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If you are joining the team pin something under this banner

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If you are joining the team pin something under this banner

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Or paste a note below attached to the Discussions header

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You can pin stuff here. For discussion or questions you can pin it here orto my "Discussions

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Howard Rheingold | Exploring mind amplifiers since 1964

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The future of digital culture-yours, mine, and ours-depends on how well we learn to use the media that have infiltrated, amplified, distracted, enriched, and complicated our lives.

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Rheingold

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Diagrams

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Wikispaces was founded in 2005 and has since been used by educators, companies and individuals across the globe.

Unfortunately, the time has come where we have had to make the difficult business decision to end the Wikispaces service.

We first announced the site closure in January 2018, through a site-wide banner that appeared to all logged-in users and needed to be clicked on to dismiss

During the closure period a range of banners were shown to users, including a countdown banner in the final month. Additionally, the home page of Wikispaces.com became a blog, detailing the reasons for the closure. Private Label Site Administrators were contacted separately regarding the closure

Wikispaces Tier

Closedown Date

Classroom and Free Wikis end of service

31st July 2018

Plus and Super Wikis end of service

30th September 2018

Private Label Wikis end of service

31st January 2019

Why has Wikispaces closed?
Approximately 18 months ago, we completed a technical review of the infrastructure and software we used to serve Wikispaces users. As part of the review, it became apparent that the required investment to bring the infrastructure and code in line with modern standards was very substantial. We explored all possible options for keeping Wikispaces running but had to conclude that it was no longer viable to continue to run the service in the long term. So, sadly, we had to close the site - but we have been touched by the messages from users all over the world who began creating wikis with it and now running them on new platforms.

The Wikispaces team

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Wikispaces was founded in 2005 and has since been used by educators, companies and individuals across the globe. Unfortunately, the time has come where we have had to make the difficult business decision to end the Wikispaces service.

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I recently shared a diagram of what it might look like to move from a focus on organizing and managing training, to helping individuals and teams self-organize in the workplace? But why would you want to do this, some have asked? Because that is how today's Smart Workers (SW) prefer to learn. So I've now annotated my previous diagram to show how 8 key ways that Smart Workers learn today map onto the diagram.

1. The Smart Worker (SW) learns continuously as she does her job> Integrate learning in the workflow

2. The Smart Worker (SW) wants immediate access to a performance problem > Provide and enable access to performance support

3. The Smart Worker (SW) is happy to share what she learns > Encourage employee generated content

4. The Smart Worker (SW) relies on a trusted network of colleagues > Support networking both inside and outside the organisation

5. The Smart Worker (SW) learns best with and from others > Encourage social interactions and knowledge sharing in the workflow

6. The Smart Worker (SW) keeps up to date with what is happening in his industry and profession > Encourage "learning the new" and "entrepreneurial learning"

7. The Smart Worker constantly strives to improve her productivity > Provide performance consulting services rather than just instructional/training services

8. The Smart Worker thrives on autonomy > Promote professional learning (outside the organisation) and the use of professional learning portfolios

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Why support self-organized learning in the workplace?

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I recently shared a diagram of what it might look like to move from a focus on organizing and managing training, to helping individuals and teams self-organize in the workplace? But why would you want to do this, some have asked? Because that is how today's Smart Workers (SW) prefer to learn.

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Lists

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A Twitter List is a curated group of Twitter accounts. Create your own or subscribe to a List created by someone else to view a streamlined timeline. 

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Personal Learning Networks: Knowledge Sharing as Democracy | Hybrid Pedagogy

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Sherry Turkle famously argues technology has begun to overtake our attention and time, which has led to increased physical isolation and shallow online interaction. She contends, in a community-starved world, we need to disconnect from our smartphones and other Information and Communications Technology (ICT)-enabling devices in order to create greater balance: "We think constant connection will make us ...

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This resource pack synthesises the outcomes from the Learner Experiences of e-Learning theme of the JISC e-Learning Programme which funded a total of ten projects from 2005 to 2009, and had the sustained involvement of over 200 learners and more than 3000 survey respondents to explore learners' perceptions of and participation in technology-enhanced learning in a digital age.

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Materials

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The Design Studio / JISC Digital Literacy Workshop materials

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The Design Studio / JISC Digital Literacy Workshop materials

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The 12 institutional projects and 10 professional associations involved worked across a range of stakeholder groups: students, academic staff, teachers, researchers, librarians, administrators, technical staff, support staff and senior managers. The knowledge and resources from the programme have been shared progressively.

The digital literacies programme built on a background of Jisc-funded work into learner literacies and strategic approaches to their development and support. This work can be explored through the digital literacies page on the UK web archive. The projects which were part of the programme included those run by universities, colleges, and professional associations, and are listed on the archived page.

More from the archive

You might also be interested in the visitors and residents project, which looked at how learners engage online at different educational stages (via the UK web archive).

Our earlier work in this field, the learning literacies in a digital age (LLiDA) project, defined the literacies needed for effective 21st century learning. A follow-up project, supporting effective learners in a digital age (SLiDA), explored institution-wide strategies for effective learning support with technology.

Find out more

Listen to our Jisc-on-Air radio shows on developing digital literacies for working in a digital world and digital literacy - delivering the agenda within colleges and universities for expert discussion of themes relating to digital literacies.

See also our 2013 study of students' expectations and experiences of the digital environment.

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The 12 institutional projects and 10 professional associations involved worked across a range of stakeholder groups: students, academic staff, teachers, researchers, librarians, administrators, technical staff, support staff and senior managers. The knowledge and resources from the programme have been shared progressively.

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The elements of the prototype thing are based on evidence from the conversation with library staff on process.arts, and earlier research carried out in the department (to be added) which revealed that the main barriers to adopting or developing more skills in digital information literacy are:

Lack of time

The volume of available information, instruction and the proliferation of tools

The feeling of entitlement - that this is a part of your role, and that time spent on developing skills in this area is a legitimate activity

The aim is to provide a resource that filters information and presents an initial highly relevant focus. (Relevant to the role of the librarian, and within our own and department and University)

The survey revealed web based tools for managing references as an area staff wanted to know more about, so we are developing this as our first thing. Below are some initial thoughts on scope and format.

Prototype thing: Web based tools for managing references : scoping

Are we using this - who and how

use with Summon and e-library

Examples of good practice (note if CC licences available)

(Some excellent comparison tables)

What is going on in the University?

Policy, or not

Champions of Zotero, other?

Video - why I use xxx (student, lecturer)

More information

Youtube videos

Links - other resources

Key contacts, champions in library, e-learning, in house development

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The elements of the prototype thing are based on evidence from the conversation with library staff on process.arts, and earlier research carried out in the department (to be added) which revealed that the main barriers to adopting or developing more skills in digital information literacy are: Lack of time The

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This ning site exists to support the Digital Literacy in Higher Education Transition project. We could use the Ning tools to set up a study circle. If interested, please join at http://dlinhe.ning.com/ and request. Many thanks Simon

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Personas are a tool for sharing our understanding of our expected users, as a starting point for design.
Whether we are designing a jet plane or a learning activity, we are ultimately designing it for people - pilots and passengers in the first case, teachers and learners in the second. In order to fit the needs and constraints of these people, we need to have a model of the actors playing a role in our innovation. One popular way of representing such models, adapted from software development, is called "personas".

Nielsen (2013) notes:

The persona method has developed from being a method for IT system development to being used in many other contexts, including development of products, marketing, planning of communication, and service design. [..] Common understanding is that the persona is a description of a fictitious person, but whether this description is based on assumptions or data is not clear, and opinions also differ on what the persona description should cover.

Why use personas? Alan Cooper explains:

Whenever I hear the phrase "the user," it sounds to me like "the elastic user." The elastic user must bend and stretch and adapt to the needs of the moment. However, our goal is to design software that will bend and stretch and adapt to the user's needs. [...] Designing for the elastic user gives the developer license to code as he pleases while paying lip service to "the user." Real users are not elastic.[...]

In our design process, we never refer to "the user." Instead, we refer to a very specific individual: a persona.

Nielsen (2013) describes the role personas in the design process:

In the design process, we begin to imagine how the product is to work and look before any sketch is made or any features described. If the design team members have a number of persona descriptions in front of them while designing, the personas will help them maintain the perspective of the users. The moment the designers begin to imagine how a possible product is to be used by a persona, ideas will emerge. Thus, I maintain that the actual purpose of the method is not the persona descriptions, but the ability to imagine the product. In the following, I designate these product ideas as scenarios. It is in scenarios that you can imagine how the product is going to work and be used, in what context it will be used, and the specific construction of the product. And it is during the work with developing scenarios that the product ideas emerge and are described. The persona descriptions are thus a means to develop specific and precise descriptions of products.

Cooper provides some guidelines for authoring personas:

Be Specific: The more specific we make our personas, the more effective they are as design tools. That's because personas lose elasticity as they become specific. For example, we [...] don't just let Emilee drive to work. We give her a dark-blue 1991 Toyota Camry, with a gray plastic kid's seat strapped into the back and an ugly scrape on the rear bumper. This distinctive specificity is very powerful as a design and communications tool. Consequently, all of our personas are articulated with singular detail and precision. As we isolate Emilee with specific, idiosyncratic detail, a remarkable thing happens: She becomes a real person in the minds of the designers and programmers. [...]

Giving the persona a name is one of the most important parts of successfully defining one. A persona without a name is simply not useful. Without a name, a persona will never be a concrete individual in anyone's mind. [...]

To make each persona more real to everyone involved in the product creation, I like to put faces to the names and give each persona an image. [...]

Precision, Not Accuracy As a design tool, it is more important that a persona be precise than accurate. That is, it is more important to define the persona in great and specific detail than that the persona be the precisely correct one. This truth is surprising because it is the antithesis of the goal of interaction design, in which accuracy is always more important than precision. [...]

Cooper concludes:

Personas are the single most powerful design tool that we use. They are the foundation for all subsequent Goal-Directed design. Personas allow us to see the scope and nature of the design problem. They make it clear exactly what the user's goals are, so we can see what the product must do - and can get away with not doing.

Links to extended descriptions:

Cooper, A. (1999), The Inmates are Running the Asylum - Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity, SAMS publishing

Nielsen, L. (2013), Personas, The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd Ed., The Interaction Design Foundation , Aarhus, Denmark. http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/personas.html

Grudin, J. & Pruitt, J. (2002), Personas, Participatory Design and Product Development: An Infrastructure for Engagement, in 'Proceedings of Participation and Design Conference (PDC2002), Sweden' , pp. 144-161.

Did you know that Angie could increase your income like magic?

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Personas are a tool for sharing our understanding of our expected users, as a starting point for design.Whether we are designing a jet plane or a learning activity, we are ultimately designing it for people - pilots and passengers in the first case, teachers and learners in the second.

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Look at your week 1 project description (if you don't have a project choose one you like from the dreambazaar or create one now). Think of a story about learning related to your project: Who and what is involved? Why? When? Where? How? What happens?
To think about
This process may raise more questions than it answers.

What don't you know about the context of your learning design?

How might you find out more? What methods might you use?

Make suggestions in the discussion around scenarios. It is unlikely you will have time to do much research into the context of your design problem during the week but if you do it would be great if you tell us about it.

Remember. Scenarios are useful for starting design conversations. Don't invest too much effort and time in developing intial scenarios - this may make it more difficult for you to revise them. Do come back to your initial scenarios and revise them as you find out more.

If you're tweeting about this week's activity, use the oldsmooc-w2 hashtag and your tweet will appear on the sidebar.

Go to OLDSMOOC-Week2-Web | OLDSMOOC-Week2-on-Cloudworks

Help: Probably the best place to ask for help with any of the activities is on the oldsmooc discussion forum, use the week and activity number for topic.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

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Contextualise your project (using scenarios)

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Look at your week 1 project description (if you don't have a project choose one you like from the dreambazaar or create one now). Think of a story about learning related to your project: Who and what is involved? Why? When? Where? How? What happens?

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Welcome to Cloudworks, a place to share, find and discuss learning and teaching ideas and experiences.

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When we started designing the OLDS MOOC, we had a workshop with all partners, where we "ate our own dogfood": used some of the various tools and techniques we present in the MOOC to help us design the MOOC

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Personas and Force maps at the OLDS MOOC design workshop

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When we started designing the OLDS MOOC, we had a workshop with all partners, where we "ate our own dogfood": used some of the various tools and techniques we present in the MOOC to help us design the MOOC

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Ida Brandão

12 Janeiro 2012

Professors: Yishay Mor (Open Univ.), Simon Walker and Peter Bryant (Univ. Greenwich)

Learning outcomes:

Explore a variety of definitions of learning design

Initiate own learning/curriculum design project

Define learning design, as a field of research and a practice

Identify some of the grand challenges of using a learning design approach to the design of learning in the 21st Century

Identify specific topics of interest for further exploration

In the launch session of OLDS MOOC, Yishar Mor presented a PREZI with several definitions, by different researchers, on the concepts of Curriculum Design, Learning Design, Instructional Design and Educational Design Research

http://prezi.com/b44jwdgvs8nl/olds-mooc-introduction/?kw=view-b44jwdgvs8nl&rc=ref-820378

OLDS MOOC follows a learning design cycle that is represented in this visual cycle

Yishar Mor offers a diagram meant for learning design in the science field:

Searching on the Internet, I found many definitions and selected the following ones:

Learning design vs. instructional design (Grainne Conole)

For me learning design is broader than instructional design - it's about the whole suite of tools, resources and methods that might be used to support the design process. Instructional design has a very specific history and associated research field. In Europe the term lower case learning design has emerged in the last ten years ago. For me it's also about bridging in different theoretical perspectives - for example I draw on socio-cultural perspectives a lot, others have different theoretical perspectives. I think also the issue about the term is a characteristic of our area and its changing nature. The same arguments have occurred in the past about learning objects, e-learning, OER, technology enhanced learning etc. I do think it's useful however sometimes to stop and reflect and try and come to some consensus about the field and terminology or at least recognize different positions even if we can't agree to agree! (discussion - http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/2536)

Universal Design for Learning

As I work in Special Needs field, the concept of Universal Design for Learning is an important one. It is an inclusive approach that deals with the differences of learners and cares about marginalized ones. The concept is based on the recent developments of neuroscience.

