P. J., Jacobson, M. J. & Coulson, R. L. (1991). Cognitive Flexibility, Constructivism, and

Hypertext. Educational Technology, 24-33. • Vygotsky, L. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA. MIT Press. • Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: The social fabric of a learning organization. NY, NY: Cambridge U.

Press.