Discussions started by Cindy Xin

Thank you Sylvia for the introduction. To open the discussion I would like to attempt a partial summary of my critique of the community of inquiry framework (CoI). Sarah will follow to provide further thoughts. The full article is at http://www.jofde.ca/index.php/jde/article/view/755/1333. For those not familiar with CoI, I provide a summary description of the framework in my article. You should also refer to the original article -

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2(2-3), 87−105.

My main arguments are three-fold. First, online discussion must be understood as foremost a communication phenomenon. Human communication is almost always multi-functional. In online discussions, we often combine instruction, intellectual exchange, and social interaction in a single utterance (as I am doing right now). Because of the multi-functionality of communication the three main aspects of CoI — cognitive presence, social presence and teaching presence — are intertwined. The distinction of these presences is useful for analyzing a conference after the fact, but they do not necessarily provide a participant the sense of what s/he should do in-situ when a conversation is in the making. This brings me to my next argument.

Online presence must be constructed through actual communicative acts that perform various social, pedagogical, and cognitive functions. By communicative acts I specifically refer to what Andrew Feenberg (1989) calls moderating functions. To create effective online presence, for example, a teacher must perform functions such as setting the agenda, recognition, prompting, and weaving. Performance of these communicative functions creates the context and atmosphere for discussion to continue. Desired states of affairs such as “open communication” and “group cohesion,” identified as two categories under CoI’s social presence, may or may not apply in any given situation. Participants must actively construct them via communicative acts. Online presence is an effect of what people do, i.e., their performance of communicative functions. By clarifying the nature of presence online, I wish to draw our attention to what leads to the presence of a participant or a thought or feeling.

The CoI model separates out the social dimension of communication. I argue that the social interaction between participants is essential to all communication, including intellectual exchange. Intense intellectual discussion depends on and produces social interaction no less than casual talk. Rather than attempting to isolate what is social as defined in CoI, I argue that the true sociality of online forums lies in the dynamics of discussion itself. Back and forth of discussion constitute what Gadamer (2004) calls the to-and-fro movement of the dialogue game. The game provides the intrinsic motives that draw participants into this movement and provoke their next move. The matrix of social interaction, itself extended in the course of discussion, provides the necessary context for continued engagement. 

I invite you to share your reaction to these thoughts. If you find any of what I have said confusing, please say so, and feel free to ask any questions.

Cindy

References

Feenberg, A. (1989) The written world. In R. Mason & A. Kaye (Eds.), Mindweave: communication, computers, and distance education (pp. 22-39). Oxford: Pergamon.

Gadamer, H.G. (2004). Truth and method (2nd ed). London ; New York : Continuum.

The following is a series of quotes from Arnold Pacey, Meaning in Technology. Read them, mark the parts you agree or disagree, and comment on them.

"Much technology has been “conceived and applied in the context of war and oppression”, yet many still want to think of it as morally neutral, as if it bore no mark of its origins."

". . . much is said about the impact of computerization, as if we were dealing with something that has come on us like a meteorite from nobody knows where. The reality is that the source of this technology is as much human as other major intentions. Like literacy, printing, firearms, bicycles, and automobiles, computers are self-revealing inventions. It is what we learn from them about ourselves – our impulses, purposes, abilities, and potential – that makes these technologies seem revolutionary."

"[airplanes] with propellers _behind_ the wings working propulsively, and one Cessna design of 1961 with a tractive propeller at the front of the body and a propulsive one at the back. Other options that have scarcely ever been used include the canard design, with the stabilizer at the front rather than forming a tail. This design could have weight-saving advantages. . . . some pilots rejected . . . the 1961 Cessna whose exceptional lateral stability made it seem too safe and easy to fly. . . . “the kind of safety given by this aircraft . . . did not fit the male image that a pilot has”. Conventional aircraft shapes also seem to have social meaning fro the general public denoting reliability and efficiency. It has become difficult for designers to depart from a conventional symbolism . . ."
The following is a series of quotes from Arnold Pacey, Meaning in Technology. Read them, mark the parts you agree or disagree, and comment on them.

"Much technology has been “conceived and applied in the context of war and oppression”, yet many still want to think of it as morally neutral, as if it bore no mark of its origins."

