Notes

Essays on Technology, Interaction and Cognition

The cover art pictures the cyclic struggle of collaborative interaction: Gustav Vigeland, Tumbling around, c. 1930, bronze, Vigeland Park bridge, Oslo, Norway. Photo by G. Stahl, 2003. It is taken from a gathering of hundreds of stone and metal artifacts showing a variety of human groupings and individual stances, created by the Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland.

A primordial form of collaboration is that of man and woman, as represented in this sculpture. Throughout the decade covered by this book, I have thrived in the collaboration with my Bliss, who supported me and tolerated my long hours at the computer. She taught me a great deal about the nature and joys of collaboration, in both theory and practice.

Chapter 1. Share Globally, Adapt Locally

Previously published as: Stahl, G., Sumner, T., & Owen, R. (1995). Share globally, adapt locally: Software to create and distribute student-centered curriculum. Computers and Education. Special Issue on Education and the Internet, 24 (3), 237-246.

This chapter was originally published with co-authors Tamara Sumner and Robert Owen. It describes work done at Owen Research with support by DOE and NSF. Michael Wright and Carla Selby also worked on this project. The project received encouragement from Len Scrogan, Technology Specialist in the Curriculum and Instruction Division of Boulder Valley Public Schools, and Jim Spohrer of Apple Computers. The design environment approach grew out of research at the Center for LifeLong Learning and Design, University of Colorado.

The research reported in this chapter and several others was supported in part by the NSF; any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this book are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Chapter 2. Evolving a Learning Environment

Previously unpublished manuscript: Stahl, G. (1999). Evolution of an LSA-based interactive environment for learning to write summaries. It was originally written for submission as a companion piece to (Kintsch et al., 2000) in the special issue of Interactive Learning Environments on LSA. It was never submitted.

The research reported here was supported in part by a grant from the Cognitive Studies in Educational Practice Project of the McDonnell Foundation. The PIs on the grant were Walter Kintsch, Gerhard Fischer and Thomas Landauer. The initial versions of State the Essence were developed by the author, with assistance from Rogerio dePaula and David Steinhart. Steinhart developed a later version, named Summary Street, as part of his dissertation. In addition, Eileen Kintsch, Darrell Laham and Maureen Schreiner also participated in this LSA Research Group. Cindy Matthews and Ronald Lamb team-taught the sixth-grade classroom at Platt Middle School, Boulder, Colorado, where the software was used in 1997 and 1998. The teachers were more than helpful, and, as always, the kids were great. The views expressed in this chapter are those of the author, and are not necessarily shared by Walter Kintsch, Tom Landauer and Eileen Kintsch, who provided the primary project leadership.

Chapter 3. Armchair Missions to Mars

Previously published as: Stahl, G. (1996). Armchair missions to Mars: Using case-based reasoning and fuzzy logic to simulate a time series model of astronaut crews. In Pal, S., Dillon, T., Yeung, D. (Eds.) (2000) Soft computing in case-based reasoning, London, UK: Springer Verlag, 321-344. This was an extended version of a paper published in Knowledge-Based Systems (vol. 9, pp. 409-415).

The research was conducted at Owen Research, Inc. (ORI) in Boulder, Colorado, during a two year SBIR grant from NASA in 1993-1995. ORI is a small research lab founded and run by Dr. Robert Owen. Dr. Owen is a physicist specializing in laser optics. He also has a Ph.D. in anthropology, and his dissertation in that field led to this research in modeling small-group behavior using AI techniques. I developed the technical approach and programmed the system. Dr. Brent Reeves assisted with the fuzzy logic algorithms. To help collect and analyze social science literature related to small groups in isolated conditions, we worked with Professor Russell McGoodwin of the Anthropology Department at the University of Colorado (CU) and his student, Nick Colmenares. In addition, I conducted several interviews of an experienced astronaut, Mike Lounge, and discussed our project with him. I also discussed this work and that of the following chapter with Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon.

This research was sponsored by the Behavioral and Performance Laboratory at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, part of NASA’s Astronaut Support Division. We worked closely with NASA researchers Dr. Joanna Wood and Dr. Albert Holland on the design of the software and the data. At the end of the project, we delivered the software to them to continue the work.

Chapter 4. Supporting Situated Interpretation

Previously published as: Stahl, G. (1993). Supporting situated interpretation. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci ‘93), Boulder, CO. Proceedings, 965-970.

This chapter is indebted to Gerhard Fischer, Ray McCall, Kumiyo Nakakoji, Jonathan Ostwald, and Tamara Sumner, who helped to focus it, and to the Center for LifeLong Learning and Design (L³D) research group at the University of Colorado generally, whose ideas and systems it tries to ground theoretically and extend practically. The Hermes system was a re-write of McCall’s Phidias system, an object-oriented implementation of his contexts as computational perspectives. The chapter reports on main themes in my computer science dissertation.

