Transcript A Pragmatic Technology Analysis of Distributed Knowledge

A Pragmatic Technology
Analysis of Distributed
Knowledge Practices
Bertram C. Bruce
Library & Information Science
U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Outline
• Classical design & evaluation
• Pragmatic technology
• Examples:
– Alliance teams
– ENFI
– Inquiry Page
• Implications for evaluation, technology
studies, design
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Waterfall model
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Waterfall process
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Document the concept
Specify the
requirements
Modularize
(architectural design)
Design each part
Code the components
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6.
7.
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Test each component
Integrate the pieces
Test the system
Deploy
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Problems with the
waterfall model
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Synergies of components
Problems hidden until full system test
Information ecology differences & changes
Don't know user needs in advance
Users don't understand the functions
User needs & situation change
Non-standard use
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Modifications
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Spiral design
Overlapping phases
Subprojects
Evolutionary prototyping
Staged delivery
User-centered design
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Reverse the flow?
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Pragmatism
• Technological change
• Scientific discoveries
• Demographic shifts
But, rigid concepts
=> an idea about ideas
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Action -> -> -> Destiny
Sow an action, reap a habit.
Sow a habit, reap a character.
Sow a character, reap a destiny.
–William James
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Pragmatist themes
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experimentalist philosophy
ordinary experience
means vs. ends
knowing — action
relationships
situation as a whole
logic — inquiry into inquiry
technology — means of resolving a problem
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Pragmatic technology
technology as the means for resolving a problematic
situation
-- Larry Hickman (1990), John Dewey's Pragmatic
Technology
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Problems find technologies
technology
=>
solves a problem
solution to a problem
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=>
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technology
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Problem-solving cycle
problem 1 => technology 1
technology 1 => problem 2
problem 2 => technology 2
technology 2 => problem 3 …
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Implications
• Technology studies: Alliance teams
• Evaluation: ENFI
• Design: Inquiry Page
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Distributed Knowledge project
• Study of the Alliance/NCSA
• New ways of doing science in distributed
teams
• Distributed Knowledge Research
Collaborative
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How does embedded knowledge
become mobile?
Knowledge
Technology
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Community
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Application Technologies teams
• http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/alliance/partn
ers/ApplicationTechnologies/
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Grand vision
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Problems
• EOT often shows the greatest impact
• But it doesn't use AT enough, and AT doesn't use
ET enough
• Successes often emerge from user community and
are fed back into the Alliance
• Large structure w/o clear lines of control leads to
politics, miscommunications, difficulty in planning,
failures to collaborate effectively
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Enabling Technologies teams
• http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/alliance/partn
ers/EnablingTechnologies/
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Astronomy Digital Imaging
Library
• ADIL
• developed and maintained by the Radio
Astronomy Imaging Group
• "collect astronomical, research-quality
images and make them available to the
astronomical community and the general
public"
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Incorporation into practice
• Addresses existing problems
– limited access to equipment
– attribution for images
• Reconfigurations
– Worldwide collaboration
– New modes of publishing
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Pasteur’s death-bed words
Bernard is right; the pathogen is nothing; the
terrain is everything.
– Oliver Sacks, Awakenings
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Implications: Technology studies
• Adaptive structuration: substitution,
enlargement, reconfiguration (Giddens,
Poole, Contractor, …)
• Longitudinal studies
• User response, reception theory
• Ecological analysis (Bruce & Hogan, 1997;
Nardi & O'Day, 1999)
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Realizations of ENFI
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Text sharing
Drama
Socratic tutoring
Scenarios
Small group
discussions
• Brainstorming
• Collaborative writing
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Devil’s Advocate
Distance networking
Twenty questions
Cross-age tutoring
Discussion of reading
Discussion of issues
Open discussion
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Classical summative evaluation
• Quantitative only
• Little attention to antecedent conditions
or classroom transactions
• Assumes fixed, knowable entities
• Unable to address unanticipated effects
• No model for diversity of realizations
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Hermeneutics
Not occasionally only, but always, the
meaning of a text goes beyond its author.
That is why understanding is not merely a
reproductive, but always a productive
attitude as well.
– H. Gadamer, Truth & Method
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Alternate realizations
A
B
C
Idealization
D
E
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Evaluation questions
Summative: How well does it work?
Formative: How can it be improved?
Situated: What practices emerge as the
innovation(s) are incorporated into different
settings? =>
How well do they work?
How can they be improved?
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Responsive evaluation
… orients more directly to program
activities than to program intents;
responds to audience requirements for
information; and … the different value
perspectives present are referred to in
reporting the success and failure of the
program -- R. E. Stake, 1975, p. 14
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Implications: Evaluation
• Need to understand diverse realizations
• Innovation begins with the user
• Technology as a tool for its own recreation
• Situated evaluation (Bruce et al., 1993;
Twidale, 1993)
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What is the Inquiry Page?
• Partner project
• Resource for inquiry
teaching philosophy
• Collaborative teaching
& learning community
• Lesson planning
support and idea site
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Evolving uses
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Teachers share curriculum units
Project website: researchers, students
Student work
Community health care
Water quality: policy makers, industry, public, K12
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Design by use: Collaboration
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Create and share a unit
Dialogue spaces: listservs, web forums
Spin-offs
Comment feature on units
Multiple authors with separate logins
Distributed IP: Style sheets
7) Synchronous editing support
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Participatory inquiry
Design through use or participatory inquiry
aims to respond to human needs by
democratic processes. Through creation of
content, contributions to interactive
elements, and incorporation into practice,
users are not merely recipients of
technology, but participate actively in its
ongoing development.
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Equitable relations, then tasks
renders the progress of expertise in a
community secondary to a relational and
epistemological practice of confronting
differences so that its participants can come
to understand how the beliefs and purposes
of others can call their own into question.
Clark, "Rescuing the discourse of community"
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Implications: Design
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Design inseparable from use
User-centered design
Participatory design (Bjerknes et al., 1987)
Equitable relations
An idea about technology (Menand, 2001)
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Meaning of technology
only by extracting at each present time the
full meaning of each present experience are
we prepared for doing the same thing in the
future.
-- Dewey, Experience & Education
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La propension des choses
In the traditional
configuration (shi)…,
tension is expressed by
the curve of a roof…
François Jullien
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