UDL guidelines provides multiple means of representation, multiple means of expression and multiple means of engagement.

Instructional Design

Instructional Design (also called Instructional Systems Design - ISD) is the practice of creating "instructional experiences which make the acquisition of knowledge and skill more efficient, effective, and appealing." The process consists broadly of determining the current state and needs of the learner, defining the end goal of instruction, and creating some "intervention" to assist in the transition. Ideally the process is informed by pedagogically (process of teaching) and andragogically (adult learning) tested theories of learning and may take place in student-only, teacher-led or community-based settings. The outcome of this instruction may be directly observable and scientifically measured or completely hidden and assumed. There are many instructional design models but many are based on the ADDIE model with the five phases: 1) analysis, 2) design, 3) development, 4) implementation, and 5) evaluation. As a field, instructional design is historically and traditionally rooted in cognitive and behavioral psychology, though recently Constructivism (learning theory) has influenced thinking in the field( in Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructional_design)

What is Instructional Design? ( http://www.instructionaldesigncentral.com/htm/IDC_instructionaldesigndefinitions.htm)

In short, instructional design is the systematic process by which instructional materials are designed, developed, and delivered. The terms instructional design, instructional technology, educational technology, curriculum design, and instructional systems design (ISD), are often used interchangeably. Below are a few instructional design definitions from various resources on instructional design, instructional technology, educational technology, curriculum design, and instructional systems design:

Definitions of Instructional Design?

"The philosophy, methodology, and approach used to deliver information. Some courseware aspects include question strategy, level of interaction, reinforcement, and branching complexity." Source: www.neiu.edu

"Instructional design, also known as instructional systems design, is the analysis of learning needs and systematic development of instruction. Instructional designers often use Instructional technology as a method for developing instruction. Instructional design models typically specify a method, that if followed will facilitate the transfer of knowledge, skills and attitude to the recipient or acquirer of the instruction." Source: www.wikipedia.org

"Instructional Design is the systematic development of instructional specifications using learning and instructional theory to ensure the quality of instruction. It is the entire process of analysis of learning needs and goals and the development of a delivery system to meet those needs. It includes development of instructional materials and activities; and tryout and evaluation of all instruction and learner activities." Source: www.umich.edu

Definitions of Instructional Technology?

"The use of technology (computers, compact disc, interactive media, modem, satellite, teleconferencing, etc.) to support learning." Source: www.neiu.edu

"Instructional technology was born as a military response to the problems of a labor shortage during WWII in the United States. There was a definitive need to fill the factories with skilled labor. Instructional technology provided a methodology for training in a systematic and efficient manner."
Source: www.wikipedia.org

"Instructional technology is the systemic and systematic application of strategies and techniques derived from behavioral, cognitive, and constructivist theories to the solution of instructional problems. www.umich.edu

Definitions of Instructional Systems Design?

"A formal process for designing training, be it computer-based or traditional instructor-led training. The ISD process includes analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. Also known as System Approach to Training (SAT)." Source: www.neiu.edu

"Systematic guidelines instructional designers follow in order to create a workshop, a course, a curriculum, an instructional program, or a training session" Source: http://edutechwiki.unige.ch

Instructional Design as a Process:

Instructional Design is the systematic development of instructional specifications using learning and instructional theory to ensure the quality of instruction. It is the entire process of analysis of learning needs and goals and the development of a delivery system to meet those needs. It includes development of instructional materials and activities; and tryout and evaluation of all instruction and learner activities.

Instructional Design as a Discipline:

Instructional Design is that branch of knowledge concerned with research and theory about instructional strategies and the process for developing and implementing those strategies.

Instructional Design as a Science:

Instructional design is the science of creating detailed specifications for the development, implementation, evaluation, and maintenance of situations that facilitate the learning of both large and small units of subject matter at all levels of complexity.

Instructional Design as Reality:

Instructional design can start at any point in the design process. Often a glimmer of an idea is developed to give the core of an instruction situation. By the time the entire process is done the designer looks back and she or he checks to see that all parts of the "science" have been taken into account. Then the entire process is written up as if it occurred in a systematic fashion.

Instructional System:

An instructional system is an arrangement of resources and procedures to promote learning. Instructional design is the systematic process of developing instructional systems and instructional development is the process of implementing the system or plan.

Instructional Technology:

Instructional technology is the systemic and systematic application of strategies and techniques derived from behavioral, cognitive, and constructivist theories to the solution of instructional problems.

Instructional technology is the systematic application of theory and other organized knowledge to the task of instructional design and development.

Instructional Technology = Instructional Design + Instructional Development

Instructional Development:

The process of implementing the design plans. ( http://www.umich.edu/~ed626/define.html)

Gagné Assumption

The history of "Instructional Design" dates back to World War II and to the pioneering work of the american educational psychologist Robert Gagné who trained pilots for the Air Force and designed instruction on the assumption "that different types of learning exist, and that different instructional conditions are most likely to bring about these different types of learning". Gagné model has roots in behaviourist and cognitivist theories.

In Wikipedia we can find a good summary of his theory, namely, regarding categories of learning:

and ways of learning, the 9 events of instruction:

Other models of instructional have been designed since then which retain basic concepts of Gagné.

ADDIE model

The ADDIE model is based in 5 main instances of instruction design - Analysis - Design - Develop - Implement and Evaluate.

Kemp Model

The KEMP model builds on ADDIE model

Dick & Carey Model

In the 70's, Dick & Carey build on ADDIE model introducing a more dynamic approach:

ARCS Model, by John Keller

The ARCS model, developed by John Keller, focus on motivation and is more learner centred.

eLearning Model of Marcel Lebrun

With the generalized access to the Internet and elearning, new dynamic models have been developed in the last decade, one particularly interesting model is that of Marcel Lebrun, that is explained in this article published in 2004, framed in constructivist theory of learning.
"As we will see, this figure may act as a check-list in order to properly design or evaluate textbooks (the nature, the structure, the attributes and the lay-out of the information), pedagogical softwares (the context of the proposed activities or the directives to be followed), educative Websites (the activities proposed to the students or the place of the Website in the pedagogical scenario), pedagogical plans (individual and collaborative activities well weighed up), students' outputs or finally to boost, design and evaluate innovation inside an institution (Lebrun, 2002). In the centre, the three rectangles are inspired by the constructivist approach: roughly, information is transformed in knowledges by the student activities and these new knowledges feed the following process (systemic loop). This process is enabled by motivation factors and sustained by interaction (from environment (functional interaction) or from other students and from teachers (relational interaction)."
A video of Prof. Marcel Lebrun explains his approach

Learning Evaluation, by Donald Kirkpatrick

Kirkpatrick's has defined 4 levels of evaluation:

1. Reaction - what participants thought and felt about the training (satisfaction; "smile sheets")

2. Learning - the resulting increase in knowledge and/or skills, and change in attitudes. This evaluation occurs during the training in the form of either a knowledge demonstration or test.

3. Behavior - transfer of knowledge, skills, and/or attitudes from classroom to the job (change in job behavior due to training program). This evaluation occurs 3-6 months post training while the trainee is performing the job. Evaluation usually occurs through observation.

4. Results - the final results that occurred because of attendance and participation in a training program (can be monetary, performance-based, etc.)

Level 1: Reaction

This level measures how your trainees (the people being trained), reacted to the training. Obviously, you want them to feel that the training was a valuable experience, and you want them to feel good about the instructor, the topic, the material, its presentation, and the venue.

It's important to measure reaction, because it helps you understand how well the training was received by your audience. It also helps you improve the training for future trainees, including identifying important areas or topics that are missing from the training.

Level 2: Learning

At level 2, you measure what your trainees have learned. How much has their knowledge increased as a result of the training?

When you planned the training session, you hopefully started with a list of specific learning objectives: these should be the starting point for your measurement. Keep in mind that you can measure learning in different ways depending on these objectives, and depending on whether you're interested in changes to knowledge, skills, or attitude.

It's important to measure this, because knowing what your trainees are learning and what they aren't will help you improve future training.

Level 3: Behavior

At this level, you evaluate how far your trainees have changed their behavior, based on the training they received. Specifically, this looks at how trainees apply the information.

It's important to realize that behavior can only change if conditions are favorable. For instance, imagine you've skipped measurement at the first two Kirkpatrick levels and, when looking at your group's behavior, you determine that no behavior change has taken place. Therefore, you assume that your trainees haven't learned anything and that the training was ineffective.

However, just because behavior hasn't changed, it doesn't mean that trainees haven't learned anything. Perhaps their boss won't let them apply new knowledge. Or, maybe they've learned everything you taught, but they have no desire to apply the knowledge themselves.

Level 4: Results

At this level, you analyze the final results of your training. This includes outcomes that you or your organization have determined to be good for business, good for the employees, or good for the bottom line.

(in http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/kirkpatrick.htm )

Design based Research

The key criteria of Design Based Research are collaborative, utility-oriented, theory informed, interventionist, iterative, rigorous and relevant. Yishar DBR cycle is shown at the top of this article, but other diagrams can be found, such as this one,based on Reeves model:

Figure 2: Design-based research (Reeves, 2006, p. 59)

A good article on DBR can be found in http://projects.coe.uga.edu/dbr/FAQ.html, describing its steps:

1. Begin with a meaningful problem
Perhaps the most essential differentiating aspect of design-based research is its emphasis on addressing meaningful problems faced by teachers, learners, and others. Design-based research requires an enormous long term effort by all involved and thus it should not be targeted on trivial problems.

2. Collaborate with practitioners
To begin with, researchers need to be actively involved in a real world design project collaboratively with other participants such as instructional designers, curriculum developers, teachers and evaluators when conducting design research. Two distinguishing features of the process of design-based research are being grounded in real-world settings and working closely with other stakeholders in those settings.

3. Integrate robust theory about learning and teaching
The whole process of design research is guided by the most robust existing theory about teaching and learning. Through the process of design-based research from design to enactment, to analysis, and to redesign, researchers hope to reveal what works, what do not work, and how it works under certain conditions in a specific context. Ideally, the researchers will continuously modify designed interventions and apply them to another setting for generating design knowledge or principles grounded in broader contexts.

4. Conduct literature review, needs analysis, etc. to generate research questions
Like other research methodologies, design-based researchers conduct a critical literature review and needs analysis to identify problems or gaps, thereby generating research questions (Bannon-Ritland, 2003; Joseph, 2004).

5. Design an educational intervention
To begin the process of solving the meaningful problem with which the design-based research initiative began, an educational intervention grounded in a robust theoretical framework is designed and placed in real-world contexts for testing. Ideally, design-based research can narrow the gap identified by the needs analysis by redesigning the interventions and/or refining the theory-based design principles.

6. Develop, implement, and revise the design intervention
Development of the design intervention is interactive with and responsive to iterative stages of formative evaluation and re-designs. From the initial design of educational intervention, a development team constructs and articulates a prototype, and develops a more elaborative intervention based on feedback given from evaluation of the intervention in practice (Bannon-Ritland, 2003). The iterative and responsive process may involve multiple design-test-revise cycles.

7. Evaluate the impact of the intervention
Design-based researchers gather data to reveal how well the intervention addresses the problems and how well the selective theories explain the learning process and outcomes. Evaluation of the design is formative in that the data may require the researchers to refine the initial design theories and, in turn, to develop a more detailed design intervention accordingly (Collins et al., 2004). Over time, the more fully developed intervention will be implemented in the same setting, other similar settings, and broader settings so that researchers can describe the interplay between design theories and multiple practices.

8. Iterate the process
Through the successive refinement cycles, design-based research has a potential not only to construct more robust, applicable designs over time but also to generate well-supported design theories about learning and instruction (Collins et al., 2004), thereby resulting in deeper understanding of complex learning environments (Cobb et al., 2003).

9. Report DBR
Finally, it is important to report design-based research in the forms of in-progress reports, a series of interim reports, journal articles, and books because it is likely to evolve over time (Collins et al., 2004; Reeves, Herrington, & Oliver, 2005).

Larnaca Declaration on Learning Design

This paper - http://www.larnacadeclaration.org/ - is a recent one, from 2012, and deals with notions of "educational notation", "pedagogical neutrality", "abstract framework", "conceptual map of Learning Design approaches".

A simplist approach to LD may resume it to the everyday decisions about how to teach, how to design activities to help students to learn, as a practice rather than a static concept.

An analogy of LD with music is made:
"The need for educators to adapt or "improvise" in the act of teaching in response to their interactions with learners seems one significant issue for deeper consideration. Perhaps Jazz music will provides an enriched music analogy - it is an example of music that can be retrospectively notated like other music, and yet the act of performance is often based on a combination of professional skill together with just the essence of some musical idea (as opposed to performance of a complete, static musical score)."
The learning takes place inside the learner, but an educator can carefully design teaching and learning activities that encourage learning to take place and this is "designing for learning".

Learning Design as a sequence of teaching, a plan for activities with learners, the implementation of a learning design with a particular group of learners

The following concepts emerge from this paper and its glossary:

1. Learning Design Framework (LD-F) - a descriptive language/notational format/visualisation for describing teaching and learning activities based on many different pedagogical approaches

2. Learning Design Conceptual Map (LD-CM) provides the link between the core concept of the LD-F (together with guidance and sharing) and the wider educational landscape. A map of the wider educational landscape as it relates to core Learning Design concept.

3. Learning Design Practice (LD-P) consist of the day-to-day practices of the teachers as they design for learning. The action of applying Learning Design concepts to the creation and implementation of effective teaching and learning activities, also called "designing for learning".

"Teaching strategy: An approach to teaching that proposes a particular sequence of teaching and learning activities based on certain pedagogical assumptions. Examples of teaching strategies are capitalised in this paper, for example, Problem Based Learning, Predict - Observe - Explain, Role Plays and WebQuests. A teaching strategy can provide a pedagogical rationale as well as a suggested structure of activities for a learning design"

Learning outcomes definitions can be found in the Analytical Quality Glossary - http://www.qualityresearchinternational.com/glossary/learningoutcomes.htm

For example:

core definition

A learning outcome is the specification of what a student should learn as the result of a period of specified and supported study.

analytical review

One attempt to synthesise various definitions states:

A learning outcome is a written statement of what the successful student/learner is expected to be able to do at the end of the module/course unit, or qualification. (Adam, 2004)

The ECTS (2004) view is that:

Learning outcomes are statements of what a learner is expected to know, understand and/or be able to demonstrate after a completion of a process of learning.