Chapter 5. Collaborative Information Environments for Communities

Previously published as: Stahl, G. (2000). Collaborative information environments to support knowledge construction by communities. AI & Society, 14, 1-27.

The earlier research on CIEs for design is a collaboration of the author with Gerhard Fischer and Jonathan Ostwald. We would like to thank the other members of L³D, particularly the “Organizational Memory and Organizational Learning” group, including Jay Smith, Scott Berkebile, Sam Stoller, Jim Masson and Tim Ohara who worked on the WebNet system. Our knowledge of LAN design benefited from our domain investigators John Rieman and Ken Anderson and local informants Kyle Kucson and Evi Nemeth. The more recent research on CIEs for knowledge construction involved the author with Rogerio dePaula, Thomas Herrmann and his students at Dortmund, Ted Habermann and his group at NOAA, Dan Kowal and his middle school students, the collaborators in the “Readings in Cognitive Science” seminar and the researchers in the “Articulate Learners” project. The work reported here was supported in part by grants from ARPA, the McDonnell Foundation and NSF. NetSuite Advanced Professional Design is a trademark of NetSuite.

An early version of this chapter was presented in 1998 as Collaborative information environments for innovative communities of practice at the German Computer-Supported Cooperative Work Conference (D-CSCW ‘98): Groupware und organizatorische Innovation, Dortmund, Germany, Proceedings, 195-210.

Chapter 6. Perspectives on Collaborative Learning

Previously published as: Stahl, G. (2001). WebGuide: Guiding collaborative learning on the Web with perspectives. Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME), 2001(1). http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/2001/1/.

This chapter grew out of the author’s Readings and Research in Cognitive Science seminar, Spring 1999, on “Computer Mediation of Collaborative Learning,” with the following participants: Kirstin Butcher, John Caron, Gabe Johnson, Elizabeth Lenell, Scott Long, Rogerio dePaula, Paul Prestopnik, Tammy Sumner. The WebGuide research is a collaboration of the author with Rogerio dePaula and other L³D members, Ted Habermann and his group at NOAA, Dan Kowal and his middle school students, the participants in my WebGuide seminars, Thomas Herrmann and his group at Dortmund, and the researchers in the ICS “Articulate Learners” project.

The first major version of this chapter was in response to Ricki Goldmann’s invitation to submit to an AERA paper session at the 1999 conference in Montreal. Earlier posters, demos and papers on WebGuide were presented at CSCL ‘97, CILT ‘98, CSCW ‘98, ICLS ‘98, Interaktion in Web: Innovative Kommunikationsformen ‘98, WebNet ‘99, GROUP ‘99, CSCL ‘99 and CILT ‘99. While incorporating some of the content of these other presentations, the current chapter is based primarily on the final JIME version. The JIME reviewers, Helen Chappel-Hayios, Hans van der Meij and Gary Boyd, provided supportive and stimulating reflections; their comments were incorporated in the JIME publication and are summarized in the present version.

The research was supported in part by grants from NSF, the McDonnell Foundation and CU’s Lab for New Media Strategy and Design.

Chapter 7. Groupware Goes to School

Previously published as: Stahl, G. (2002). Groupware goes to school: Adapting BSCW to the classroom. International Journal of Computer Applications Technology (IJCAT). 19 (3/4). 162-174.

The ITCOLE Project—funded by the European Commission “School of Tomorrow” framework grant IST-00-III.2—was a collaboration of many people from universities and schools throughout Europe. The project was conceived largely by people in the Centre for Research in Networked Learning and Knowledge Building at the University of Helsinki and in the Media Lab at the University of Art and Design Helsinki. Much of the Synergeia user interface was designed by the Media Lab group. MapTool was implemented at the University of Murcia in Spain. The project manager for ITCOLE at FIT was Wolfgang Appelt. The implementation of most of the features described in this chapter was done by the BSCW group at Fraunhofer-FIT, especially by Rudolf Ruland and me. To carry out the adaptation of a complex system like BSCW in a way that takes advantages of the strengths of its design and does not contradict its philosophy would not be possible without detailed guidance from the BSCW development staff, including Thomas Koch, Elke Hinrichs and Gerd Woetzel, in addition to Rudolf. I am grateful to all the people at FIT who made my year there possible, productive and enjoyable.

Parts of this chapter originally formed a User Manual for Synergeia. An early version of this chapter was presented at the International Workshop on Groupware (CRIWG ‘02) in La Serena, Chile, September 1-3, 2002. A number of CRIWG reviewers and participants made suggestions that significantly improved this chapter.