Pragmatic Design of Information and Communication Technologies

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Pragmatic Design of Information and Communication
Technologies

• Bertram C. Bruce
• Library Information Science
• U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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• What theory adequately accounts for the
  complexity and rapid evolution in the design and
  use of new information and communication
  technologies?

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Pragmatic technology

• tools to meet real human needs, accommodate to
  users and situation
• sees technologies as developed within a community
  of inquiry and embodying both means of action and
  forms of understanding

John Dewey, 1859-1952
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What is the logic of inquiry?

• Genuine intellectual integrity is found in
  experimental knowing (Dewey, Essays in
  Experimental Logic,1916)
• Inquiry is the controlled or directed
  transformation of an indeterminate situation into
  one that is so determinate in its constituent
  distinctions and relations as to convert the
  elements of the original situation into a unified
  whole (Dewey, Logic The Theory of Inquiry, 1938)

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What is learning?

• We always live at the time we live and not at
  some other time, and only by extracting at each
  present time the full meaning of each present
  experience are we prepared for doing the same
  thing in the future (Dewey, Experience
  Education, 1938)

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How should we live together?

• the desire to make the entire social organism
  democratic, to extend democracy beyond its
  political expression (Jane Addams)

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Design as inquiry
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Examples

• Keyboard collaboration
• Instant messaging
• Distributed Knowledge study
• iLabs bricks
• Distance learning
• Paseo Boricua

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Re-creation of technology
Christine Wang, Constructing a third space at
the computer in a first-grade classroom
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iLabs bricks

• Community, Content, and Collaboration Management
  Systems (C3MS) --Daniel Schneider, et al.

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Related C3MS projects

• Community tools drupal.org, plone.org
• Courseware atutor.ca, moodle.org
• Groupware egroupware.org
• Digital libraries nsdl.org
• Collaboratories scienceofcollaboratories.org
• Inquiry Labs ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu

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Types of bricks

• Communication -- bulletin board, listserv,
  address book, timeline, syllabus tool, signup
  sheet, bookmarks, blog, ...
• Content -- document center, digital library,
  cataloguer, quotes database, image gallery, wiki,
  ...
• Collaboration -- lab notebook, remote
  instrumentation, data aggregation
  visualization, ...
• System -- authentication, user and group
  profiles, community awareness, language packs,

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Develop through use
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Opening the process
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Shift towards formal and distributed
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Language packs

• Profiles for iLab and for user
• Override provisions
• User adds translation as needed
• User adds languages, dialects, disciplinary/projec
  t languages
• Process of continuing empowerment

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Beyond participatory design

• through creation of content, contributions to
  interactive elements, and incorporation into
  practice, users are not merely recipients of
  technology, but participate actively in its
  ongoing design and development

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Construction as inquiry

• open source software gt worldwide collaboration
• commons-based peer-production (Yochai Benkler)
• a shared form of life (Pelle Ehn)
• improving the improvement process (Doug
  Engelbart)
• the democratic goal of facilitating the
  interpenetration of worldviews among the parties
  to a given activity (Phil Agre)

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Distance learning

• A community of action has to work towards ...(i)
  transforming an external situation...and (ii)
  allowing its members to develop mutual knowledge
  and identities (Manuel Zacklad)

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LEEP

• An online scheduling option at the UIUC Graduate
  School of Library Information Science (Fall
  1996)
• Currently
• 232 degree-seeking students ( others) and 413
  graduates
• 50 courses available via LEEP
• 46 of the 50 states
• Argentina, Bahamas, Belgium, Canada, China,
  England, France, Germany, Italy, Japan,
  Netherlands, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Thailand,
  Virgin Islands
• Close to 100 retention/graduation

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LEEP model

• Design emphasizes communication and community
  (quasi-cohort model) for both students and
  instructors
• User-driven development
• Hybrid model (synchronous, asynchronous, brief
  residential, independent learning components)

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Web-based Information Science Education (WISE)

• Leading schools in the information field
• Principles metrics for effective online
  teaching and learning
• Online sharing of syllabi, curricula, pedagogy,
  development, and course evaluation
• Access to administrative, pedagogical and
  technical support

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Equitable participation

• the progress of expertise in a community is
  secondary to a relational and epistemological
  practice of confronting differences so that its
  participants can come to understand how the
  beliefs and purposes of others can call their own
  into question (Gregory Clark)

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Paseo Boricua

• Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago's
  Humboldt Park neighborhood
• Galvanizes neighborhood residents around
  community projects
• Addresses critical issues gang violence, AIDS,
  social and environmental justice, literacy, and
  economic development

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PB community library

• Collection emphasizing Puerto Rico, third-world,
  politics
• Need for a catalogue and a community-based
  process to maintain it
• Cataloguing tool
• Students learning along with community members

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Alternate realizations
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Situated evaluation

• Diverse realizations (Bruce et al., 1993)
• Innovation begins with the user appropriating the
  technology (Twidale, 1993)
• Technology is a tool for its own re-creation
  (iLabs, 2005)

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Conclusion

• Ask Participatory design
• Investigate Construction as inquiry
• Create Development through use
• Discuss Equitable relations
• Reflect Situated evaluation

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Pragmatic technology

• Technologies are tools to solve problems, but
  problem-solving also creates technologies
• A trace of problem-solving becomes a technology
  when we envision future needs to address similar
  problems thus, a device isn't a particular
  technology until it comes into use, in which
  case, it can realize any of an indefinite set of
  possibilities
• The user is not the recipient of the developer's
  work, but the ultimate creator of the technology
• The problem-solving / technology cycle means that
  one can view a technology as a description of the
  process of past problem-solving or as a means for
  future problem-solving
• This view resists both a naive constructivism
  that views all activity as fluid and agentive, as
  well as a naive determinism.

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Conclusion

• Spirit of pragmatism
• Situation-dependence
• Problem of modern technology
• Equitable participation first