The UNESCO definition identifies both outcomes and student learning outcomes although they do not differ much:

Outcomes: Anticipated or achieved results of programmes or the accomplishment of institutional objectives, as demonstrated by a wide range of indicators (such as student knowledge, cognitive skills, and attitudes). Outcomes are direct results of the instructional programme, planned in terms of student/learner growth in all areas. An outcome must be distinguished from an , which is a sought-after result. Generally, each outcome statement should describe one effect of the instructional programme, and not accumulate several into one statement. Also, the statements should be clearly detailed and easily understandable by all teaching staff and students in the given area or department.

Student Learning Outcomes: Statements of what a learner is expected to know, understand, and/or be able to demonstrate after completion of a process of learning as well as the specific intellectual and practical skills gained and demonstrated by the successful completion of a unit, course, or programme. Learning outcomes, together with assessment criteria, specify the minimum requirements for the award of , while grading is based on attainment above or below the minimum requirements for the award of credit. Learning outcomes are distinct from the aims of learning in that they are concerned with the achievements of the learner rather than with the overall intentions of the teacher. (Vlãsceanu et al., 2004, pp. 41-42)

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Ida Brandão 12 Janeiro 2012 Professors: Yishay Mor (Open Univ.), Simon Walker and Peter Bryant (Univ.

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Rheingold 65 min

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Howard Rheingold on 'Net Smart' for Change11 MOOC

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Howard Rheingold addresses the topic of "Net Smart: Introduction to fundamental social media literacies": http://change.mooc.ca/post/525 http://mooc.wikispaces.com/rheingold Links from session: http://change.mooc.ca/post/529

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class outline Howard's

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a six week course using asynchronous forums, blogs, wikis, mindmaps, social bookmarks, synchronous audio, video, chat, and Twitter to introduce the fundamentals of an interdisciplinary study of cooperation: social dilemmas, institutions for collective action, the commons, evolution of cooperation, technologies of cooperation, and cooperative arrangements in biology from cells to ecosystems.

Cost: $300. $250 if you've taken a Rheingold U course. $500 if your company reimburses you.

If you are interested in signing up, contact howard@rheingold.com

About this course: Expect participative and collaborative learning
Live Session Notes
Week One: Cooperation in Biology Required Texts

A work in progress that may help you frame the different components of cooperation theory in relation to each other.

Peter Corning: Nature's Magic (book summary)

lecture on cooperation in biology and evolution (video)

As Above, So Below: The Worldview of Lynn Margulis (article)

Rhizobia (Wikipedia article)

Week One: Cooperation in Biology Recommended Texts

Roland Legrand's blog post about the live session on cooperation in biology, January 24, 2012

Legrand did an excellent job summarizing the key points.

Short video and paragraph with links about the role of networks in tree roots that encourage rhizobium symbiosis

"In a study of more than 3,000 mustard seedlings, scientists discovered that the young plants recognize their siblings - other plants grown from the seeds of the same momma plant - using chemical cues given off during root growth. And it turns out mustard plants won't compete with their brethren the way they will with strangers: Instead of rapidly growing roots to suck up as much water and minerals as possible, plants who sensed nearby siblings developed a shallower root system and more intertwined leaves."

A great introduction to symbiosis with an intriguing extrapolation to human self-organization. Highly readable. Read it.

"Emerging research shows that bacteria have powers to engineer the environment, to communicate and to affect human well-being. They may even think."

"MIT researchers have found that cells in a bacterial colony grow in a way that benefits the community as a whole. That is, while an individual cell may divide in the presence of plentiful resources to benefit itself, when a cell is a member of a larger colony, it may choose instead to grow in a more cooperative fashion, increasing an entire colony's chance of survival."

Shows examples of mutualism within a system of complex biological interdependencies in an ecosystem.

Explore the Human Microbion (cool interactive graphic of the internal human ecosystem)

This post refers to the prescient work of Russian botanist Boris Kozo-Polyansky, who proposed a theory of symbiogenesis in the 1920s.

Week Two: Evolution of Cooperation Required Texts

Martin Nowak, The Evolution of Cooperation, MIT, (available online)

The video is 20 minutes long. The transcript of a longer video, which is no longer available, is also valuable. Please read.

Do primates share an evolved sense of fairness? (available online)

This video, a bit over 2 minutes long, is not only "the funniest moments" from de Waal's TED presentation, but gets the point across within the first minute. There is a longer version in the recommended texts.

Axelrod's work is fundamental. Thinking about cooperation, evolution, game theory, and computer simulation led him to use what has since become the e. coli of cooperation studies, the computer-simulated interated prisoner's dilemma game, a strategy game that probes the ways human react when given the choice between assured self interest and potential but not guaranteed benefits of cooperation. Axelrod's "Three Conditions" brings the gist of his research to a practical level that can then be used as a lens for looking at collective action online: what are the most important conditions for ensuring cooperation among strangers in a competetive environment.

Joseph Henrich, "How Culture Drove Human Evolution" (39 minute video -- or read the transcript that accompanies it).

Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution Introduction and Conclusion (PDF)

Week Two: Evolution of Cooperation: Recommended Texts

Wilson is controversial, but the rarity of "eusocial" species and the coincidence of the cognitive, cultural, social growth of humans with the advent of hunting and gathering in cooperative groups is strongly supportive of his hypothesis.

Intriguing short, easily readable article about clever experiments that provide evidence that 15 month olds have a sense of fairness. Also, this research adds the useful phrase "altruistic sharing" to the lexicon of cooperation theory.

Martin Nowak, Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation (public access scientific article)

George W. Grace, " Reflections on the Evolution of Language: Robin Dunbar's Social Bonding Hypothesis " (web page with Howard's highlighting)

The Evolution of Cooperation 1: Selfish genes and helpful family (blog post)

Yochai Benkler, (Harvard Business Review -- most of the article is behind a paywall, but the visible part is useful)

Mark Pagel on Social Learning (interview)

Yochai Benkler, " The Penguin and the Leviathan: Towards Cooperative Human Systems Design" CSCW 2012 (PDF of slides)

Sharing knowledge is the key difference between humans and chimps, say scientists (news report of research)

Mcnally, Brown, Jackson, " Cooperation and the Evolution of Intelligence" (scientific research article)

Studies Show That Gossip Isn't All Loose Talk (NY Times article)

Eric Michael Johnson, "Ayn Rand vs. the Pygmies: Did human evolution favor individualists or altruists?" (Slate article)

Lee Alan Dugatkin, " The Russian Anarchist Prince Who Challenged Evolution," (Slate Article)

"The Baby Lab," CBS News transcript about research conducted at The Infant Cognition Lab about evidence that babies make moral decisions.

David G. Rand, Martin Nowak, " Reciprocity is Fundamental" (research report)

If you want to do your own systems simulations and agent-based modeling to study cooperation-related phenomena, you could use Insight Maker, a free, browser-based tool for exploring interactive systems. Here is Insight-Maker's webbrain and systemswiki.org.

Ethan Watters, " We aren't the world," article about Joe Henrich's work with ultimatum game in different cultures

Week Three: Social Dilemmas: Required Texts

Kollock, who died in a traffic accident in 2009, addressed the Stanford seminar on "A new literacy of cooperation," led by Andrea Saveri and Howard Rheingold, in 2005.

Peter Kollock: Social Dilemmas (PDF)

After you watch Kollock's screencast and want to read a superbly written literature review of interdisciplinary research and theory regarding social dilemmas, this paper ( PDF download) is essential.

Also a work in progress -- a way to remind yourself about the material covered by Kollock

Barry Wellman, Rochelle R. Cote and Gabriele Plickert, "Tit-for-Tat and All That: Reciprocity in East York in the 1970s" (PDF Online)

You don't have to work your way through the experimental methodology portions if that doesn't interest you. While social dilemmas exist, so does reciprocity. These sociological researchers used survey data to discover that the single most important indicator of whether someone in a face to face neighborhood receives help from others is whether they have given help to others. There's competition -- and there's also reciprocity.

Week Three: Social Dilemmas: Recommended Texts

This is a succinct overview of social dilemmas, game theory, proposed solutions.

If you really want to dig into the relationship between formal game theory, social dilemmas, and human cooperation, this entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a great place to start.

"Author Robert Wright explains "non-zero-sumness," a game-theory term describing how players with linked fortunes tend to cooperate for mutual benefit. This dynamic has guided our biological and cultural evolution, he says -- but our unwillingness to understand one another, as in the clash between the Muslim world and the West, will lead to all of us losing the "game." Once we recognize that life is a non-zero-sum game, in which we all must cooperate to succeed, it will force us to see that moral progress -- a move toward empathy -- is our only hope."

Less technical than Kollock, an excellent introduction to social dilemmas. I almost made this a required reading.

The persistence of violence in human relations is a vexing and potentially suicidal form of social dilemma. I lean more toward Kollock because he thinks culture can help change our ways (by teaching cooperative games to very young people, for example), but Shmookler's take on why it is so difficult to deal with violence without either resorting or surrendering to it is worthy of critical consideration.

This cooperation business is complex. Certainly humans are strongly influenced by the shaping forces of evolution. And certainly humans have distinguished ourselves by inventing cultural workarounds such as morality. But there's the rub. Different cultures develop different workarounds. There may or may not be an absolute morality, but it is clear that people don't act as if there is a single, universal behavioral code. A set of cultural norms may encourage and enforce cooperation within a group, but the world consists of many groups, different cultures, and the deep problem is precisely the one that Joshua Greene is pursuing.

Week Four: The Commons and Institutions for Collective Action: Required Texts:

Garrett Hardin, (1968) "The Tragedy of the Commons," Science, 162 (1968):1243-1248. available online

This is the foundational paper for the modern study of the commons (and modern students of the commons would say that Hardin is not referring to a commons, which is managed in some way by a community, but to an open access common pool resource). Looking ahead to the 21st century from the late 1900s, Hardin foresaw disaster in the way the human population was doubling, and more, with each succeeding generation. He referred to the way common grazing grounds have been overgrazed when individual farmers, unrestrained by regulation or property rights, added more and more animals to their flocks until the common meadows became overgrazed and unusable. Isn't global climate change a commons problem? Ostrom and other modern theorists react to Hardin. This short paper should be read by anyone who wants to understand issues of human collective action -- but no reader should stop with Hardin, whose gloomy assumptions have been shown by others to be something other than inevitable. See also this .jpg of a mindmap about issues arising from this article.

Elinor Ostrom, Governing The Commons : Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (summary) and One minute video .

Ostrom asked of Garrett Hardin's gloomy prophecies regarding the "tragedy of the commons" the question any scientist should ask: is it really true that humans will inevitably despoil any common resource? Looking and thousands of records, ancient and modern, of human use of shared watersheds, fishing and hunting grounds, forests and grazing lands, Ostrom found that a significant portion of communities found ways to override basic social dilemmas, by constructing systems of norms and self-policing social contracts. Ostrom is getting at something deep -- can humans learn to be more cooperative through our culturally constructed institutions than our biological heritage as competitive creatures naturally affords? Ostrom's scope is wide. She wants to know how groups of people overcome barriers to collective action and why they fail to overcome them.

Dog parks, dog owners, and dog poop are the main ingredients in commons-management experiments that take place in communities all over the globe. This report describes empirical research that tests Ostrom's design principles in a real-life situation.

Week Four: Institutions for Collective Action Recommended Texts

" Collective Action Research, Practice and Theory," issue of Grassroots Economic Organizing devoted to Elinor Ostrom

" Shame and Honor Drive Cooperation," blog post summarizing recent research -- source linked from blog

" The Penguin and the Leviathan," long blog summary of Benkler's book

" A different way of doing things," Economist article about co-ops

" Simulation modeling of Balinese irrigation," a short summary of the work Stephen Lansing reported in his book, Perfect Order.

" Collective Action Toolkit," Instructive PDF by frogdesign on how to organize collective action

" Give and Take: How the rule of reciprocation binds us," NPR Interview with psychologist Robert Cialdini

" Bill Clinton on Creative Networks of Collaboration," Blog post by Steven Johnson, referring to his book, Future Perfect, about cooperative networks in politics.

Arthur Himmelman, Collaboration for Change, PDF that clearly delineates the differences and boundaries of networking, coordination, cooperation, and collaboration.

Coopoly - The Game of Cooperatives, I haven't tested this yet. Maybe in this course?

" Justice is in our nature," Scientific American blog post by Jag Bhalla about the role of punishment in emergence and enforcement of sharing and egalitarianism.

" Punishment Promotes Human Cooperation When People Trust Each Other" (research report)

Week Five: Technologies of Cooperation Required Texts

This report was prepared by Institute for the Future by Kathi Vian, Andrea Saveri, and Howard Rheingold

This chart was created by the Institute for the Future in collaboration with Howard Rheingold, attempting to systematize the relations between the technological affordances and social practices of online collaboration.

Heather March, Stigmergy

Week Five: Technologies of Cooperation Recommended Texts

David Bollier, a champion of the commons, talks about innovation and the commons.

The design, evolution, use of environments that help individuals coordinate behavior -- stigmergic collaboration -- is a promising and largely unexplored frontier for designers of cooperation technologies.

Net neutrality is a commons issue. It's not just about protecting it from enclosure. It's about deriving the broadest possible benefit from the cornucopia of the commons that can manifest when digital media, with their power to duplicate, distribute, and coordinate flows of information, meet human judgement in an "architecture of participation" can multiply individual acts of self-interest into public goods useful to all.

O'Reilly situates architectures of participation within the "small pieces, loosely joined" design of the Internet.

Week Six: Self-organizing the Big Picture

No texts this week. Co-learners self-organize live sessions, we use forums, blogs, and mindmaps to reflect on the entire course.

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About this course: Expect participative and collaborative learning Live Session Notes A work in progress that may help you frame the different components of cooperation theory in relation to each other.

