1. From Open Content Repositories to Open Sensemaking Communities Simon Buckingham Shum Knowledge Media Institute Open University, UK www.kmi.open.ac.uk/sbssbs@acm.org Advancing the Effectiveness & Sustainability of Open Education Advancing the Effectiveness & Sustainability of Open Education Annual Instructional Technology Conference Utah State University 28-30 Sept. 2005

2. Overview The Open University Challenges –4 Challenges for Open Learning –A Missing Layer in Open Learning Infrastructures Infrastructure for Open Sensemaking Communities –Collaboration Software –Discourse Mapping

3. The Open University, UK Labour 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

4. The Open University, UK Europe’s largest university: >220,000 students/yr. 35% UK undergrads. UK’s largest e-university: 170,000 students online Now ranked as one the UK’s 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 materials Mission to broaden educational access globally, and esp. to traditionally low-achieving grps (32% <2 ‘A’ Levels; 21% qualify for financial assistance; 7% w. disability; 10% minority ethnic background)

5. SOL: Supported Open Learning From ‘learning to learn again’, through to undergrad, postgrad. and professional degrees (MBA; Teaching; Nursing) Integrated multimedia learning packs Pedagogy embedded in the materials Personal tutor (“Associate Lecturer”) Student cohort group Periodic face-to-face contact with peers and Associate Lecturer Variable amount of e-contact (sync/async) depending on the course, and student preference

6. Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) Created in 1995: now a 60-strong institute Knowledge Media –the craft, design and science of creating digital tools for knowledge construction and negotiation Modus operandi: invention + research –Prototype and evaluate candidate next generation tools with real user communities –Within the OU and with many other contexts –Academic research institute with doctoral training, post- docs, and career track Strategic Threads –Semantic Web –Social Software –Narrative Hypermedia –Collaborative Web Media

7. Open Learning: 4 Challenges

8. 1.Engage the instructional design and computer-supported collaborative learning communities 2.Contextualise this knowledge to ‘Open Learning Pedagogy’ 3.Develop engaging, integrated tools to support learning 4.Develop engaging, integrated tools to provide social support Community composition and conceptual foundations Enabling tools

9. Open Learning: 4 challenges 1.Engage the instructional design and computer- supported collaborative learning communities 2.Contextualise this knowledge to ‘Open Learning Pedagogy’ 3.Develop engaging, integrated tools to support learning 4.Develop engaging, integrated tools to provide social support Making sure that our tool devpt. efforts are giving the learners as much attention as the educators How rigorously has Open Content been evaluated? Deploying tools to scaffold not overwhelm

10. Open Learning: 4 challenges 1.Engage the instructional design and computer- supported collaborative learning communities 2.Contextualise this knowledge to ‘Open Learning Pedagogy’ 3.Develop engaging, integrated tools to support learning 4.Develop engaging, integrated tools to provide social support Are 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 cohorts Do distance/e-learning focused institutions have a better pedagogical foundation for Open Content?

11. Open Learning: 4 challenges 1.Engage the instructional design and computer- supported collaborative learning communities 2.Contextualise this knowledge to ‘Open Learning Pedagogy’ 3.Develop engaging, integrated tools to support learning 4.Develop engaging, integrated tools to provide social support What is the ‘design space’ for generic tools which could be developed to support any Open Content offering?

12. A Missing Layer in the Open Content Infrastructure

13. Giving ‘content’ a ‘social life’ From raw learning resources… (what we push to the learner)

14. Giving ‘content’ a ‘social life’ …to layers of tools for sensemaking (what the learners construct for themselves)

15. Giving ‘content’ a ‘social life’ …creating a web of ideas, open and evolving

16. Giving ‘content’ a ‘social life’ …creating a sensemaking community

17. open content documents, learning objects, etc… metadata generally uncontroversial: minimise inconsistency, ambiguity, controversy (domain ontologies) richer formalisation of consensus: minimise inconsistency, ambiguity, controversy sensemaking: community discourse A missing layer in the Open Content infrastructure

18. sensemaking: community+discourse ‘Sensemaking’ Sensemaking is a term used in relation to students (Bell), information analysts (Card), organisational actors (Weick/Dervin)Sensemaking 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)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?What tools will help learner(s) to articulate and negotiate (possibly conflicting) interpretations?  “open sensemaking communities”

19. Anatomy of the sensemaking layer community sensemaking discourse How 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 interactionDiverse communication channels for p2p/group interaction Self-organising student cohortsSelf-organising student cohorts Peer ratings for p2p supportPeer ratings for p2p support Visualizations of community activityVisualizations of community activity Agents monitoring forumsAgents monitoring forums Tools to construct and publish interpretations, e.g. Level 1: annotations, portfolios, web boards, blogs, wikisLevel 1: annotations, portfolios, web boards, blogs, wikis Level 2: semantic structure toLevel 2: semantic structure to provoke deeper personal reflectionprovoke deeper personal reflection enable collaborative annotation and discourseenable collaborative annotation and discourseinformalsemiformal

20. Emerging Tools for Open Sensemaking Communities

21. Anatomy of the sensemaking layer community sensemaking discourse How 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 interactionDiverse communication channels for p2p/group interaction Self-organising student cohortsSelf-organising student cohorts Peer ratings for p2p supportPeer ratings for p2p support Visualizations of community activityVisualizations of community activity Agents monitoring forumsAgents monitoring forums Tools to construct and publish interpretations, e.g. Level 1: annotations, portfolios, web boards, blogs, wikisLevel 1: annotations, portfolios, web boards, blogs, wikis Level 2: semantic structure toLevel 2: semantic structure to provoke deeper personal reflectionprovoke deeper personal reflection enable collaborative annotation and discourseenable collaborative annotation and discourseinformalsemiformal

