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RE: [ba-ohs-talk] Fixed ideas and polarization


Gary,    (01)

Are you able to translate your thoughts into, maybe, concrete use cases 
and/or requirements? I am reading into your comments here that notions of 
seamless linking between stories and issue-based arguments is a requirement.    (02)

What is not yet clear to me is how close the NexistWiki experiment comes to 
developing that idea. My present experience is that the NexistWiki user 
interface is far less adequate as an engineering platform than I had hoped 
it would be, so we are not yet experiencing, I think, the kinds of results 
required to get a real handle on the nature of seamless integration.    (03)

Jeff Conklin's point of view, if I might translate it into my own terms, 
seems to be that the value of such an integration is not going to come into 
view until the visual element is brought into the user interface. For now, 
all you get is a simple outline view, and that's just nowhere near adequate 
for displaying the structure of the argument space.    (04)

If I could jump ahead into implementation details, I think that we may not 
be able to see what we are talking about here until the user interface is 
painted in animated SVG with javascripting and is completely 
interactive.  An early goal in the present version of NexistWiki was to 
remain as browser neutral as possible.  Moving to SVG would nuke that idea.    (05)

Thanks
Jack    (06)

At 04:22 PM 9/13/02 -0700, you wrote:
>Jack,
>I readily accept the idea that both conversational and issue based
>collaboration is needed.
>There has been a lot of work done on the use of stories to capture and
>convey knowledge.
>In the development of systems (software, social, etc.) stories about the
>problem space provide something akin to "use cases" They are anecdotal
>rather than formal, but a proper story can provide context in which to
>appreciate the challenges and benefits that the evolving system is to
>address.
>What is needed in terms of augmentation is a way of getting at the history
>in the form of the stories when it comes time to work on the issues. Since
>we no longer spend years teaching the stories to all involved, we come back
>to the sorts of tools we are discussing.
>When it comes time to do issues based work, I need something better than
>"remember the story Jack told us about the researchers who said we need both
>conversational and issue based collaboration" and hope that it communicates
>enough information to be worthwhile. I need to be able to retrieve the
>relevant stories, study them together and in combinations, see what sorts of
>benefits and issues they describe, and then reference them as rationale for
>the requirements, constraints, features, etc that become the basis of the
>issue-based discussion.
>Very good points
>
>Thanks,
>
>Garold (Gary) L. Johnson
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Jack Park
>  I've been reading from the book _Electronic Collaborators: learner-Centered
>Technologies for Literacy, Apprenticeship, and Discourse_ edited by Curtis
>Jay Bonk and Kira S. King.  On page 58, a chapter on critical thinking
>authored by Thomas M. Duffy, Bill Dueber, and Chandra L. Hawley, the
>discussion begins to focus on points that I think to be appropriate to
>Gary's comment above, augmenting individual capability.
>
>I'll quote snippets from those points here, and note that they lend some
>level of support to the notions of "augmented story telling" that I have
>been exploring of late.  These authors speak to the need for two different
>spaces, one for story telling, where people just want to get heard, and one
>for argumentation, issue-based discussion.
>
>"The foundation of group work, we propose, is conversation: We talk to each
>other to explore issues and seek common ground. Conversation is the general
>discussion between team members in which there is assessment of the group
>knowledge base and perspectives relevant to the problem. It is primarily
>"me"-centered, featuring a lot of "Here is what I think" types of comments
>made in response to an issue presented."
>
>"Educators have typically eschewed this type of conversation among
>students. Students are criticized for talking past each other and for not
>systematically analyzing the issue. ...we want to argue that this sort of
>exploratory posturing is a necessary part of the collaborative
>problem-solving process."
>
>"In contrast to conversation, issue-based discussion is focussed on moving
>to the development of the recommended solution or plan. Unlike the temporal
>flow of a conversation, the issue-based discussion is organized around
>important issues."
>
>"For all the reasons already discussed, we believe that a system to support
>critical thinking and inquiry must support both the conversation and the
>issue-based discussion. Furthermore, we think that there is a need to link
>the two types of discussion so participants can review the context from
>which the issues arose and move back and forth between the issue discussion
>and the conversation."
>
>Leaving the quotes, I would argue that email lists such as this and the
>unrev list, are, and seem to behave as though they are best suited for
>conversation. These lists bring out the best in those of us who are
>logical, and in those of us who have firm, rigid ideas of truth, and in
>those who aren't sure which way to go.  I think Peter and I proved that you
>cannot start an IBIS discussion here. People who join this list want to be
>heard, not herded.
>
>So, consider it Park's conjecture that if we are going to help the
>individual do better, we must provide the individual with those tools which
>facilitate opportunities to do better (whatever that may mean).
>
>I think that purple numbers in emails (say, automatically appended when
>they are posted and before distribution) which are URLs to some "home page"
>where an IBIS discussion can occur, make sense.  That, of course, is the
>nature of the NexistWiki experiment, but it could just as easily be done by
>way of enhancements to email technology.
>
>I might add that the real work lies, I think, in the study of the problems
>to be solved. I think that the nature of that beast needs to be examined,
>and soon. I'll cite the example going on over at unrev where a simple post
>of some news on one subject brought out strong opinions on the subject
>which eventually mutated into personal attacks on those who post the
>news.  Is the nature of the discussion to be based on the news items
>(stories) (as planned), or on the nature of argumentation (as occurred)?
>
>My 0.009 EUROs for the day.
>Cheers
>Jack    (07)