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Howard Rheingold

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Instructor: Howard Rheingold

Stanford Winter Quarter 2014

Mondays, 11:15-2:05, Room TBA

Course Description:

Today's personal, social, political, economic worlds are all affected by digital media and networked publics. Viral videos, uprisings from Cairo to Wall Street, free search engines, abundant inaccuracy and sophisticated disinformation online, indelible and searchable digital footprints, laptops in lecture halls and BlackBerries at the dinner table, twenty-something social media billionaires, massive online university courses -- it's hard to find an aspect of daily life around the world that is not being transformed by the tweets, blogs, wikis, apps, movements, likes and plusses, tags, text messages, and comments two billion Internet users and six billion mobile phone subscriptions emit. New individual and collaborative skills are emerging. This course introduces students to both the literature about and direct experience of these new literacies: research foundations and practical methods to control attention, attitudes and tools necessary for critical consumption of information, best practices of individual digital participation and collective participatory culture, the use of collaborative media and methodologies, and the application of network know-how to life online. Contrasting perspectives are offered in the readings and explored through classroom and online discussion. In each three hour class, the instructor will lecture for approximately one half hour, student project teams will present and facilitate discussion about mindmaps, learner lectures, and the lexicon for approximately one half hour, students will engage in group activities for about an hour, and instructor will facilitate full class discussion for about an hour. Students actively collaborate and cooperate in their learning during and between classes through small group discussions, collaborationt eams, and face to face exercises, forums, blogs, mindmaps and wikis.

Learning Outcomes:

Diligent students will:

Cultivate an ability to discern, analyze, and exert control over the way they deploy their attention.

Learn to use social media tools for collaborative work.

Understand the need for critical consumption of information.

Hone their ability to find the answer to any question with the right kind of search.

Train their thinking to assess the accuracy of the answers they find online.

Learn the modes, consequences, some of the responsibilities and dangers of different kinds of digital participation, from curation to blogging.

Distinguish the characteristics and methods, advantages and pitfalls, of virtual communities, smart mobs, collective intelligence, crowdsourcing, social production, collaborative consumption and wiki collaboration.

Recognize the ways the structure and dynamics of networks affect the behaviors of populations, the elements of applying of social network analysis to online culture, the steps necessary to cultivate personal learning networks.

Become familiar with competing perspectives on social media practices and their effects; learn how to make analytic arguments regarding key debates around the use of social media.

Note to Students: Please Read and Agree to The Way We Co-learn

Assignment Support
Lexicon 2013 Sign up for lexicon team 2013 Sign up for learner lectures 2013 Sign up for note-taking team 2013 Sign up for e-book team 2013 Sign up for mindmapping team 2013 Key Questions for Collaborative Inquiry Student personal wiki pages Interactive Media Resources (for learner lectures) How to use forums, blogs, wikis, mindmaps Quick How-to for forums, blogs, wikis mindmaps Helpful checklist (thank you, Joy!) for regular weekly assignments
Ongoing Assignments

Online forums:

Students are expected to contribute at least one substantial post to the forum each week - and more than one post per week is encouraged. Good forum conversation is a communication art on its own. Be sure you know how to use the forum software, understand these guidelines to discussion board participation, and understand how forum posts will be evaluated. Reading the texts precedes and is necessary for forum discussions , since the common theme of the online discussions will be the previous week's readings and in-class discussions. For examples of "substantial" comment threads, try this one about online identity or (perhaps ironically) this long thread commenting on Nicholas Carr's article, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" or this thread about "the dark side of digital backchannels." This is a good example of a comment that disagrees with the author of the original post but respectfully adds a valid point that the original post did not consider. Here is a productive thread in the new (2012) threaded discussion medium, " Branch."

Lexicon teams:

Each week, a team of two students will collaboratively identify and define key words and phrases from that week's readings and class discussion. During the next class session, led by the lexicon team, the entire class will discuss, and if necessary, improve the definitions. Each week, as we consider new texts, new words and phrases will be added and defined by a new team. A cumulative record of lexicon work will aggregate on the course wiki -- the student-defined lexicon will be a resource for the final paper. Individual team members should document their lexicon work on their personal wiki pages.

Key questions about readings:

At the beginning of each class meeting, each student will turn in a legibly signed 3 X 5 or 5 X 8 card with one substantial question that the student is prepared to address for each reading in the syllabus; Students are required to post their questions for each reading each week on their personal wiki notebook before the class meeting in which those questions are discussed.

Blog reflections on readings.

Each week, by 9 AM on the day of the class meeting, each student is a required to post a short (a few sentences or a short paragraph) reflection about each reading in the student's blog. Go beyond demonstrating that you've read the text -- demonstrate that you've thought about it. Rather than a direct summary or mini-book-report, students are requested to present key points of the texts creatively: for example, create a short dialog between the authors of each week's texts, list ways in which the subject of the texts could affect the student's life or society, and/or reflect on the implications of the texts for life online in the future, answer your own key questions from your own perspective, and/or that of the authors of the week's texts. An opportunity to exercise creativity.

Mindmapping teams:

For each of the readings assigned for each week, a team of two students will present a mindmap or concept map, showing the most important top level, second level, and third level concepts and/or practices from that week's readings. See this introduction to mindmapping to understand how it can be done.

This suggested exercise can be useful: Each member of the team should write down (independently) on Post-it notes as many important points to remember about the readings that they can come up with in a few minutes. One idea, concept, issue, fact, per note. Put all the notes up on a wall, then try to cluster those that seem related. Then ask why they seem related For clusters, see if you can come up for a descriptive name for the cluster in one or a few words. The descriptive name for the cluster becomes a top-level node in the mindmap and the notes in the cluster can orbit around it. If there is a strong hierarchical structure to the collection of notes, look at how to branch and sub-branch a tree -- what is the top level, the second level, the third level of the hierarchy? Most subjects are not naturally strongly hierarchical, but are a mix of network-like lateral connections and hierarchical nodes that have subnodes that have subnodes. This exercise is meant to generate a sketch. The next step is to refine it.

Mindmaps can be hand-drawn and scanned, then projected, or constructed online with one of many available mindmapping applications and embedded then projected -- or they can be drawn on the whiteboard. The goal is to engage the entire class in trying to sketch a systemic map of each week's subject matter. For example, these are mindmaps that student teams did of the entire set of readings for each class session of a different course http://howardrheingoldsteachingnotes.posterous.com/student-mindmaps-from-social-mediavirtual-com

Real-time note-taking teams

During class sessions, teams of four take notes using a real-time note-taking service such as MoPad, PiratePad or HackerPad, handing off to another team every half hour, publishing their notes to the class wiki after the end of the class session .

Real-time Backchannel

During certain sessions, students will use Hotseat or Todaysmeet to engage in parallel, relevant online discussion in real time through the web, Facebook, Twitter, or Facebook.

Collaborative inquiry:

During the first class meeting, we will brainstorm and decide upon five questions about social media literacies we most want to pursue. At the second class meeting, a team of four will spend a week discussing each question and deciding on resources, outline headings for an eventual article about the question. What are the underlying issues? Driving forces? Critical uncertainties? They will use the comment thread attached to their question's wiki page for discussion -- and whatever other media they want to use -- then use the wiki page itself to create the beginning of a collaborative document that is meant to grow and morph. At the beginning of the third class meeting, the first team for each question will hand off their wiki document-in-progress to a second team, who will use the same methodology to flesh out, broaden, deepen, rearrange if necessary, add to, sharpen the document inherited from the first team. A third team will have two weeks to create a presentation no longer than five minutes, in any medium except PowerPoint, and to present it.

Learner Lectures:

A co-learning opportunity. Lets have fun with it. Each week two learners volunteer to work up a five minute presentation on one of the recommended (i.e. not required) texts. Not a book report. Don't report -- teach. Find something in the text that you'd like the rest of us to know. Talk about it. Use one of the many presentation media other than PowerPoint. Keep it short. You obviously can't cover everything in 5 minutes, so pick one or two or three things that are the most important. Work on conveying what you learned succinctly.

Assignments

Some weeks, students will be asked to post screenshots of learning activities or write reflections on their blogs in addition to their other work.

Mid-term exam in class February 11

Final exam is a take-home paper and in-class exam.

Half of the exam will consist of short -- 200-300 word -- essay questions, provided a week before they are due, submitted as Word document due no later than 9:00 PM, March 11. Apply the analytic tools and conceptual frameworks learned thus far in your answers. Use the terms from the student-defined lexicon in context (don't attempt to fit all of the lexicon into your answers, but use lexicon terms appropriately) and refer to the texts you have read and discussed. Taken together, the two halves of the final exam will count for 15% of your grade.

The in-class examination will consist of short essay questions. Please check here for exact time and place, but the final exam is tentatively scheduled for 11:15-2:05 March 18, in Wallenberg 124. This will be the second half of your final exam. Bring a laptop!

Expectations

Readings are substantial; each student is expected to come to class prepared to answer questions about all of the week's assigned readings, to bring a question for each reading, record their question in their private wiki, and reflect on the readings in their public blog.

Students are expected to devote a minimum of six hours each week to the readings and assignments from this course.

Active participation is required in discussions during class meetings and in the online forum between class meetings; infrequent or low-quality participation either in class or online will diminish the final grade.

Students are expected to inform the instructor if they miss or expect to miss a class session. Missing class more than once will require substantial additional work in order to avoid a lower grade.

Overdue assignments will affect grades. Bibliographies, footnotes, and/or lists of sources are required when quoting or referring to another's work in assigned papers. Son of Citation Machine can help: use MLA style.

As ever, the honor code applies to all your work.

Grading

Key Questions About Readings & Lexicon: 15%

Classroom participation: 15%

Online Forum discussion: 15%

Schedule/Texts

Texts:

Howard Rheingold, Net Smart: How to Thrive Online, MIT Press, 2012.

Before Session One

Howard Rheingold, Net Smart, Introduction: "Why you need digital know-how -- why we all need it." pp i-ix. (textbook) (This chapter is available online)

The Way We Co-learn: How a collaborative, cooperative, learning community works -- and the kind of active learning it requires. Read and make sure you can commit yourself.

Read through this syllabus, click on all the links -- take an hour or two -- before the first class meeting..

The syllabus wiki: support, expectations, texts, schedule, grading

Seating, questions about the class, demo of forum, blog, wiki -- diff between forum and blog? Looking analytically at affordances of media, our use of media

one minute attention to breath

Note-taking teams, lexicon teams: get set up

[Multitasking exercise: those who aren't taking notes, mindmapping, or on lexicon team, strive to participate in class discussion AND participate meaningfully in real-time chat.] (We'll try this later in the quarter)

Review use of forums, blogs, wiki, mindmapping, how-to

poll for day/time of online session for week of January 21.
Note: Students should read and understand all required texts before the class meeting; for session two, students should have read all the texts listed below. During the week following each class session, we will discuss online the texts read during the previous week and discussed during the previous class session.
Required texts:

Howard Rheingold, Net Smart, Chapter One: "Attention! Why and how to control your mind's most powerful instrument," pp 35-70.

Recommended texts:

Deepak Chopra, "7 myths of meditation," Chopra can be cheesy, but this short piece is excellent advice for anyone who thinks meditation is difficult.

Daily online mindfulness practice: Put a sticker, card, post-it on your desk and laptop. Whenever it catches your attention, note what you were just paying attention to. Were you breathing normally or holding your breath? At the end of a week, reflect on your blog about this practice.

Session Three: Infotention (January 28)

Attention probe: counting exercise

Let's talk about how the course is working

Note-taking teams, mind-mapping teams, lexicon teams: get set up

Infotention mindmapping team

Lexicon team leads discussion of words added and defined over the past week

Learner lectures (Lauren)

Required texts:

Rheingold, Net Smart, Chapter Two: "Infotention: Attention to Information," pp 96-111.

Recommended texts:

"How to focus," Mindmap of practical steps for training focus in a blog post -- graphic with text.

Session Three: Infotention Learning Activities

Write your daily priorities in a few words and put note (or tape it) near the periphery of your computer screen. When you notice the note, notice where your attention is deployed.

On a daily basis, rearrange the tabs and feeds on your dashboard to match your priorities.

Reflect on this process, and how you coordinate your attentional strategies and information tools. One blog post on this reflection required, although co-learners are encouraged to blog as often as they desire.

Session Four: Crap Detection (February 4)

Let's talk about the final

Note-taking teams, mind-mapping teams, lexicon teams: get set up

Key questions breakouts, regroup

Crap detection mindmapping team

Let's look at the lexicon

Attention probe: Assign a student to ring a chime at random intervals, three times during the session. Students write what they were paying attention to/thinking at that moment: On yellow post-it if it is directly related to the discussion at that time, on an orange post-it if it is indirectly related, on a red post-it if it is not at all related. Anonymously. Then put them up, clustered by color, on the wall. (Use Primarywall?)

Required texts

Rheingold, Net Smart, Chapter Two: "Crap Detection 101: how to find what you need to know, and how to decide if it's true," pp 77-96.

Recommended texts:

Session Four: Crap Detection Learning Activities

Select a current issue or topic that is in the news and which also has the potential for evidence-based sources (e.g., scientific claims, factual claims that can be supported or cast into doubt by the use of research or polling). Select web sources that you would be consider to be very good, only partially trustworthy, and probably untrustworthy. Write a blog post describing the process you used and the evidence for your evaluation.

Session Five: Curation (February 11)

Note-taking teams, mind-mapping teams, lexicon teams: get set up

Curation mindmapping team

Attention probe: student-organized via forum

Revision teams hands off revised draft of collaborative inquiry to presentation teams; presentation teams have two weeks to prepare a five minute presentation. Focus on clarity and summary of the most important points raised by the inquiry, not on detail. Link to or embed the presentation on the questions' wiki pages.

Collective intelligence & crowdsourcing overview

Poll for day/time of online session for week of January 21.

Required texts

Recommended texts:

Session Five: Curation Learning Activities

Use the social bookmarking tab here in the Social Media Classroom to find, tag, and select descriptive snippets for two resources related to this course. Use the "Create Social Bookmark" link or drag the bookmarklet to your browser menu bar.

Create a Diigo account, find and tag four sites related to the theory and/or practice of curation. Use the bookmarklet. Highlight the key passages in one of the texts and post a link to the highlighted text (by getting an "Annotated Link" from Diigo) as a social bookmark in the Social Media Classroom. Post a link to your Diigo library on your personal wiki page.

NO CLASS FEBRUARY 18 -- PRESIDENTS DAY (We will organize an hour-long online live session this week.)

Online mindmapping team: Maxine & Lauren

Required texts:

Howard Rheingold, Net Smart, Chapter Three: "Participation Power," pp 111-147.

