Technological Support for Educational Communities Michael Bieber Information

Technological Support for Educational Communities Michael Bieber Information Systems Department College of Computing Sciences October 10, 2001 1

On-Line Support for Educational Communities • More efficient – ubiquitous access (anytime, anyplace) – information/opinions recorded for future reference – streamlined administrative meetings • More effective (“sense of community”) – makes people feel part of a group – all inclusive, regardless of location 2

Four Educational Communities • • IS Graduate Students (advising) IS Co-op Students IS Department individual IS Courses 3

side note: NJIT has a lot of Community Research Expertise • Deek: educational communities • Hiltz, Turoff: educational, governmental, business, research communities • Bieber et al. : virtual community infrastructure • Whitworth: legitimacy and ethics • department-wide: counter-terrorism • outside IS: many others. . . • Gurstein (SOM): community informatics 4

On-Line Community Components • people • shared-purpose • policies – conduct within the community (rituals, rules, guidelines, norms) – tacit expectations • computer support * from Jenny Preece: On-line Communities [2000] 5

IS Graduate Students • people (Advising) – potential applicants, current students, graduate advising office • shared-purpose: advising, course feedback • policies – you can always visit the advisor, but – check Web site first – then ask questions in discussion forum (so everyone can benefit from answers) – provide course feedback (may be anonymous) • computer support – Web Site: http: //is. njit. edu/msis/ – Discussion Forum: http: //webboard. njit. edu: 8080/~GISadvise/

Conferences All Messages | 2 New | 0 Attn Graduate Advising Web. Board Conferences (showing number of comments in each) +Entry Request Conference (5) + Necessary MS IS Information (1) + Necessary IS Ph. D. Information (32) + Necessary Distance Learning Information (9) — MS Applicants Questions (66, 1 New) GMAT score (senthil chenniappa) 10/4/01 + IS vs. CS / GMAT or GRE? 9/24/01 (4) + Part-Time Course Scheduling 9/21/01 (2) + Is GMAT, GRE, etc. Required? 9/18/01 (2) + Last Minute Questions 9/9/01 (2) + Admission with a low undergrad GPA 9/7/01 (2) + Question about Credits from India 8/30/01 (2) + General Question 7/17/01 (2) + Bridge courses - CIS 465 & CIS 505 6/8/01 (6) Do NOT post your Student ID/SSN here (Michael Bieber) 5/17/01 Next Bottom + Ph. D. Applicants Questions (1) + Current MS Students Advising Questions (54, 1 New) + Current Ph. D. Students Advising Questions (6) + Distance Learning Advising - Questions (1) + Comments by Others (1) + Administrative Conference (2) 7 + Course Evaluations (44) + Suggestions and Feedback (2)

Computer Support • Discussion --> Discussion Forum Web. Board – create a comment – reply to a comment – see all new comments – create a conference (similar functionality on Web. CT) 8

Computer Support • Discussion --> Web. Board Discussion Forum (what information to include) • Information --> MS IS Web site 9

Co-Op Community • people – co-op students, professor, co-op office, supervisors • shared-purpose: learning during the co-op experience • policies/assumptions – – participants should introduce themselves students must post 1 comment and 2 replies bi-monthly students can ask for advice with any kind of problem separate private areas for students and for supervisors • computer support – Discussion Forum: http: //webboard. njit. edu: 8080/~SP 2001 CIS 590 -591 -592 -IS/ (italics) planned additions after Spring 2001 10

Conferences All Messages | 0 New | 0 Attn IS Co-Op Web. Board Conferences (showing number of comments in each) + Co-op Administration (10) + Questions, Problems, Advice, Misc. (1) + Getting to Know You (45) — Work Discussion (A-L) (128) Work experience with different projects (Vauhini Vakati) 5/10/01 + Discussion#3 4/13/01 (2) Jane Liao-Panasonic (DISCUSSION 3) (Zhen Liao) 4/12/01 Jane Liao-Panasonic (DISCUSSION 2) (Zhen Liao) 4/12/01 + Status Report 3/27/01 (10) + Discussion 3/26/01 (6) + Status report and Issue 3/26/01 (2) Discussion#2 -Kartik Bayyareddy (ADP) (Kartik Bayyareddy) 3/25/01 + Guru Ramnath Kathiresan - Work Description 3/19/01 (5) + Kartik Bayyareddy-ADP 3/13/01 (9) + Dipal Gandhi- ADP Inc. 3/12/01 (13) + Work Description (Sridhar Anne) 3/12/01 (15) + Ramnish Gupta (net. Forensics) 3/12/01 (8) + Madhu S Kolla(ADP) 3/10/01 (9) + Amit Lalwani (Ne. ST Technologies) 3/10/01 (8) + Work Description - Vijay Babaria 3/9/01 (10) + Information System & infrastructure 3/7/01 (9) + e. Planets 3/5/01 (10) + Jane Liao--Panasonic 2/23/01 (8) + Work Discussion (M-Z) (87) + Final Report (12) 11

IS Department • people – faculty, Ph. D. students, research fellows, invited guests, dean • shared-purpose – creating a close-knit community for conducting education, research, and (streamlined) administration • policies – a major collaboration forum: everyone should participate! – private discussions for certain groups (e. g. , faculty meeting; recruiting; research teams) • computer support – Discussion Forum: http: //fire. njit. edu: 8080/~ISSeminar/ – Web Site: http: //is. njit. edu/ 12

