| Darren Pearce |
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| Wednesday, 05 March 2008 | ||||
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on Riddles, objects to think with, and more.
Q: It seems you embody the interdisciplinarity of LKL, having started out at IoE and now at Birkbeck. I guess it makes sense in your case since you are more technical - are you a computer scientist by training?
One other technology I should mention that came out of Riddles was the PoSE: the Principle of State Expansion. The idea is that rather than allowing the user to manipulate a task explicitly, they can be presented with a variety of possibilities that the system automatically generates. This aids them in navigating through the state-space and also enables the system not only to see what they think is right but also what they think is wrong. This has interesting ramifications for sophisticated learner modelling. There seems to be a general trend away from single users to collaboration/multiple users. Yes, I agree. But I think people are constrained in the way they think about collaboration, because of the way it's been done for so long. One of the aspects of collaboration that is just plain sad is that, as of a few years ago, teachers were still saying that children talking to each other in class counted as noise, and should be stopped! The TSF is attempting to change this! If you look at multi-player games, or the way that technology has afforded multiple users to share the same whiteboard, it has all been very limited. It's rare to see something that really looks at how the technology can afford interesting styles of collaboration suitable to the task. So does TSF sort of attempt to impose a little more structure for collaboration? Not so much structure as to give desginers of collaborative tasks (whether physical, virtual or a combination) a way to think more generally about exactly how collaboration could take place. It is not prescriptive. I am just attempting to drive home the point with it that the space of possibilities is far richer than what is presented in the literature. It's a framework to think with. Designers can justify their chosen style with regard to pedagogy (or any other sensible constraints) but, ultimately, the aim of the TSF is to give them a way to think through the possibilities.
An important aspect of the framework is that it shows that it is possible to vary the collaborative affordances of the interface, dynamically. For example, imagine that, through the use of separate interfaces (whether co-located or not), it becomes obvious (to the system) that one user is copying another. It could then automatically hide the other user’s view. Alternatively, it could phase the other user out and ask them to guide the 'less-able' peer through the task, explaining the actions they are suggesting. Another example is to imagine domination within collaboration (a very frequent occurrence in typical 'shared whiteboard'-style systems): one user moves element A to position S, the other moves it to position T. The first user then moves it back to position S and so on. What this comes down to is a shortcoming of the interface in that it only shows one task state at one particular time. A solution to this is to split the screen automatically, allowing each user access to only their area, thereby scaffolding the process of disagreement resolution. There are other aspects to the framework in terms of abstracting how and when (if ever) users should be constrained to agree, which elements are shared at which times and so on; there's no need to enforce a particular style at any particular time across all elements. Interesting - so it can support different types of collaboration such as argumentation, conflict resolution, collaborative writing, and so on? Exactly. It's not about the framework specifically supporting these different types of collaboration. It just explodes the possibilities so that people can design tasks that support these types themselves. They would then use the machinery of the framework to help them in this design process. In the journal paper I am writing, I show how it can be used in collaborative brainstorming and collaborative programming, as well as other examples. How long have you been working on MiGen now?
What is your specific role? In conjunction with Sergio, the other Birkbeck RO, and Ken Kahn of IoE, we have the responsibility of researching and developing the system itself. Basically, we are driving the design process in terms of gathering requirements, developing software specs, etc, in light of what we've learned from earlier iterations. Excellent. This project runs until when? Finishes at end of December 2010. Indeed! I do like working here so I'm planning on staying here as long as I can! I'm dedicating my time to MiGen 100 percent. It's a very busy project! I am trying to find tie-ins from the TSF and PoSE so I can drive forward some of my original research interests as well as meet the project's goals. I haven't cut my ties to Sussex entirely. I have a Visting Research Fellowship there, part of my initiative to keep a lot of the Riddles work alive and kicking and progressing over the next few years.
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