Recommended texts:

Ethan Zuckerman, "What Ancient Greek Rhetoric Might Teach Us About New Civics," dmlcentral.net, November 29, 2012. available online.

Session Six: Collective Intelligence and Crowdsourcing (February 25)

Required texts:

Howard Rheingold, Net Smart, Chapter Four: "Social-digital know-how: The arts and sciences of Collective Action," pp 147-167.

Recommended texts:

Arthur Himmelman, Collaboration for Change, PDF that clearly delineates the differences and boundaries of networking, coordination, cooperation, and collaboration.

Session Six: Collective Intelligence and Crowdsourcing learning activities

Find a Wikipedia page with a rich history of interaction and dispute on the Talk page -- substantial discussion of significant issues (attribution, significance, sourcing, etc.) rather than simply extensive discussion. Describe the process by which Wikipedians argued over the entry, the reasons for disputes, what methods they used to resolve conflicts, and describe the outcome (so far).

Write a blog post of at least 400 words about an example of collective intelligence and/or crowdsourcing you find online. What was the objective, was it accomplished, why would you call it example of collective intelligence and/or crowdsourcing, what social or technological affordances contributed to its success, would you consider the outcome beneficial or destructive?

Session Seven: Virtual Community and Social Production (March 4)

Required texts:

Howard Rheingold, Net Smart, Chapter Four: "Social-digital know-how: The arts and sciences of Collective Action," pp 168-190.

Recommended texts:

Session Eight: Social Networks, Social Capital, Personal Learning Networks (March 11)

Note-taking teams, mind-mapping teams, lexicon teams: get set up

Social networks, social capital, personal learning networks mindmapping team

Required texts:

Recommended texts:

Session Eight: Social Networks, Social Capital, Personal Learning Networks learning activities

Reflect on whether or not -- and how -- your activities with other learners have created or made use of social capital. How much do you think you have, and why? What evidence/criteria can you offer?

Your PLN is part of a larger network of resources that include the digital tools, online communities, networked services you use -- your Personal Learning Environment or PLE. Create your own PLE diagram. You can use a mindmapping tool, draw freehand, make collages of images -- feel free to be creative. Include collaborative and research tools, networks and communities, media, skills. Here are examples: A, B, C, D, E. Post a link or upload an image of your PLE diagram in the PLE forum topic thread. In the same post, reflect on: What did you learn about yourself when looking at your PLE? How does your PLE compare to other peers in class -- similarities and differences between yours and your classmates' diagrams.

Jessica Tonn's mindmap
Jessica Tonn's Prezi on 10 page paper: http://prezi.com/qulo5gwrnygt/edit/#54

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Today's personal, social, political, economic worlds are all affected by digital media and networked publics.

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wikipedia

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Howard Rheingold (born July 7, 1947) is an American critic, writer, and teacher, known for his specialties on the cultural, social and political implications of modern communication media such as the Internet, mobile telephony and virtual communities (a term he is credited with inventing).

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Using the SMC technically and pedagogically

To download and install, visit the download page.

To access all currently available instructional information visit the How To Page.

Intro to the SMC
Watch an eight minute intro screencast of the SMC, created by Howard Rheingold.

Participatory Pedagogy

The greatest value that the SMC can add to a learning community is its ability to support a movement away from education as delivery of knowledge toward education as critical, collaborative inquiry-a student-centric pedagogy that engages students in actively constructing knowledge together, rather than passively absorbing it from texts, lectures, and discussions. The social media collaboratory and classroom began when Howard Rheingold started teaching courses on virtual community and social media, digital journalism, and participatory media/collective action. This subject matter calls for hands-on use online communication media to augment texts, lectures, and classroom discussion. It is easier to understand and to feel engaged with theory about community, identity, collective action, public sphere, social capital, and other issues that arise from the use of Internet-mediated communication when the entire class uses the media they are studying. The first year of teaching the course, using an assortment of free Web 2.0 communication media, led to the conviction that an integrated set of tools would make it far easier to integrated multiple new communication modes into the learning process, and to the discovery that the use of these tools and collaborative inquiry hold the potential for engaging students more actively and passionately in learning, by making them responsible for formulating and pursuing questions, rather than for memorizing a body of knowledge. In regard to the Internet environment, the ability to engage with others in critical inquiry is an increasingly important skill, so this style of pedagogy is uniquely suited to the subject matter of cyberculture studies. However, interest in constructivism, constructionism, collaborative inquiry, and student-centric learning is not new. What is new is the intersection of these modes of learning, the affordances of social media, and the laptop-carrying, always-on media practices of 21st century students.

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To download and install, visit the download page. To access all currently available instructional information visit the How To Page. Intro to the SMC Watch an eight minute intro screencast of the SMC, created by Howard Rheingold.

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Collective intelligence, virtual communities, smart mobs, crowdsourcing, social production, peer learning are distinctly different forms of collaboration that have sprung up now that every desktop and every pocket is a potential printing press, broadcasting station, marketplace, community forum, political organizing force.

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Knowing the importance of participation and how to participate has suddenly become not only an individual survival skill but a key to large-scale social change.

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People participate in building the value of the every day by reading, tagging, liking, favoriting, plussing, commenting, linking, posting, refactoring (editing wiki pages), arguing in comment threads and discussion forums.

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There is a bigger social issue at work in digital literacy, one that goes beyond personal empowerment. If we combine our individual efforts wisely, it could produce a more thoughtful society: countless small acts like publishing a Web page or sharing a link could add up to a public good that enriches everyone.

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I see a new story emerging about how humans get things done together. The outlines of this new narrative can be seen in recent evidence that contradicts old assumptions about human selfishness versus altruism, self-interest versus collective action. What could be more important than understanding how people cooperate and fail to cooperate? Problems and challenges in everyday life in the home, office, factory, public places and global behavior such as conflict, pollution, resource sustainability are all being addressed with very little comprehensive knowledge about cooperation. Before empirical biology, people thought disease was caused by foreigners, witches, or sin. With the advent of experimental science and the invention of the microscope, we understood that microorganisms in water and food were killing our children. In regard to cooperation theory, fragmentary and specialized knowledge is advancing in a dozen or more different fields, but in terms of putting this fragmented knowledge together into a systemic whole, we're still in the pre-microscope era.

Cooperation Theory and Practice

I teach this course once or twice a year online via Rheingold U.

Together with Andrea Saveri and Kathi Vian of the Institute for the Future, I compiled resources toward the goal of catalyzing and interdisciplinary study of cooperation. Vian, Saveri, and IFTF production director Jean Hagen took the voluminous and disorganized notes I had been making for a couple years and turned them into a visually stunning map of cooperation theory, another visually stunning chart of "technologies of cooperation," and a print report. When we talked to specialists from different disciplines, it became clear that scientists working with complex interdependencies in ecosystems were not familiar with the work of ethnographers and complexity scientists studying Balinese water sharing rituals, and neither group of specialists were likely to be familiar with cooperation-focused research in economics or computer science. We compiled more than seventy summaries of essential work across a broad variety of disciplines. Each summary contains a link to the source document with complete bibliographic information, a one-sentence, one-paragraph, and one-page summaries of the work.

Cooperation Commons research summaries (March, 2005)

Technologies of Cooperation report (January, 2005)

"Emerging digital technologies present new opportunities for developing complex cooperative strategies that change the way people work together to solve problems and generate wealth. Central to this class of cooperation-amplifying technologies are eight key clusters, each with distinctive contributions to cooperative strategy. Each of these technology clusters can be viewed not only as a template for design of cooperative systems, but also as tools people can use to tune organizations, projects, processes, and markets for increased cooperation. Specifically, each can be used in distinctive ways to alter the key dimensions of cooperative systems-structure, rules, resources, thresholds, feedback, memory, and identity."
Designing Business for an Open World by Institute for the Future and Herman Miller Company
"How do you do business with an illusive network that belongs to nobody? How do you work with talented people you are likely never to meet and who are not motivated by money? How can businesses learn to "take advantage of" innovation when it comes along in an open-platform world?And on another level, are we seeing the beginning of the end for the existing business models based on hierarchy, planning and management, and pure competition? We are in fact seeing a new level of change. What are the indicators? The rise of open-source development communities. The growth of an on-line knowledge commons. A shift of power to socially and technologically connected "smart mobs." And many more."

Technologies of Cooperation map (September, 2005)

New Strategic Pathways in Business: Leveraging Technologies of Cooperation (June, 2005)

Howard Rheingold Screencast: Introduction to Cooperation Studies (2009)

"Emerging digital technologies present a range of catalysts for enabling new social arrangements that will transform our business and social institutions. In particular, new technologies of cooperation will enable social arrangements that help us develop new complex cooperative strategies. Such transformation has happened in the past, with the development of the printing press that led to broader literacy and public discourse, which ultimately shaped the development of democratic society. We're on the threshold of a new series of changes that will transform the way people work together to solve problems and generate wealth."
Videos from 2005 Stanford University course "Toward a Literacy of Cooperation."
Peter Kollock, Jimmy Wales, Bernardo Huberman and others

The Cooperation Revolution SGI Quarterly (April, 2008)

"When I started investigating the nature of cooperation, I kept running into a familiar story about human behavior. Humans are particularly adept at telling themselves what kind of creatures they are, and these narratives have proved tenacious and potent. When the stories people fervently believe about the nature of human nature change, lives and civilizations change."
Toward a Literacy of Cooperation Concept Map

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I see a new story emerging about how humans get things done together. The outlines of this new narrative can be seen in recent evidence that contradicts old assumptions about human selfishness versus altruism, self-interest versus collective action. What could be more important than understanding how people cooperate and fail to cooperate?

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developed by Howard Rheingold

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Using the SMC technically and pedagogically

To download and install, visit the download page.

To access all currently available instructional information visit the How To Page.

Intro to the SMC
Watch an eight minute intro screencast of the SMC, created by Howard Rheingold.

Participatory Pedagogy

The greatest value that the SMC can add to a learning community is its ability to support a movement away from education as delivery of knowledge toward education as critical, collaborative inquiry-a student-centric pedagogy that engages students in actively constructing knowledge together, rather than passively absorbing it from texts, lectures, and discussions. The social media collaboratory and classroom began when Howard Rheingold started teaching courses on virtual community and social media, digital journalism, and participatory media/collective action. This subject matter calls for hands-on use online communication media to augment texts, lectures, and classroom discussion. It is easier to understand and to feel engaged with theory about community, identity, collective action, public sphere, social capital, and other issues that arise from the use of Internet-mediated communication when the entire class uses the media they are studying. The first year of teaching the course, using an assortment of free Web 2.0 communication media, led to the conviction that an integrated set of tools would make it far easier to integrated multiple new communication modes into the learning process, and to the discovery that the use of these tools and collaborative inquiry hold the potential for engaging students more actively and passionately in learning, by making them responsible for formulating and pursuing questions, rather than for memorizing a body of knowledge. In regard to the Internet environment, the ability to engage with others in critical inquiry is an increasingly important skill, so this style of pedagogy is uniquely suited to the subject matter of cyberculture studies. However, interest in constructivism, constructionism, collaborative inquiry, and student-centric learning is not new. What is new is the intersection of these modes of learning, the affordances of social media, and the laptop-carrying, always-on media practices of 21st century students.

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To download and install, visit the download page. To access all currently available instructional information visit the How To Page. Intro to the SMC Watch an eight minute intro screencast of the SMC, created by Howard Rheingold.

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Try it. You can resize your box, too

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You can place your discussion under or overlapping this box

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CollabTech 2010: Keynote: Social Media, Participative Pedagogy, and Digital Literacies

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CollabTech 2010: Keynote: Social Media, Participative Pedagogy, and Digital Literacies

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CollabTech 2010: Keynote: Social Media, Participative Pedagogy, and Digital Literacies

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Date: Thursday, May 6th, 2010 Location: Thwing Center Ballroom at Case Western Reserve Unviersity Speaker: Howard Rheingold There are a lot of voices talking about social media today, but Howard Rheingold defined the field before it existed.

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e-book

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A persona is not the same as an archetype or a person. The special aspect of a persona description is that you do not look at the entire person, but use the area of focus or domain you are working within as a lens to highlight the relevant attitudes and the specific context associated with the area of work.

30.1 An example persona

Dorte is 53 years old and works as a secretary in her husband's plumbing business in the suburbs of Copenhagen. There are 5-6 assistants and apprentices in the company.

Background

When Dorte was very young she trained as an office clerk in the accounts department in a department store in Copenhagen. She was married at the age of 21 to Jan who had just got his skilled worker's certificate. They have two grown-up sons who no longer live at home in the combined house and workshop/office. Their sons visit frequently as they still enjoy mum's cooking.

Dorte likes to keep up with fashion. She often goes to the hairdresser, loves vibrant colours and elegant shoes. When she reads women's magazines, she looks for small tips that she changes and makes her own. She is always smartly dressed and stays fit.

Dorte loves travelling to faraway countries; most recently, she and her family were on a trip to Vietnam this summer. Before they went, she spent time reading up on the country and also watched the film Indochine starring Catherine Deneuve. Dorte always discusses the vacations with Jan, who would prefer to go to Rhodes with old friends, but it is Dorte who has the final say about the destination.

In an average day, she tends to drink too many cups of coffee, and when the telephone rings all the time and she can't reach the assistants, she also tends to smoke a bit too much.

Dorte makes payments to the Danish early retirement benefit scheme and looks forward to the day where she no longer has to be the "mum" of others any more and can spend more time travelling.

Computer use

Dorte does the accounts and the bookkeeping, VAT, taxes, vacation pay, the Danish Labour Market Supplementary Pension ATP, etc. She uses a mini financial management system that she has mastered after many years of use, but sometimes the system is not completely logical.

If she were to use other systems or use new, digital reporting, she would prefer it to be demonstrated to her by someone. She feels unable to learn something new when it is just explained to her, and she dislikes reading user guides. She says it takes her a long time to study anything new and familiarise herself with it, and she tends to see more limitations than possibilities in new IT. Dorte often underestimates her IT proficiency and overestimates the time that it will take to learn something new, so she stalls before she even gets started.

If she needs IT help, her oldest son and, less often, a woman friend provide the support. The friend works in a big company and is a super-user of the financial management software.