Conferences All Messages | 282 New | 0 Attn IS Department Web. Board Conferences (showing number of comments in each) + + + + + + America Under Attack (24, 4 New) experiment discussion (110, 66 New) facultyresearch. Agenda (69) IS dept meeting 2001 (89) New Faculty Orientation (14, 4 New) Qualitative Research (54, 51 New) Recruiting 2001 (195, 2 New) Seminar-Fall 2001 (85) Virtual Communities (93) Seminarspr 2001 (170) Introductions (64) ISClub. House (275, 1 New) Events & Meetings (137, 30 New) Article Reviews (91, 18 New) IS website design (69, 24 New) New Students (86, 9 New) State of the art (2) Public. Forum (163, 38 New) Useful & interesting websites (45) HICSS 35 (24) Paper Fair (2, 1 New) Webcenter project (221, 49 New). . . 13

CIS 677 (a course community) • people – students (Newark, Mt. Laurel, Distance), professors • shared-purpose: learning from each other • policies – – students from all sections mixed into small discussion groups participants introduce themselves 1 comment and 2 replies weekly on-line project presentations • computer support – Web Site: http: //ccsweb. njit. edu/~bieber/CIS 677 S 01/ – Discussion: http: //webboard. njit. edu: 8080/~Archive. SP 2001 CIS 677_All_Sections/

Conferences All Messages | 0 New | 0 Attn CIS 677 Web. Board Conferences (showing number of comments in each) + + + + + + + General Admin - all sections (24) General Admin - Distance sections (30) General Admin - Wednesday sections (20) Final Exam (545) Questions and Answers (202) General Discussion (16) Feedback (18) Interesting Weekly Materials (47) Other Interesting Stuff (19) Getting to Know You (102) Chunking A-C (166) Chunking D-I (262) Chunking J-Ma and Y (300) Chunking Mc-P and Z (251) Chunking R-W (249) Discussion A-G (Distance) (218) Discussion H-O (Distance) (293) Discussion P-Z (Distance) (266) Mentoring Teams Matchmaking (Distance) (41) Intermediate Grader Discussion (11) Individual Article Review Approval - Spring 2001 (242) Individual Article Review Approval - Fall 2000 (225) Individual Article Review Approval - Spring 2000 (361) mentoring team - ethics (distance) (43) mentoring team - strategic (distance) (9) mentoring team - vitual orgs (distance) (45) private (1) Testing. . . (15) 15

Learning & Communities Learning is a constructionist, often social activity occurring through knowledge building (Vygotsky, 1962). Knowledge building activities include contributing to, authoring within, discussing, sharing, exploring, deploying a collective knowledge base (O’Neill & Gomez 1994; Perkins 1993). People learn as they navigate to solve problems (Koschmann et al, 1996). Learning requires cognitive flexibility (Spiro et al. 1991), and results from interaction with people having different experiences and perspectives (Goldman-Segall et al. 1998). Much learning between and within communities occurs with boundaries rich in interactions, whether formal, informal, or through a computer based system (Wenger 1998). Student-centered teaching theories (Mc. Cown & Driscoll 1995) state that students learn through collaboration. * Bieber et al. (2002). “Towards Knowledge-Sharing and Learning in Virtual Professional Communities, ” 35 th HICSS Conference 16

On-Line Support for Educational Communities • More efficient – ubiquitous access (anytime, anyplace) – information/opinions recorded for future reference – streamlined administrative meetings • More effective (“sense of community”) – makes people feel part of a group – all inclusive, regardless of location 17

References • • • Bieber, M. , I. Im, R. Rice, R. Goldman-Segall, R. Paul, E. Stohr, S. Hiltz, J. Preece, M. Turoff. (2002). Towards Knowledge-Sharing and Learning in Virtual Professional Communities. Proceedings of the 35 th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Goldman-Segall, R. , Rao, Srinivasan V. (1998). A Collaborative On-Line Digital Data Tool for Creating Living Narratives in Organizational Knowledge Systems, Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), Hawaii. Koschmann (1996), CSCL, Theory and Practice of an emerging paradigm. 1 -23. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Mc. Cown, R. R. & Driscoll, M. P. (1995). Using Collaborative Writing and Problem-Based Learning in the College Classroom. Proceedings of the Computer Supported Collaborative Learning Conference, 1995. O'Neill, D. K. , & Gomez, L. M. (1994). The collaboratory notebook: A distributed knowledgebuilding environment for project-enhanced learning. Proceedings of Ed-Media '94, Vancouver. Perin, C. (1991). Electronic social fields in bureaucracies. Comm. of the ACM, 34(12), 75 -82. Preece. J. (2000). Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability. Chichester, England: John Wiley. Spiro, R. J. , Feltovich, P. J. , Jacobson, M. J. & Coulson, R. L. (1991). Cognitive Flexibility, Constructivism, and Hypertext. Educational Technology, 24 -33. Vygotsky, L. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA. MIT Press. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: The social fabric of a learning organization. NY, NY: Cambridge U. Press. 18