Searching for help: how learning technologies involves collaborative search Michael Twidale Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Searching for an Answer Nowadays, tech learning often turns into a search activity CSCW dimensions: – Same Time v Different Time – Same Place v Different Place – Colleagues, strangers – Mixtures of the above Googling for inspiration – Forums, blogs, documentation, videos “How to …” Searching for keywords: – “I need help on that thing I can’t even name!” Dealing with partial solutions Compositional solutions Yak shaving In-app search
Tech Help Search Hidden in Plain Sight Data Mining tech forums at the Veteran’s Administration OSS tech help forums – lots of reuse and collaboration Teaching Museum Informatics students to explore new tech they can use in their projects Hackathons: techies program by google Does anyone actually teach how to do this tech learning / help / problem-solving thing?