Dorte handles the tax cards for the business. She deals with and reports the wages, vacations, sickness benefits, and maternity leaves of the staff. She does the VAT returns and annual accounts of the company. In addition, she fills in the reports for Statistics Denmark and the Employer's Reimbursement System AER.

Dorte does not understand the logic of the IT system and does not trust everything to happen as it should. If she sends in a return form or report digitally, she likes a confirmation saying that the recipient has received the form.

Her workday:

She is not involved in the plumbing business as a trade, but she knows all the technical terms.

She tidies things up. She does not want the others (her husband and the assistants) to make a mess in the basement where the office is as she is the one who has to look at it all day "Tidy up! Your mum does not work here!"

She digs in and sometimes has to keep far too many balls in the air at the same time.

She holds the fort, but does not get a lot of professional recognition in the company from the boss/her husband.

She answers the telephone, handles mail, deliveries of goods (including invoices and delivery letters), and email.

She handles the accounts, does some bookkeeping and writes invoices.

She makes the coffee.

She has occasional contact with the accountant.

She does the invoicing of clients.

She sends/delivers mail every day.

She sends reminders.

She handles customer contact (including damage control).

She also walks the dog.

Future goals

Dorte dreams about a future where she no longer has to work and where she can spend more time travelling. She is still debating with Jan whether they should travel or buy a summer cottage where they can live all year round when they retire.

The persona approach stems from IT system development where in the late 1990s many researchers had begun reflecting on how you could communicate an understanding of the users. In literature, various concepts emerged, such as user archetypes, user models, lifestyle snapshots, and model users - as I termed it when I first wrote about the method in 1997. In 1999, Alan Cooper published his tremendously successful The Inmates are Running the Asylum (Cooper, 1999) where the persona as a concept to describe fictitious users was introduced for the first time. Despite the fact that a vast number of articles about using personas have been written, there is no unilateral understanding of the application of the method nor a definition of what a persona description is.

30.2 Four different perspectives

The literature today offers four different perspectives regarding personas: Alan Cooper's goal-directed perspective; Jonathan Grudin, John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin's role-based perspective; the engaging perspective that I myself use, which emphasizes how the story can engage the reader (Sønderstrup-Andersen, 2007); and the fiction-based perspective. The first three perspectives agree that the persona descriptions should be founded on data. However, the fourth perspective, the fiction-based perspective, does not include data as the basis for persona description, but creates personas from the designers' intuition and assumptions; they have names such as ad hoc personas, assumption personas, and extreme characters.

30.2.1 The goal-directed perspective

Cooper characterizes his persona method as "Goal-Directed Design" and maintains that it makes the designer understand the user. Thus, Goal Directed Design is meant as an efficient psychological tool for looking at problems and a guide for the design process. The central core of the method is the hypothetical archetype that is not described as an average person, but rather as a unique character with specific details.

The method focuses on a move from initial personas to final personas. In the beginning of the process, a large number of personas are created based on in-depth ethnographic research. The initial personas grasp an intuitive understanding of user characteristics. Later on, these are condensed into final personas, one persona for each kind of user. Every project has its own set of personas (Floyd et al., 2008).

A persona is defined by its personal, practical, and company-oriented goals as well as by the relationship with the product to be designed, the emotions of the persona when using the product, and the goals of the persona in using the product (hence Goal-Directed).

In other words, it is the users' (work) goals that are the focus of the persona descriptions, e.g. workflow, contexts, and attitudes. And, as implied, the advantage of the method is that it provides a focused design and a communication tool to finish discussions.

30.2.2 The role-based perspective

The role-based perspective shares goal direction with Cooper and also focuses on behaviour. The personas of the role-based perspective are massively data-driven and incorporate data from both qualitative and quantitative sources. Often, dozens of personas are shared among projects (Floyd et al, 2008).

The starting point of the role-based perspective was criticism of the traditional IT system development approaches and of Cooper's approach to personas. The traditional use of scenarios is criticized for lacking clarity and consistency in the user descriptions. Therefore, the critics introduced user archetypes, which can communicate the most important knowledge about the users and thereby support the design process. Jonathan Grudin and John Pruitt criticized Alan Cooper for underestimating the value of user involvement and for seeing the method as one single method that can handle anything (Mikkelson & Lee, 2000),(Grudin & Pruitt, 2002).

The role-based perspective used the criticism as a starting point to develop the method further. The most important additions are, firstly that both qualitative and quantitative materials must supplement the persona descriptions; and secondly that there should be a clear relationship between data and the persona description (Grudin & Pruitt, 2002). Personas can communicate more than design decisions to designers and clients; they can also communicate information from market research, usability tests, and prototypes to all participants in the project. Finally, the method is regarded as a usability method that cannot stand alone, but should be used in tandem with other methods. The persona description itself should contain information about several issues: how big a share of the market the individual persona takes up; how much market influence the persona has; the user's computer proficiency, activities, and hopes and fears; and a description of a typical day or week in the life of the user. In addition to this are strategic and tactical considerations (Pruitt & Adlin, 2006).

The role-based perspective focuses on the users' roles in the organization (Sønderstrup-Andersen, 2007). Personas are an efficient design tool because of our cognitive ability to use fragmented and incomplete knowledge to form a complete vision of the people who surround us. With personas, this ability comes into play in the design process, and the advantage is that a greater sense of involvement and a better understanding of reality will be created.

30.2.3 The engaging perspective

The engaging perspective is rooted in the ability of stories to produce involvement and insight. Through an understanding of characters and stories, it is possible to create a vivid and realistic description of fictitious people. The purpose of the engaging perspective is to move from designers seeing the user as a stereotype with whom they are unable to identify and whose life they cannot envision, to designers actively involving themselves in the lives of the personas. The other persona perspectives are criticized for causing a risk of stereotypical descriptions by not looking at the whole person, but instead focusing only on behaviour (Nielsen, 2004;Nielsen, 2011; Nielsen 2012).

The starting point for the engaging perspective is the way we as humans interact with other people. We experience specific meetings in time and place. We mirror ourselves in the people we meet. And we experience others as both identical to and different from ourselves. Also, we experience relationships that are not specific and where the person we meet is anonymous and represents a type. Here, we use our experiences to understand the person and to predict what actions he or she will perform. If the designers see the users as stereotypical representations, they mould a mental image of the users together with a number of typical and automated acts. These representations prevent insight into the unique situation of the users and reduce the value of the scenario as a tool to investigate and describe future solutions.

An engaging description requires a broad knowledge of the users, and data should include information about the social backgrounds of the users, their psychological characteristics, and their emotional relationship with the focus area. The persona descriptions balance data and knowledge about real applications and fictitious information that is intended to evoke empathy. This way, the persona method is a defence against automated thinking.

30.2.4 The fiction-based perspective

These personas have spurred discussions about validity and value (see e.g. When does a Persona stop being a Persona and Assumption personas help overcome hurdles). In line with Adlin & Pruitt (2006), James Robertson (2008) in his article Beyond Fake Personas suggests a continuum from Persona Sketch, over Persona Hypothesis and Provisional Personas, to Robust Personas ending in Complete Personas.

30.2.5 Other perspectives

Floyd et. al. 2008 mention three additional types that they have come across: Quantitative data driven personas are extracted from natural groupings in quantitative data: User archetypes as personas are similar to personas, but more generic, usually defined by role or position: Finally Marketing personas are created for marketing reasons and not to support design.

30.2.6 Criticism

Criticism of the persona method pertains to empiricism, especially the relationship between data and fiction. The implementation of the persona method in companies has also come under fire (Chapman et al, 2008; Chapman & Milham, 2006; Portigal, 2008; Rönkkö et al, 2004).

Because the persona descriptions have fictitious elements, some find it difficult to see the relationship with real users and the way that the data used is collected and analysed. Furthermore, the fictitious elements apparently prevent the method from being regarded as scientific, as one of the criteria for a scientific method is that the study must be reproducible. This critique is based on an objectivistic scientific paradigm where science consists of statements that can be verified. In contrast to this is the interpretative paradigm where science is understood as the object of continual clarification and discussion (Kvale, 1997). The persona method is as such qualitative; deep knowledge of user needs, attitudes, and behaviour is gathered using qualitative methods. Thus this criticism can be disproven as the critics having misunderstood the starting point of the method.

The method has additionally been criticized for not being able to describe actual people as it only depicts characteristics.

When it comes to implementation, the method is criticized for preventing designers meeting actual users, as actual stories and encounters with real users are assumed to give a better understanding of the users' needs. Yet another objection is that the method does not take into consideration internal politics, and that this can lead to limited use. Lately, the latter has been refuted, as can be seen in the suggested 10 steps to personas that involve the organisation in as many steps as possible.

30.3 The use of personas

I now provide a brief introduction to why the persona method is a useful design tool, what personas are used for, how they are constructed, how to use them, and what to consider in the communication of personas.

In the design process, we begin to imagine how the product is to work and look before any sketch is made or any features described. If the design team members have a number of persona descriptions in front of them while designing, the personas will help them maintain the perspective of the users. The moment the designers begin to imagine how a possible product is to be used by a persona, ideas will emerge. Thus, I maintain that the actual purpose of the method is not the persona descriptions, but the ability to imagine the product. In the following, I designate these product ideas as scenarios. It is in scenarios that you can imagine how the product is going to work and be used, in what context it will be used, and the specific construction of the product. And it is during the work with developing scenarios that the product ideas emerge and are described. The persona descriptions are thus a means to develop specific and precise descriptions of products.

A scenario for Virk.dk could be described like this:

Dorte sits at the computer ready to handle the reporting. She goes to Virk.dk and looks at the front page. Dorte tries to take it all in. It is new and thus a little daunting, but at least it looks nice with those colours, she thinks, while at the same time she says to herself: "What do I do now I have installed my signature. I need to find the report form, but where? Well... look, in the middle of the page is a search box, maybe I can try searching for it." Dorte writes "Apprentice refund" in the search field and launches the search. A new screen appears with a short list of hits. At the top is a link to the form she wanted.

In this case, the designers got the idea that there should be a search field in the middle of the homepage. This would support a shift from information push in the old version of the webpage to form retrieval in the new version.

Author/Copyright holder: Unknown (pending investigation). Copyright terms and licence: Unknown (pending investigation). See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below.
30.3.1 Personas for IT and for products

When personas are used for IT system development, it is mainly to explore interaction and navigation. On the other hand, they are not suited to describing what kind of information the system is to contain. For Virk.dk, four personas were created. One of these personas, Jesper, is an accountant. Jesper represents all the users reporting for other companies, not, however, including for example agricultural consultants. When Jesper is used in the scenario, he illustrates what demands those who report on behalf of companies have of the product, both how they think and how they would like to see the information presented. But Jesper does not represent what information and reporting forms should be available on the site. If he did, there would be no reporting forms for agricultural consultants.

In IT systems development, there are specific methods to describe the system navigation and interaction e.g. Unified Modelling Language or the user stories within agile development methods, where the scenarios are described in illustrated and narrative stories. It is quite easy to insert the personas into these methods.

As the persona method developed from a method for IT system development to also working within product development, a shift in the method occurred that has had an impact on how the method is used and what it can be used for. When personas are used for product development, the scenario takes a different path. Here, the users' processes and interactions with the product can more easily be understood as role-playing and story-boarding, and the ways of capturing ideas are less formalized.

30.3.2 4 areas of importance, 10 steps to follow

The persona is ideally shaped according to user studies, and used for ideation. But the process varies; sometimes the idea comes first, and the persona is created later and used to verify or enrich the idea (Chang et al., 2008). Studies have shown that one of the main difficulties in the method is to get project participants to use it (Browne, 2011). In the following, I present a process model that sets out to cover this problem throughout the process. It contains four different main parts: data collection and analysis of data (steps 1, 2), persona descriptions (steps 4, 5), scenarios for problem analysis and idea development (steps 6, 9), and acceptance from the organization and involvement of the design team (steps 3, 7, 8, 10).

The 10 steps cover the entire process from the preliminary data collection, through active use, to continued development of personas. It is an ideal process, and sometimes it is not possible to include all steps in the project (Nielsen, 2011; Nielsen 2012).

1. Collection of data. In the first step, you collect as much knowledge about the users as possible. Data can come from many different sources, even from pre-existing knowledge in the organization.

2. You form a hypothesis. Based on the first data collection, you form a general idea of the various users within the focus area of the project, including in what ways the users differ from one another.

3. Everyone accepts the hypothesis. In this step, the goal is to support or reject the first hypothesis about the differences between the users. This happens by confronting project participants with the hypothesis and comparing it to existing knowledge.

4. A number is established. In this step, you decide the final number of personas.

5. You describe the personas. The purpose of working with personas is to be able to develop solutions based on the needs of the users, which you do through preparing persona descriptions that express enough understanding and empathy for the readers to understand the users.

6. You prepare situations. As already mentioned, the method is directed at creating scenarios that describe solutions. To that purpose, a number of specific situations that could trigger use of the product are described. In other words, situations are the basis, or the precursors, of a scenario.

7. Acceptance is obtained from the organization. It is a common thread throughout all 10 steps that the goal of the method is to involve the project participants. This means that as many as possible should participate in the development of the personas and that it is important to obtain the acceptance of the participants of the various steps. That is why all should contribute to and accept the situations. In order to achieve this, you can choose between two strategies: You can ask the participants for their opinion, or you can let them participate actively in the process.

8. You disseminate knowledge. In order for the method to be used by the project team, the persona descriptions should be disseminated to all. It is, therefore, important early on to decide how this knowledge is to be disseminated to those who have not participated directly in the process, to future new employees, and to possible external partners. The dissemination of knowledge also includes how the project participants will be given access to the underlying data.

9. Everyone prepares scenarios. As previously mentioned, personas have no value in themselves. Not until the moment where the persona is part of a scenario - the story about how the persona uses a future product - does it have real value.

10. On-going adjustments are made. The last step is the future life of the persona descriptions. The descriptions should be revised regularly, approximately once a year. There can be new information, or the world could change and new aspects may affect the descriptions. Decisions have to be made whether to rewrite the descriptions, or add new personas, or whether some of them possibly should be eliminated.

