From Open Content Repositories to Open Sensemaking CommunitiesSimon Buckingham Shum

Knowledge Media Institute Open University, UK

www.kmi.open.ac.uk/sbssbs@acm.org

Advancing the Effectiveness & Sustainability of Open Education Annual Instructional Technology Conference Utah State University 28-30 Sept. 2005

OverviewThe Open University

Challenges4 Challenges for Open LearningA Missing Layer in Open Learning Infrastructures

Infrastructure for Open Sensemaking CommunitiesCollaboration SoftwareDiscourse Mapping

The Open University, UKLabour Government initiative in 1960s University of the Air working with BBC. University education for all. No entrance qualifications.Questioned by many establishment institutions. Attracted staff with strong social ethos. Opened in 1971. Open Content from the start on the BBC

The Open University, UKEuropes largest university: >220,000 students/yr. 35% UK undergrads.UKs largest e-university: 170,000 students onlineNow ranked as one the UKs top teaching universities (17/23 subjects rated Excellent by UK QAA)Several 5/5* research centres (UK RAE 2000)Large multimedia repository of distance learning materialsMission to broaden educational access globally, and esp. to traditionally low-achieving grps (32%

SOL: Supported Open LearningFrom learning to learn again, through to undergrad, postgrad. and professional degrees (MBA; Teaching; Nursing)Integrated multimedia learning packsPedagogy embedded in the materialsPersonal tutor (Associate Lecturer)Student cohort groupPeriodic face-to-face contact with peers and Associate LecturerVariable amount of e-contact (sync/async) depending on the course, and student preference

Knowledge Media Institute (KMi)Created in 1995: now a 60-strong instituteKnowledge Mediathe craft, design and science of creating digital tools for knowledge construction and negotiationModus operandi: invention + researchPrototype and evaluate candidate next generation tools with real user communitiesWithin the OU and with many other contextsAcademic research institute with doctoral training, post-docs, and career trackStrategic ThreadsSemantic WebSocial SoftwareNarrative HypermediaCollaborative Web Media

Open Learning: 4 Challenges

Open Learning: 4 ChallengesEngage the instructional design and computer-supported collaborative learning communitiesContextualise this knowledge to Open Learning Pedagogy

Develop engaging, integrated tools to support learningDevelop engaging, integrated tools to provide social support

Open Learning: 4 challengesEngage the instructional design and computer-supported collaborative learning communities

Contextualise this knowledge to Open Learning Pedagogy

Develop engaging, integrated tools to support learning

Develop engaging, integrated tools to provide social supportMaking sure that our tool devpt. efforts are giving the learners as much attention as the educatorsHow rigorously has Open Content been evaluated? Deploying tools to scaffold not overwhelm

Open Learning: 4 challengesEngage the instructional design and computer-supported collaborative learning communities

Contextualise this knowledge to Open Learning Pedagogy

Develop engaging, integrated tools to support learning

Develop engaging, integrated tools to provide social supportAre there distinctive dimensions to Open Learning Pedagogy, compared to normal study?or is Open Learning just another spin on familiar e-learning scenarios?Is Open Learning always going to be the poor cousin of Fully Supported Learning?or could it in fact overtake its parents through greater use and refinement?Developing tools to support p2p emergent community in the absence of institutionally defined cohortsDo distance/e-learning focused institutions have a better pedagogical foundation for Open Content?

Open Learning: 4 challengesEngage the instructional design and computer-supported collaborative learning communities

Contextualise this knowledge to Open Learning Pedagogy

Develop engaging, integrated tools to support learning

Develop engaging, integrated tools to provide social supportWhat is the design space for generic tools which could be developed to support any Open Content offering?

A Missing Layer in the Open Content Infrastructure

Giving content a social lifeFrom raw learning resources (what we push to the learner)

Giving content a social lifeto layers of tools for sensemaking (what the learners construct for themselves)

Giving content a social lifecreating a web of ideas, open and evolving

Giving content a social lifecreating a sensemaking community

A missing layer in the Open Content infrastructure

SensemakingSensemaking is a term used in relation to students (Bell), information analysts (Card), organisational actors (Weick/Dervin)Sensemaking is about such things as placement of items into frameworks, comprehending, redressing surprise, constructing meaning, interacting in pursuit of mutual understanding, and patterning. (Weick, 1995, p.6)Essentially, it is what we do in the face of uncertainty and ambiguity: What does this mean? (contextualisation) What tools will help learner(s) to articulate and negotiate (possibly conflicting) interpretations? open sensemaking communities

Anatomy of the sensemaking layersensemakingHow much does the system know about this layer? What kinds of services can it enable for students?Tools to facilitate emergent social structures, e.g.Diverse communication channels for p2p/group interactionSelf-organising student cohortsPeer ratings for p2p supportVisualizations of community activityAgents monitoring forumsTools to construct and publish interpretations, e.g.Level 1: annotations, portfolios, web boards, blogs, wikisLevel 2: semantic structure to provoke deeper personal reflection enable collaborative annotation and discourse

Emerging Tools for Open Sensemaking Communities

Anatomy of the sensemaking layercommunitysensemakingdiscourseHow much does the system know about this layer? What kinds of services can it enable for students?Tools to facilitate emergent social structures, e.g.Diverse communication channels for p2p/group interactionSelf-organising student cohortsPeer ratings for p2p supportVisualizations of community activityAgents monitoring forumsTools to construct and publish interpretations, e.g.Level 1: annotations, portfolios, web boards, blogs, wikisLevel 2: semantic structure to provoke deeper personal reflection enable collaborative annotation and discourse

Presence visualizationInstant messaging+Presence overlaid onto geographic and conceptual maps

BuddySpace in OU Languages Course

BuddySpace for NASA remote science teams

Hexagon: lo-fi visual presence & awarenessSmall Hexes show periodically updated snapshots of people, availability, and activity in the department

Text + voice chat options

Just needs a webcam and Flash plug-in for Web browser

FlashMeeting: Web video conf.

