Transcript Community Inquiry Labs: Developing shared capacity to
Community Inquiry Labs
Chip Bruce Library & Information Science U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign VMT Project CSCL Workshop, Drexel University , June 9-11 , 2004
Research Questions
1) What
theory
adequately accounts for the complexity and diversity of (distributed) collective practice?
2) What
tools
are needed to mediate work on concrete tasks?
3) What is the most effective
process for developing
shared capacity in the form of knowledge, skills, & tools?
4) How do
actual communities work
address their problems?
to
(1) Pragmatism
• • • “the desire to make the entire social organism democratic, to extend democracy beyond its political expression,” Jane Addams “only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same in the future,” John Dewey “A community of action has to work towards ...(i) transforming an external situation...and (ii) allowing its members to develop mutual knowledge and identities,” Manuel Zacklad
(2) Community Inquiry Labs
A place where members of a community come together to develop shared capacity and work on common problems.
Community
– support for collaborative activity and for creating knowledge that is connected to people's values, history, and lived experiences
Inquiry
– support for open-ended, democratic, participatory engagement
Laboratory
– a space and resources to bring theory and action together in an experimental and critical manner
Setup Bricks
(3) Development Process
• • • • • • • “improve the improvement process,” Doug Engelbart “participatory design requires a shared form of life,” Pelle Ehn Open participation in iLabs design, creation, membership, & use Accessible for low-end users => Open-source, W3C, CSS, PHP/MySQL Modifiable--brick selection, customization, development Self-documenting Use ==> Build ==> Design
Opening the process
(4) Paseo Boricua
• • • Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood Galvanizes neighborhood residents around community projects Addresses critical issues: gang violence, AIDS, social and environmental justice, literacy, and economic development
LIS 391: Literacy in the Information Age Course
• • • • • • • Website maker
GK-12: Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education
•graduate students collaborate with faculty and K-12 teachers to integrate computer-based modeling and scientific visualization into education
Ethnography of the University
• sponsors undergraduate research on the university and archives it in web-accessible form • functions as a learning group for students, staff, and faculty interested in what it means to conduct research on universities as institutions