". . . much is said about the impact of computerization, as if we were dealing with something that has come on us like a meteorite from nobody knows where. The reality is that the source of this technology is as much human as other major intentions. Like literacy, printing, firearms, bicycles, and automobiles, computers are self-revealing inventions. It is what we learn from them about ourselves – our impulses, purposes, abilities, and potential – that makes these technologies seem revolutionary."

"[airplanes] with propellers _behind_ the wings working propulsively, and one Cessna design of 1961 with a tractive propeller at the front of the body and a propulsive one at the back. Other options that have scarcely ever been used include the canard design, with the stabilizer at the front rather than forming a tail. This design could have weight-saving advantages. . . . some pilots rejected . . . the 1961 Cessna whose exceptional lateral stability made it seem too safe and easy to fly. . . . “the kind of safety given by this aircraft . . . did not fit the male image that a pilot has”. Conventional aircraft shapes also seem to have social meaning fro the general public denoting reliability and efficiency. It has become difficult for designers to depart from a conventional symbolism . . ."

The following is a series of quotes from Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody. Read them, mark the parts you agree or disagree, and comment on them.

"Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society; they are a challenge to it. . . ."

". . . social tools don't create collective action - they merely remove the obstacles to it. Those obstacles have been so significant and pervasive, however, that as they are being removed, the world is becoming a different place."

"Communications tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring. The invention of a tool doesn't create change; it has to have been around long enough that most of society is using it. It's when a technology becomes normal, then ubiquitous, and finally so pervasive as to be invisible, that the really profound changes happen, and for young people today, our now social tools have passed normal and are heading to ubiquitous, and invisible is coming."

"For us, no matter how deeply we immerse ourselves in new technology, it will always have a certain provisional quality. Those of us with considerable real-world experience are often at an advantage relative to young people, who are comparative novices in the way the world works. The mistakes that novices make come from a lack of experience. They overestimate mere fads, seeing revolution everywhere, and they make this kind of mistake a thousand times before they learn better. But in times of revolution, the experienced among us make the opposite mistake. When a real once-in-a-lifetime change comes along, we are at risk of regarding it as a fad."

[SCoPE] Marginalia Sandbox -> Using Marginalia -> Using Marginalia

by Cindy Xin -
What is it: Marginalia is an open source Javascript web annotation system that allows users of web applications to highlight text, write margin notes, and quote text. The Moodle version adds annotation to Moodle discussion forums. These features work much as would underlining and marginalia in a book, but unlike a book, they can be searched and used to group related material of special interest. Marginalia also includes a feature that makes it easy to identify the source of remarks copied and pasted from comments in the forum. When you drop a quotation into your own comment, its author and a link back to the original source is added automatically.

How to use Marginalia: Here is the link to the screencasts of Marginalia which shows how it works.

Why use Marginalia: Marginalia is useful in any context where the archive of comments is a resource for the future. In such contexts, users will want to have a record of their reactions and go back and reread the most important passages on selected topics. Marginalia is especially useful for the writing of summary comments that cover a wide range of comments and topics. These so-called “weaving comments” are difficult and time consuming to write. It is helpful to be able to use the computer’s capabilities to capture immediate reactions, to quickly identify and group significant passages by topic, and to quote with attribution.

Pedagogical considerations: Marginalia was designed to make it easier for teachers to participate in and for their students to learn from online discussions. Teachers can make a big difference in the quality of the discussion by introducing concepts from their disciplinary tradition in the course of commenting on students’ contributions. This pedagogical technique establishes a close connection between students’ reports of their own ideas and experiences and aspects of the course content that may be too unfamiliar, difficult or abstract for students themselves to introduce it in their comments. It is encouraging for students to see the teacher mention their contributions and helps to maintain a good flow of discussion, while also keeping the discussion on track. Active participation by the teacher is a pedagogically valid use of the Web for education. Marginalia is there to support this pedagogy. In addition, Marginalia can be used by students to organize the review of material in the online discussion archive and to write weaving comments as assignments, a good learning experience.

The Research: The purpose of the research we are conducting on Marginalia is to discover whether it is really useful for our preferred pedagogy, described in the preceding paragraph. We expect teachers who agree to test Marginalia to try it out for this type of online discussion, explaining it to the students and modeling its use for them. We will provide an opportunity for teachers to play with the software before introducing it to their class.