Author/Copyright holder: Lene Nielsen. Copyright terms and licence: All Rights Reserved. Reproduced with permission. See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below.
30.3.3 Why stories matter

One of the perceived benefits of personas is that they give the design team a mental model of a particular kind of user, which allows the team to predict user behaviour. The personas evoke empathy with users and prevent designers from projecting their own needs and desires onto the project (Floyd et al., 2008). For the persona to evoke empathy, the description needs to be crafted in such a way that the reader can imagine a real person, understand this person's needs and desires, and predict the person's future actions. In the following, I go into more details about how personas and scenarios are tightly interlinked with storytelling to evoke empathy and identification. Here, I am thinking both of the relationship between the fictitious characters and the story and the general narrative structures.

Using narratives is nothing new within IT system development (Madsen & Nielsen, 2006), where stories have been suggested as a starting point to collect data and as a method to theorize over various project types and project phases. At the same time, focus on stories can play a part in providing insight into what goes on outside and below the official course of events. Thereby, the many, often contradictory and competing, stories and interpretations that circulate in an organization can be revealed. Stories can also be used when you want to theorize about organizations, IT systems, and IT system development. An organization can be seen as a collective narrative system where members construct and play out sequences of events on an on-going basis, both individually and together, to be able to remember and to create meaning in past, present, and future events (Boje, 1991; Boje, 1995). These sequences can be used in the process of structuring both the IT system development process and the IT system itself. Here, the narrative contributes to establishing a partnership and a common understanding of the players involved and their goals. This applies in relation to both the development and the presentation of the system to the user (Gazan, 2005). Stories work on several levels, and also provide templates for gathering and analysing empirical data. This happens in interview situations when you need to determine system requirements. The developers can focus on the users' stories about existing and future practice, analyse them, and thus become more aware of requirements (Alvarez & Urla, 2002). These requirements can later on be described in narrative scenarios that are easy to relate to and easy to remember. The scenarios draw on our ability to create meaning individually and together, and to arrange and concentrate information in a narrative form (Carroll, 2000). Subsequently, the stories can be used to analyse the process, the mistakes that occurred, and the political implications of the development and implementation process (Brown, 1998; Brown & Jones, 1998).

30.4 Field data and the engaging persona

To describe users as personas helps designers to engage in the users during the entire design process. It enables the design team to engage in the user and to focus the design on the user. But the descriptions can conflict with the preconceived perceptions the designers have - their stereotypical images.

When we encounter a stranger, we have a tendency to see the person as a stereotype. We do not see the person as possessing a unique constellation of characteristics, but add him to a previously formed category (Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2001). The stereotype is built on knowledge of previous meetings with others and ordered into categories that form the basis for the stereotype. One definition of stereotypes is that they are "socially constructed representations of categories of people" (Hinton, 2000). The stereotypes function as mental pictures for the designers, but being stereotypes, they prevent identification with the described person. The descriptions thereby influence the value of the scenarios as means to investigate and describe a possible future solution.

To move designers away from stereotyping and to get them to engage in the personas puts demands on the descriptions. The field data for personas has traditionally focused on behaviours and demographics (Goodwin, 2008) or goals and tasks in work-related environments (Carroll, 2000). Cooper et al. (2007) list three types of user goals that should be included in the persona descriptions: experience goals, end goals, and life goals. To collect field data for the engaging personas demands an awareness of other kinds of information such as background, psychology, emotions, and character traits.

Within the field of HCI, ethnographic material is collected, interpreted, and communicated, but the act of communicating the data to a design team is often overlooked. The foundation document (Pruitt & Adlin, 2006) is an example of a recommendation for what should be included in a material that can support the personas, but the choice of material does not reflect the process of perceiving the material.

The creative process of writing engaging personas is grounded both in the writer's previous experiences and in the field data. To introduce field data to designers is an act of communication that involves both a selection of the data to present and selecting the form in which it is to be presented. During the presentation, the presenter must be aware of how the data is received and interpreted. As human beings we have a tendency to categorize persons, but by being aware of this and adding information that works against the tendency, we might prevent designers from conceiving stereotypes.

30.4.1 Engagement

INT. - THELMA'S KITCHEN - MORNING

THELMA is a housewife. It's morning and she is slamming coffee cups from the breakfast table into the kitchen sink, which is full of dirty breakfast dishes and some stuff left from last night's dinner which had to "soak".

She is still in her nightgown. The TV is ON in the b.g. From the kitchen, we can see an incomplete wallpapering project going on in the dining room, an obvious "do-it-yourself" attempt by Thelma.

But what is it to engage a designer? And how can a persona description evoke empathy? In the following, I present a framework that emanates from a theoretical understanding of fictional "engaging characters" and character building and writing. Furthermore, it encompasses what elements a character description should include and how in the reading process we engage with a character when, as readers, we comprehend a written description of a human as complete. Take a look at the excerpt from the beginning of the film script for Thelma and Louise. The description of Thelma is quite vivid and in few lines tells the reader about her state of mind (unhappy), her status (housewife) and her character trait (sloppy).

The character perspective in fiction has commonalities with the persona description as the narrator is withdrawn and invisible. The invisible narrator is also seen in the script example where the description of Thelma is not seen from any specific perspective, but a neutral author comments on the scene by describing details that say something about Thelma and her surroundings.

The persona in the scenario has a function similar to the function of the character in the film script; it is through the description of the character that we understand the character's actions and motivation for action, and it is the character's actions that move the story forward.

30.4.2 Levels of engagement

To create an engaging persona is to provide the reader with a vivid description of a user, so vivid that the reader can identify with the user throughout the design process. The term "identification" covers the processes of recognition, alignment, and allegiance (Smith, 1995).

Recognition is the information that enables the reader to construct the character as an individual and human agent.

Alignment is the process whereby the reader is placed in relation to the character's actions, knowledge, and emotions.

Allegiance is not only the moral evaluation the reader produces of the character, but also the moral evaluation the text allows the reader to produce. Allegiance depends on access to the character's state of mind and the reader's ability to understand the context wherein the action takes place.

The engagement is first and foremost provided through the ability to recognize - a recognition that originates from both the material presented and the reader's knowledge that goes beyond this. The more material presented the less the reader has to draw on his own experiences.

What is not presented to the reader in the description of the persona, the reader must create himself from inferences, which are added to the story, so to speak.

To enable engagement in the character, the description of emotions as well as of alignment and allegiance is derived from the material. From the reader's point of view, the description of the persona has certain demands, but as the engaging persona is to be part of a scenario, the narration generates demands of the character description too.

In order for the designer as reader to engage in the persona, the text must give access to:

Information that enables persona construction;

Information about the emotional status of the persona;

Information about context that enables an understanding of the character.

30.4.3 Flat character or rounded character

To the reader or viewer of fiction, the two basic types of stories are well known. The plot-driven story is seen in most action films where the hero has very few character-traits and the story moves from one action to the next. The character is defined as a flat character. In contrast to this, the character-driven story has a character that is described with several traits, and it is the development of the character that moves the story forward. This character is defined as a rounded character.

The difference between the characters in the character-driven and the plot-driven stories are the number of traits. In the plot-driven story, the character has a limited number of traits, and they function as catalyst for actions. This makes the character highly predictable and creates a flat character in a plot-driven story (Chatman, 1990).

In the character driven story, the character has multiple traits. The tension between the character traits creates unpredictable actions and this determines the story development.

30.4.4 Construction of the rounded character

A description of a human being should include physiognomic dimensions as well as sociological and psychological dimensions. Each of these has an impact on the character's behaviours and actions. The descriptions of physiognomy, sociology, and psychology enable an understanding of the motivation behind the persona's actions in the scenarios. The dimensions encompass both past and present, both the self and relations to others.

"If we understand that these three dimensions can provide the reason for every phase of human conduct, it will be easy for us to write about any character and trace his motivation to its source." (Egri, 1960: p. 35).

Thus the character possesses both personal (inner) and inter-personal (social, public, and professional) elements. It is the diversity in experiences that constitute the character. All characters have personal needs and goals as well as interpersonal wishes and professional ambitions. These help define the character and create its own demands, restrictions, and privileges.

This, as well as the understanding of the rounded character, has several implications for the creation of the persona description:

The character develops in the story.

The character has two or more traits that interact.

The character belongs to a specific time and specific culture and interacts with the culture.

The persona description is characterised by:

More than one character trait;

Psychology, physiognomy, and a social background;

Personal needs and goals, interpersonal wishes, professional ambitions;

Context.

Furthermore the persona belongs to a specific time and specific culture and interacts with the culture, and the persona develops in the scenario.

The understanding of the rounded and engaging characters puts demands on the data from the field studies. Observations of work processes and segmentation of users as skilled versus non-skilled users do not provide the writer with the necessary information to describe the character traits and psychology of the persona. As the rounded character incorporates personality, emotions, and actions, these elements should also stem from the field data. During research, information about the users' surroundings, character traits, emotional status, and background, as well as common demographics, actions, goals, and tasks should be observed.

30.5 Scenarios and stories

The move from creating engaging personas to scenarios reflects the move from a static character description to an active character in a story - a narrative. In the following, I draw on an understanding of narratives as both a process (mental story construction) and a product, both performance and text (Ryan, 2003; Boje, 1991).

There is an on-going discussion of what a narrative is, but it is agreed that it includes time - it is a way for humans to organize time. Is a narrative the barest organization of time as suggested by Abbott (2002) e.g. "She took her bicycle"? Or does it include causality, as suggested by Cobley (2001) e.g. "She took her bike and was hit by a bus"? I will not participate in the discussion, but take a pragmatic standpoint from a scenario point of view. In the scenarios, the narrative must include causality, as the focus is on the relationship between how the user's action gives rise to system reaction and how system action provokes user reaction.

There is a distinction between narrative and story. The narrative is the organization of events, while the story includes prior events or events the reader must assume or guess.

Narrative: A movement from a start point to an end point, with digression that involves the showing or telling of story events. Narrative is a re-presentation of events and, chiefly, re-presents space and time.

Story: All the events which are to be depicted in a narrative and which are connected by the means of a plot (Cobley, 2001).

For a text (in the broadest sense of the word) to qualify as a narrative, it must (Ryan, 2003):

create a world and populate it with characters and objects; the world must undergo changes of state that are caused by non-routine physical events: either accidents/happenings or deliberate human action;

allow the reconstruction of an interpretive network of goals, plans, causal relations, and psychological motivations around the narrated events.

30.5.1 Stories and meaning

When we experience incidents, we try to understand and extract a meaning from the incidents. This meaning can either have the construction of a story with sequences organised in a narrative and linear structure or as meaning organised in a logical structure (Bruner 1990). When we read a scenario, a similar process begins. We are handed story elements that make us put together a narrative. Some information we do not receive as story elements; they are to be inferred from our expectations, knowledge of the area, and cultural background.

The creation of the narrative is an inter-subjective process constructed by the reader from presumptions and inference. An example: The woman takes the knife. The man hits the woman.

We infer a causal connection between the two elements of action, and we assume that the two actions will spur further action.

The narrative becomes different if the story-elements are the same, but are presented in reverse order, as in this example: The man hits the woman. The woman takes the knife.

30.5.2 Personas in stories - scenarios

In IT system development, the persona description is used as the foundation for outlining a scenario that investigates the use of an IT system from the particular user's point of view. The persona method authors suggest different types of persona-scenarios. Cooper et al. (2007) suggest a progression from initial, high-level scenarios to more and more detailed ones with increasing emphasis on the user-product interaction. In order to describe this progression, they distinguish between problem scenarios, which are stories about a problem that exists prior to the introduction of technology, and design scenarios that convey a new vision of the situation after the introduction of technology. Pruitt & Adlin (2006) refer to Whitney Quesenbery's (Quesenbery 2006) definition of different types of personas and to scenarios with different levels of detail placed in a continuum between evocative and prescriptive scenarios as well as along the development process. Mulder & Yaar (2006) focus exclusively on web development and propose one type of scenario that describes a persona's journey through a website. The authors provide different lists of elements that could/should be included in a 'complete' or 'good' scenario. Below is presented an overview of these authors, the scenario elements they propose, and the scenario element definitions they give, if definitions are given (Madsen & Nielsen, 2009)

PERSONA

A persona encapsulates a distinct set of behaviour patterns

Characters The persona is the main character, but other characters might also be involved.

Specified user A persona.

Document the mission from the persona's point of view. Others can be around, influencing the decisions.

CONTEXT

In what setting will the IT system be used?

Set the scene: Where is the persona? When does it happen? Who else is around?

BEGINNING

Context/situation The beginning of the story, motivation for what happens, and a focus on what the persona is trying to do.

Particular task or situation.

Establish the goal or conflict. Conflict: inner or outer conflict triggers the visit to a website.

ACTION

Is the persona interrupted frequently?
Will the IT system be used for extended amounts of time?
Will other IT systems or products be used?
What are the primary activities the persona needs to perform to meet his or her goals?
How much complexity is permissible, given persona skill and frequency of use

Plot/action Focus on what happens during the scenario and what influences the decisions the persona has to make.
Facts Gathered from user research.

Features or functionality References to specific features or functionality the persona will need and/or use.
Procedure or task flow information

Overcome crisis along the way.
Describe intermediate steps and decisions.
Does the persona use other sites, email, phones etc.?
How does the persona feel about the experience?

ENDING

What is the expected end result of using the IT system?

Resolution The ending situation and a focus on what has changed during the story.

Clearly defined outcome or goal for the task.

Achieve resolution
Reach denouement - what happens after the resolution?

The table shows that the lists of scenario elements are somewhat similar, but also that only Quesenbery (2006) and Mulder & Yaar (2006) explain the elements that should be included in a scenario - and this only in a brief manner. Mulder & Yaar (2006) state that the scenario elements they outline are the classic components of storytelling. However, they do not explain what classic storytelling is. In general, the persona literature is clearly inspired by, but does not explicitly refer to, narrative theory as an established knowledge base and source of already defined (if controversially discussed) key concepts, such as story elements. It is relevant to look more closely at the narrative aspect of persona-scenarios and to draw more explicitly on narrative theory in doing so.
Author/Copyright holder: Unknown (pending investigation). Copyright terms and licence: Unknown (pending investigation). See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below.
30.5.3 The story structure

Basically, a story includes setting, goal, plot, and solution. It evolves in a dramaturgy of beginning, middle, and end. For the scenario, the dramatic elements are:

The beginning presents the user and what the persona wants to achieve.