22. Presence visualization Instant messaging + Presence overlaid onto geographic and conceptual maps

23. BuddySpace in OU Languages Course

24. BuddySpace for NASA remote science teams

25. Hexagon: lo-fi visual presence & awareness Small ‘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

26. FlashMeeting: Web video conf.

27. Anatomy of the sensemaking layer community sensemaking discourse How 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 interactionDiverse communication channels for p2p/group interaction Self-organising student cohortsSelf-organising student cohorts Peer ratings for p2p supportPeer ratings for p2p support Visualizations of community activityVisualizations of community activity Agents monitoring forumsAgents monitoring forums Tools to construct and publish interpretations, e.g. Level 1: annotations, portfolios, web boards, blogs, wikisLevel 1: annotations, portfolios, web boards, blogs, wikis Level 2: semantic structure toLevel 2: semantic structure to provoke deeper personal reflectionprovoke deeper personal reflection enable collaborative annotation and discourseenable collaborative annotation and discourseinformalsemiformal

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

29. Web-based, conversational peer review in an e-journal …a case study of structuring discourse within an online sensemaking community

30. Peer review dimensionsanonymousnamedappointed open invitation 1-shotconversation reviews discarded reviews preserved reviewers on their own reviewers interact author right of reply author no right of reply anonymousappointed 1-shot reviews discarded reviewers on their own author no right of reply anonymousnamedappointed open invitation 1-shotconversation reviews discarded reviews preserved reviewers on their own reviewers interact author right of reply author no right of reply

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

32. JIME’s peer review lifecycle

33. Embedded interactive media in a JIME article Readers can ‘play’ with the construction of a painting, as students were encouraged to do

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

36. A productive author- reviewer exchange during JIME’s conversational peer review

37. ‘Ubiquitous D3E’ Discuss any website: enter the URL + optional discussion topics Demo server: ud3e.open.ac.uk ud3e.open.ac.uk

38. Making a learning object into a discussion document in D 3 E

40. Beyond threaded discussions Forging meaningful links between annotations

41. ClaiMapper: Modelling research arguments This map is someone’s interpretation of the key claims/arguments in a research literature It 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)

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

43. ClaimFinder: Visualising claims in the literature Annotation metadata behind every concept node

44. ClaimFinder: Visualising claims in the literature Behind every concept node, the source document

45. 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]claimaker.open.ac.uk

46. Mapping the Iraq Debate www.GlobalArgument.net www.GlobalArgument.net

47. Mapping the Iraq Debate

48. Mapping Monday’s open discussion

49. Mapping JSB this morning

50. Compendium Web outline export

51. 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

52. NASA e-science field trials: Highlighted annotations are responses from one team to another’s queries Copyright, 2004, RIACS/NASA Ames, Open University, Not to be used without permission

53. Putting it all together… Combining tools to support collective sensemaking

54. At an OU webcast last week… Hexagon Instant Messaging Webcast

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

56. 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 permission Meeting 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

57. Dialogue Mapping + meeting video replay (2) A PhD student’s probationary review

58. Conclusions so far… Collaborative knowledge media open up new possibilities for learner engagement –with each other –with Open Educational Resources A “sensemaking community” around an OER can now engage in new forms of sync/async interpretive discourse We need to use collaboration media and concept mapping tools judiciously in order to scaffold learning conversations …much scope for future OER research

59. Acknowledgements & contacts in KMi Needless to say the toolset presented here is not all my work. The respective project leaders are: Marc Eisenstadt: www.kmi.open.ac.uk/people/marcwww.kmi.open.ac.uk/people/marc –BuddySpace: instant messaging + presence Peter Scott: www.kmi.open.ac.uk/people/scottwww.kmi.open.ac.uk/people/scott –FlashMeeting: web video conferencing+replay –Hexagon: web video presence Simon Buckingham Shum: www.kmi.open.ac.uk/people/sbswww.kmi.open.ac.uk/people/sbs –D 3 E: Digital Document Discussion Environment –Compendium: dialogue mapping and conversational modelling –e-PhD project: online PhD training and support –GlobalArgument.net: modelling the Iraq debate –JIME: Journal of Interactive Media in Education –ScholOnto: Modelling literatures as claim networks using a relational metadata scheme (discourse ontology)

60. Hands on the tools… (screen movies, software, demo servers, research papers, case studies, communities) BuddySpace: instant messaging + presence –www.buddyspace.orgwww.buddyspace.org D 3 E: Digital Document Discussion Environment –d3e.sourceforge.net + www.aktors.org/technologies/d3ed3e.sourceforge.netwww.aktors.org/technologies/d3e Compendium: dialogue mapping and conversational modelling –www.kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/compendiumwww.kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/compendium Compendium + video meeting capture: CoAKTinG and Memetic projects on e- science/virtual research environments –www.aktors.org/coakting + www.memetic-vre.netwww.aktors.org/coaktingwww.memetic-vre.net e-PhD project: online PhD training and support –www.kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/e-phdwww.kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/e-phd FlashMeeting: web video conferencing+replay –www.flashmeeting.comwww.flashmeeting.com Mapping the Iraq Debate: global experiment to compare argumentation tools –www.GlobalArgument.netwww.GlobalArgument.net Hexagon: web video presence –hexagon.open.ac.ukhexagon.open.ac.uk ScholOnto: Modelling literatures as claim networks using a relational metadata scheme (discourse ontology) –www.kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/scholontowww.kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/scholonto