Ben Daniel

1
Human and Technology Factors in the Design and
Sustainability of DCoPs

• Ben Daniel
• Laboratory for Advanced Research in Intelligent
  Educational Systems ARIES Lab
• University of Saskatchewan

2
Outline of Talk

• Introduction (DCoP)
• DCoP Motivation
• Types of Technologies Supporting DCoP
• Common problems
• Design Challenges
• Human
• Technology
• Others
• Questions

3
DCoP Chemistry
4
Semantics,Pragmatics, or Syntax of DCoP?

• D/- \De-\ for
• Do or make the opposite of
• Reverse
• Decriminalise
• Remove or remove from
• Delouse deoxygenate
• Deplane defenestration
• Derived from
• Deverbative
• CoP/kop for
• No, not police but communities of practice

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Introduction

• A geographically dispersed professionals who
  share common practices, and interests in a
  particular area of concern
• Members activities are mainly enriched, and
  mediated by information, and communication
  technologies (I CT)
• They are more than communities of practice (CoP).
• They are not limited to community of interests
  (CI).
• They represent one type of a virtual learning
  community(VLC)

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Features of DCoP

• Shared interestsMembership is organized around
  topics, interests, or domain issues that are
  important to members
• Common groundingMembers develop shared
  understanding
• Autonomy in goals settingmembers set group
  agenda based on the needs of members at a
  particular period of time
• Shared information and knowledgeMembers share
  information and knowledge

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Features of DCoP Cont

• Voluntary participationMembers normally
  voluntarily participate in the activities of the
  community
• Awareness Social protocols and goals,
  expertise, location, task, social, cultural,
  etc..
• Communicationsone-to-one, one-to-many,
  many-to-many
• Interaction is mediated by face-to-face and
  enriched by ICT

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Key Motivation

• Informal and casual learning
• Minimise the learning required to operate within
  them
• Maximise information and knowledge yield
• Hub for information and knowledge sharing
• Easy, cheaper , and faster
• Minimise cognitive load caused by information and
  knowledge explosion
• Ability to network with colleagues

9
Community Technologies Push

• Automated processes searching, locating,
  retrieving, and delivery of content to a user's
  end
• Enabling people, computers applications to
  share data
• Data and information sent on a periodic basis
• Personalised stream of data and information

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Community Technologies pull

• A process where a user(s) request data from
  another programapplication or computer
• Enable people to seek relevant information they
  need
• High level of personalisation
• Download information to your computer
• Seek support from colleagues
• Knowledge repositories, members profiles etc

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Common Issues with Push Technologies

• User/Community privacy
• Relevancy
• Cognitive over-clocking
• Security
• Privacy
• Performance
• User/system vulnerability

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Common Issues with Pull Technologies

• Require user/community, ability, time to search,
  locate, and retrieve information
• Limit user/community to what they know or want
  to know at a time
• Keep individuals in a community together but
  isolate communities from other communities
• Requires high interactivity

13
Design Challenges

• Human-Oriented
• Awareness
• Contextual issues
• Sociability
• Relevance
• Trust
• Culture
• Personalisation
• Sustainability

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Design Challenges cont..

• Technology-Oriented
• Scalability
• Privacy and security
• Usability
• Transferancy
• Imaginability
• Trust
• Reduced learnability

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Other Challenges

• Difficult to emerge organically
• Difficult to build and support due to diversity
  in membership
• Difficult to establish shared understanding and
  trust among members
• Hard to merge individual interests to community
  interests
• Providing individualisation
• The issue of relevance is implied not defined
• Requires strong leadership to motivate, energise
  participation

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Merging Technology and Human Factors

• Creating and interface
• In building DCoP, you generally push and let the
  members pull.
• When, how, what, where, do you push?
• When, how, what, where, do you pull?

17
Workshop wikisDom Societies human or
artificial have always reminded individuals
about the value of communities, the importance of
building communities, and the benefits of
ascribing, subscribing to, and achieving at least
a particular communitys status. But over the
years most societies seem to have progressively
achieved successful high rates of failures
because of their inability to link one community
to another, to create shared understanding not
among individuals in a community, but between
communities. If people in a society, who are
often members of different communities are to
work together, to solve common confounded global
or regional issues, then I think this is a way to
go! Uncle Ben, May, 30th 2004