Anatomy of the sensemaking layercommunitysensemakingdiscourseHow much does the system know about this layer? What kinds of services can it enable for students?Tools to facilitate emergent social structures, e.g.Diverse communication channels for p2p/group interactionSelf-organising student cohortsPeer ratings for p2p supportVisualizations of community activityAgents monitoring forumsTools to construct and publish interpretations, e.g.Level 1: annotations, portfolios, web boards, blogs, wikisLevel 2: semantic structure to provoke deeper personal reflection enable collaborative annotation and discourse

Giving documents a social life (Brown & Duguid, 1996)Collective sensemaking: what are the key contributions in this ?

Web-based, conversational peer review in an e-journala case study of structuring discourse within an online sensemaking community

Peer review dimensions

Journal of Interactive Media in Education An Interactive Journal for Interactive Media http://jime.open.ac.uk(Launched 1996)

JIMEs peer review lifecycle

Embedded interactive media in a JIME articleReaders can play with the construction of a painting, as students were encouraged to do

Integrated document+discussion(MS Word article exported to HTML, then converted by the D3E Toolkit to enriched hypertext)

Integrated document+discussion(MS Word article exported to HTML, then converted by the D3E Toolkit to enriched hypertext)

A productive author-reviewer exchange during JIMEs conversational peer review

Ubiquitous D3EDiscuss any website: enter the URL + optional discussion topics

Demo server:ud3e.open.ac.uk

Making a learning object into a discussion document in D3E

Making a learning object into a discussion document in D3E

Beyond threaded discussionsForging meaningful links between annotations

ClaiMapper: Modelling research argumentsThis map is someones interpretation of the key claims/arguments in a research literatureIt is concept mapping grounded in a discourse ontology which focuses on the relationships between concepts. Multiple authors can annotate the literature, and then interrogate the collective knowledge web (next slide)

ClaimFinder: Visualising claims in the literatureA sensemaking layer over raw resources, generated from community annotations, which have discourse relationships grounded in a relational metadata scheme

ClaimFinder: Visualising claims in the literatureAnnotation metadata behind every concept node

ClaimFinder: Visualising claims in the literatureBehind every concept node, the source document

ClaimFinder: Visualising claims in the literature(alternative navigation and visualization by selecting the focal concept (centre column) to see its incoming and outgoing links) [claimaker.open.ac.uk]

Mapping the Iraq Debatewww.GlobalArgument.net

Mapping the Iraq Debate

Mapping Mondays open discussion

Mapping JSB this morning

Compendium Web outline export

NASA e-science field trials:Compendium-based photo analysis by geologists (with no training in the tool)Copyright, 2004, RIACS/NASA Ames, Open University, Not to be used without permission

NASA e-science field trials:Highlighted annotations are responses from one team to anothers queriesCopyright, 2004, RIACS/NASA Ames, Open University, Not to be used without permission

Putting it all togetherCombining tools to support collective sensemaking

At an OU webcast last weekHexagonInstant MessagingWebcast

Dialogue Mapping + BuddySpace + video conferencing (on the Access Grid)

Dialogue Mapping + meeting video replay (1)NASA Mars exploration e-science field trials 2004, RIACS/NASA Ames, Open University, Southampton University. Not to be used without permissionMeeting Replay tool synchronising video recording of a discussion with the participants Compendium map

Now being integrated with the Access Grid for hypermedia video conference replay

Dialogue Mapping + meeting video replay (2)A PhD students probationary review

Conclusions so farCollaborative knowledge media open up new possibilities for learner engagement with each otherwith Open Educational ResourcesA sensemaking community around an OER can now engage in new forms of sync/async interpretive discourseWe need to use collaboration media and concept mapping tools judiciously in order to scaffold learning conversations

much scope for future OER research

Acknowledgements & contacts in KMiNeedless to say the toolset presented here is not all my work. The respective project leaders are:

Marc Eisenstadt: www.kmi.open.ac.uk/people/marc BuddySpace: instant messaging + presence

Peter Scott: www.kmi.open.ac.uk/people/scott FlashMeeting: web video conferencing+replayHexagon: web video presence

Simon Buckingham Shum: www.kmi.open.ac.uk/people/sbs D3E: Digital Document Discussion EnvironmentCompendium: dialogue mapping and conversational modellinge-PhD project: online PhD training and supportGlobalArgument.net: modelling the Iraq debateJIME: Journal of Interactive Media in EducationScholOnto: Modelling literatures as claim networks using a relational metadata scheme (discourse ontology)

Hands on the tools (screen movies, software, demo servers, research papers, case studies, communities)BuddySpace: instant messaging + presencewww.buddyspace.org D3E: Digital Document Discussion Environmentd3e.sourceforge.net + www.aktors.org/technologies/d3e Compendium: dialogue mapping and conversational modellingwww.kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/compendium Compendium + video meeting capture: CoAKTinG and Memetic projects on e-science/virtual research environmentswww.aktors.org/coakting + www.memetic-vre.net e-PhD project: online PhD training and supportwww.kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/e-phd FlashMeeting: web video conferencing+replaywww.flashmeeting.com Mapping the Iraq Debate: global experiment to compare argumentation toolswww.GlobalArgument.net Hexagon: web video presencehexagon.open.ac.uk ScholOnto: Modelling literatures as claim networks using a relational metadata scheme (discourse ontology)www.kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/scholonto