Narratives of coherence: sensemaking and wayfinding in complex information ecologies George Siemens September 6, 2011 Pretoria, South Africa

Fragmentation of information Coherence formation challenged by: 1.limits of human cognition 2.growth of information quantity

Existing coherence forming systems Books Newspapers TV news programs Magazines (anything that is structured and that the end user can’t speak into and alter)

Information grounds “focuses on people’s information behavior in informal social settings” Counts and Fisher, 2010

Fragmentation of information requires that we weave together elements into some type of coherent framework Youtube Blogs Twitter Facebook TEDtalks Kahn Academy Online news/information sites Traditional coherence frameworks

“the rise of millions of fragmented discussions across the world tend instead to lead to fragmentation of audiences into isolated publics” Habermas 2006

Coherence is an orientation about the meaning and value of information elements based on how they are connected, structured, and related Antonovsky 1993

Coherence expression (sensegiving) Artifacts Narratives

Artifacts of sensemaking

Organizing course content Dolors Capdet

Image of course structure created by course participant

Language games Storytelling Debate, dialogue Descriptions Clarification Metaphors Analogies Examples Resonance Narratives of sensemaking

Language/externalization reduces the “occult character” of mental images. Wittgenstein Language gives birth to thought Vygotsky

What is sensemaking?

An effort “to create order and make retrospective sense of what occurs” Weick 1993

“a motivated, continuous effort to understand connections... in order to anticipate their trajectories and act effectively” Klein et al. 2006

“Sensemaking is about labelling and categorizing to stabilize the streaming of experience” Weick et al. 2005

Cynefin Framework Dave Snowden

Domains of Sensemaking

Participatory sensemaking: “the coordination of intentional activity in interaction, whereby individual sense-making processes are affected and new domains of social sense-making can be generated that were not available to each individual on her own” De Jaegher and Di Paolo 2007

What is wayfinding?

“the process that takes place when people orient themselves and navigate through space” Raubal and Winter 2002

“is the cognitive element of navigation … it does not involve movement of any kind but only the tactical and strategic parts that guide movement.” Darken and Peterson 2002

Adapted from: Darken and Peterson (2001).

Sensemaking Wayfinding Information Model

change.mooc.cachange.mooc.ca (Starts September 12, 2011) Twitter: gsiemens Learning Analytics & Knowledge 2012: Vancouver