Copenhagen II: On time
[This is a posting that I composed near the end of March, 2011 but never finished. I am posting it anyway, with the hope of returning to some of the ideas. Someday.]
Some of my time this past week was spent reflecting on the paper that I wrote as part of the book that we are working on as an outcome of a series of workshops on Multivocality in Research. I presented a new method for the analysis of networks of learners, one that takes into account the notion of a Zone of Proximal Development and builds on the automated analysis of participant contributions. The work was done on an existing data set (data reuse is another research interest) and whereas that provided a number of benefits it was frustrating because we couldn’t actually DO anything to effect change: we could only study what had already happened. Nobuko made some great suggestions about backing up to earlier points in the data, making predictions about what would likely happen in the following week and then seeing if the actually happened. We’ll present these ideas at the upcoming Alpine Rendezvous in La Clusaz and see what others think. So we want to create a time machine that will allow us to travel back in time and examine the situation at any point in history!
I was also working on firming up the details of another workshop we’re planning: this one at CSCL2011. I think we managed to attract some first-rate data presenters and analysts and together we’re going to try to tackle the problem of linking multiple levels of learning in networked communities. Planning this workshop certainly has taken a lot of time but I think it is worth the effort.
I continue to act as a mentor to the new programming team that has taken over work on Knowledge Forum. There are two sides of this task, one of which I enjoy tremendously and one that I dislike immensely. I enjoy working with talented, energetic students who want to build on previous work. Christian Perreault is one such student. He’s doing some great work using MySQL representations of Knowledge Forum databases. The other side of the work, the one which I don’t like so much, is one where I see much effort being applied in the absence of good design. Fixing that is beyond the scope of what I can do but I continue to provide input when asked.