The middle describes what the user does, e.g. the navigation and the information that is offered. And it describes the persona's motivation for pursuing the goal.

The end describes whether the persona succeeds in his or her intentions.

The creative part of scenario construction is crucial; it is during this process that the field data evokes design ideas. Whether writing or drawing, producing a scenario can take place in a shared setting and as an act of communication. The scenario explores the creative situation, and this can be compared to the productive notion Tolstoy had when writing Anna Karenina:

"(...) after Vronsky and Anna had finally made love and Vronsky had returned to his lodging, he, Tolstoy, discovered to his amazement that Vronsky was prepared to commit suicide." (Abbott, 2002: p. 18)

It is the acquaintance that Tolstoy has with the Vronsky character and the narrative that in itself provides the action. In this instance, it reflects the circumstances and the traits of the character, but when the story acts as a motor for creativity, it can both provide descriptions and solutions and, as here, also carry the writer away.

As the creative process has this ability, it becomes necessary for the producer of the scenario to look for consistency and closure in both the description of the persona and the scenario. In other words, the producer needs to look upon the scenario from a reader's point of view to try to understand the story as an outside reader might understand it.

30.5.4 Story elements: Events

Events are essential to stories. A narrative is made up of both constituent events that are necessary for the story and supplementary events that do not seem essential, but add flavour and enrich the story (Abbott, 2002).

Setting is another common ingredient in stories. The setting is optional; "she took her bike and was run over by a bus" does not include a setting, but to a scenario, the setting is inevitable. It is the setting that pinpoints where the use takes place, the surroundings that may influence the use, the time of day, and other elements of context that might influence the use.

Dorte sits at the computer ready to handle the reporting. She goes to Virk.dk and looks at the front page. Dorte tries to take it all in. It is new and thus a little daunting, but at least it looks nice with those colours, she thinks, while at the same time saying to herself: "What do I do now," I have installed my signature. I need to find the reporting, but where?" Well... look, here in the middle of the page is a search box, maybe I can try searching for it" Dorte writes "Apprentice refund" in the search field and launches the search. A new screen appears with a short list of hits. At the top is a link to the form she wanted.

If we again look at the scenario for Virk.dk, the setting is known from the persona description. The scenario includes the following events:

Dorte writes "virk.dk" and presses the enter key.

The webpage loads.

She searches for a form.

She gets a list of hits.

These are the events that lay the foundation for the system design.

30.5.5 Story elements: Closure and resolution

When a narrative resolves a conflict, it achieves closure (Abbott, 2002). Closure can be both for a single event and for the whole story. Resolution is one way of obtaining closure. When we read a story, we want to have closure to get answers to questions and to experience the end. We have a desire for the end. As Brooks puts it: "...narrative desire is ultimately, inexorably, desire for the end" (Brooks, 1984: p. 52). As we write the scenario, we do not know the end, but we have a desire to find the end through the creative process. During discussions and writing, endings will be created; if open-ended, the scenario can be an agenda for dialogue.

Scenario reading differs from scenario writing. As a natural cause of the reading process, closure and resolution is craved. If it is not provided, the reader will make it up (Abbott, 2002) - in the scenario example, the reader depicts Dorte in a setting: is she in her office - or sitting with her laptop in front of the television? If the scenario does not provide the information, the reader will make the setting up in the urge to obtain closure.

30.5.6 Story elements: Voice

The voice - whom do we hear - can be either a first person narrator or a third person narrator. The first person narrator "I took a bicycle" is limited to the view of the person, while the third person narrator "she took a bicycle" has the possibility to include comments that the person cannot know of - "she took a bicycle, but what she didn't know was that the evil person had put a GPS on it to track her traces".

Some suggest use of a first person narrator, e.g. (Mikkelson & Lee, 2000). Even though this provides information about the language used by the persona, the downsides are bigger. The possibility of adding omnipotent comments to the scenario should not be ruled out as they can function as containers of information that are not accessible for the persona. If dealing with scenarios for more personas, it can be very difficult to distinguish one character from the other with the use of "I". Furthermore, it takes a very skilled writer to imitate and create a consistent language. This can be experienced in the scenario excerpt where the dialogue is very extensive and not as subtle as real-world dialogue.

30.5.7 Story elements: Plot

Plot is inevitable in a story; it is the linking of events in the plot that keeps the story moving (Cobley, 2001). Both plot-driven and character-driven stories include action; what separates them is the depth of the persona portrait. In the character-driven story, the character is seen as a personage rather than somebody who is the product of the plot and just participating in the story development. Instead, it is the character development that creates the story development, and the story development that spins the plot. If the designer is to engage with the persona, the scenario should include a strong central character with goals and desires that need fulfilment during the story, thus resembling the character-driven story.

30.5.8 Story elements: Obstacles

Understanding the obstacles of the users when using the product is essential in order to develop and redesign products. Often, the obstacles become visible during the collection of data, and they can stem from the system itself and from the surroundings. If we look again at the excerpt of the scenario for Dorte, the obstacle of installing a digital signature is not examined. It is a pre-requisite that she has installed the signature, and the story begins from this point. But how likely is it that she can do this herself when she needs help from her son to do her first digital reporting?

You often see scenarios, especially in IT, where just giving the persona an IT system solves all problems. I call this type of scenario "happy scenarios" as they always have a happy ending. They lack obstacles, and the solution is always that the IT product will make everything much easier. When you read this type of scenario, they seem unrealistic because of the lack of obstacles.

30.5.9 An overview of the scenario elements

The overview below is inspired by Jean Mandler's reflections on the story form (Mandler, 1983). The story begins with a setting in which characters, location, problems, and time are presented. After this presentation, one or more episodes follow, each having a beginning and a development towards a goal. In the opening episode, the character reacts to the introductory events, sets a goal, and outlines a path to reach the goal. Each episode focuses on the goal, the attempts to reach the goal, and the obstacles in the way of reaching the goal. The attempts are understood as the causes of the outcome. Each episode links to the overall story, thereby building up the plot.

NARRATIVE ELEMENTS

NARRATIVE ELEMENTS IN A SCENARIO

Time: both the time in which the actions take place, e.g. the future, and the story development over time - beginning, middle, and end.

Most scenarios are set in present time, but they can also concern a distant future.
The story time can last minutes, days, months, etc.

Episodes: development toward the goal. Episodes consist of:

Beginning

Attempts

Events (accidents, obstacles, happenings, deliberate human actions)

Development

The scenario develops through a sequence of episodes that concern the problem, the goal and the attempts to reach the goal, the events involved in these attempts, and the obstacles hindering fulfilment of the goal.

Overall story: starts with a beginning, goes through a middle, and arrives at the end.
The overall story is sensitive towards what is considered ordinary social practice within a given culture and explains deviations from accepted social practice.

Each episode links to and has to be meaningful in relation to the overall story.
The scenario has to explain why non-routine actions and events happen and how they are dealt with.

30.5.10 Benefits and pitfalls

To sum up, the benefit of the scenarios are that they are specific and use a language that is easily understood and accessible for both users and designers. This is a contrast to other models that require knowledge and expertise in order to be understood. The scenario enables a design process focused on use and explains vividly why a system is necessary. The scenario enables an understanding of the experiences that most likely results in a successful accomplishment of the user's goals and it offers a task-oriented decomposition (Sutcliffe, 2003; Bliss, 2000; Jarke, 1999; Kyng, 1992).

This overview suggests a shared understanding of the scenario method as a means to provoke discussions and generate ideas in a specific language easily shared by users and designers. It enables experiences to be shared and anchors the empirical data in a specific form.

The downsides of the scenario are that it can confirm beliefs and create obsession with details, and it can create a false reassurance, as it is hard to know when the design area is covered. The downside is also a lack of clarity in evidence of field data and a lack in focus on the user.

The benefits of the scenario are:

The scenario enables specific knowledge and supports reflection in action.

It supports communication and shared understanding between the members of the design team and between users and designers. It can help design knowledge to accumulate across problem instances when categorized and abstracted.

It supports idea generation, including abandoning of design ideas and is easily revised and written for many purposes and at many levels.

It constitutes a theoretical anchoring of an empirical "chaos".

(Bødker, 1999; Bødker & Christiansen, 1997; Carroll, 1999, Carroll 2000; Erickson, 1995; Sutcliffe, 2003).

The downsides of the scenario are:

The scenario can create a false sense of assurance that all aspects are covered by a small number of scenarios and can supply minimal evidence to confirm a belief.

As the scenario is detailed, it can bias people away from the big picture and create obsession with unnecessary details.

The scenario method lacks clarity in defining the user: it does not capture the essence of the user as representation is covered by attributes such as age, job, and title and might not faithfully represent the user's tasks and contexts or the user's interests.

The method lacks focus on the user and does not create engagement.

The scenario design tradition lacks evidence of how data is gathered and on which basis the scenarios are formed.

(Grudin & Pruitt, 2002; Mikkelson & Lee, 2000; Nardi, 1996; Nielsen, 2003; Sutcliffe, 2003).

Alan Cooper (1999) links personas and scenarios. He describes the scenario as the investigation of tasks. "A scenario is a concise description of a user using a software-based product to achieve a goal" (Ibid p. 179), where the goals stem from the persona description.

Even though it seems natural that there should be a link between personas and scenarios, they have often been viewed as separate methods.

30.6 A useful tool around the globe

In 2010, Forrester claimed that a redesign with personas can provide a return of investment on up to four times (Drego & Dorsey, 2010). In a later study, it was demonstrated that a number of areas affect the success of the method (Browne, 2011). The criteria of success are:

Personas should be used for identifying concrete decisions and products that should be based on personas.

Qualitative research should have high priority.

The persona descriptions should be properly made.

The descriptions should be used for design decisions.

The descriptions should be evaluated and updated at regular intervals.

Reported failures seem to be due to:

Sloppy research and data gathering.

Many do not understand the method and think it is the same as demographically based segmentations and customer profiles.

Too few resources are put into the project.

The quality of the persona descriptions is inconsistent. Some are well-written stories and engage stakeholders using supportive material. Other descriptions are unrealistic and badly written and do not think of those using the descriptions.

Those who are to use the descriptions find it hard to understand how to use them.

Similar studies have been carried out in Denmark in 2009 (Vorre Hansen, 2009) and 2011. These studies showed that there is a difference between consultant agencies and in-house development as some agencies have a world-view or a lens with which they collect and analyse the data, e.g. motives and barriers for product use or shared values between sender and recipient. For in-house development, the specific values seem not to be present. One finding was that those interviewed in the study assessed that personas should be checked regularly and updated if necessary every 1-2 years.

The interviewed judged the value of the method as well as the challenges. From the studies, patterns of what the companies use the method for appeared. Personas are used for a variety of purposes and with different values:

In concept and product development, to maintain focus on the users in the entire development process. The personas can be integrated directly in the development processes, in preparing test scenarios and in concept testing. Some companies use them for requirement specification.

As a strategic tool. Some companies use them as a strategic tool to target future user groups. The method makes it possible to make strategic decisions regarding target groups. The companies are able to identify both their primary target group and groups that are either secondary groups ornotto be addressed.

They are used for recruitment of users for usability tests, interviews, and focus groups, and for preparing test scenarios and questionnaires.

The method offers a common communication platform for the company or internally in the project group. It ensures that discussions are based on a common understanding of the user and not based on pre-existing understanding of and personal experience with the users.

It provides a qualified understanding of the users. The method communicates data and thus increases the internal knowledge about the target groups of the company.

The method shifts focus from the well-known users to the lesser known, thus ensuring that the target groups that the company knows less about are also included in the deliberations of the projects.

It can focus and validate the final product. By including the users early on in a development process, the likelihood that there will be recipients for the product is greater.

The method creates documentation and argumentation for specific solutions. To be able to refer to a specific persona and the underlying data is part of supporting the choice of one solution over another.

It supports working across departments. Especially in larger organizations, the method can contribute to abolishing "silo" thinking. When focus is shifted from the organizational structure to the users, the method makes different departments collaborate.

It has a long shelf life. Personas can be included in more and in new projects long after their development.

Surprising areas of application. The persona descriptions can be used in areas that are unexpected e.g. to develop test scenarios and questionnaires.

A number of challenges are reported, especially in the following areas:

Making the method visible in the organization. It can be difficult to disseminate knowledge about and ownership of the method to other departments in the company.

It is challenging to get supporting knowledge about the persona method as there is no exchange of experiences across companies and there is no platform for knowledge sharing.

It is difficult to differentiate the communication and to operationalize the personas to various work groups; for example, some groups might emphasize that they have insight into the data behind the personas, while other groups dislike the fictional elements. There is a lack of tools to develop differentiated forms of communication.

Often, the method is dependent on individuals, and it is a challenge to anchor the method in management. This creates a feeling that the method depends on individual members of staff, and if they disappear from the department, the method will not survive.

It may also be difficult to get external suppliers to use the method and to communicate personas to them. It is important to get the suppliers to use or at least know the method as in certain contexts it is the subcontractors that develop the final product.

Maintaining the persona descriptions is also a challenge. Often, there is no one employee responsible for updating the personas so the descriptions are updated at random. Funding for this might also be difficult as there is no budget for updating, but only a budget for the actual persona development project.

In the book "Personas - User Focused Design" (Nielsen, 2012), I asked 6 UX professionals from Australia, Brazil, Finland, India, Russia, and UK, to give a short overview of the status of persona use in their country. The common experience is that it is often large companies that are drivers: banks, newspapers, insurance companies, or government bodies. Some companies report from product design (Japan, India), while most use still seems to be within IT-related areas. Few companies develop their own method, and many refer to Alan Cooper and the goal-directed design method. The Russian UIDesign Group had to translate and define the term of personas into Russian when they started and has now developed its own method that has a strong focus on the use of personas for requirement gathering. Around the globe, there seems to be a uniform format of the descriptions, with photos and short descriptions of an individual character. While most companies report that the use of the method is still in its infancy, Daishinsha Inc. in Japan has used the method for product innovation since 2000, following an introduction from Forrester research and Alan Cooper.

30.7 Future directions

As we have seen, the persona method is not a uniform method, and it is used in different ways. With a shift from a method used for IT systems design to include more areas such as marketing and communication, the method is constantly evolving. Some companies do not fully understand the potential of the method as a design method and instead devise marketing archetypes and call these personas. I hope that in the future much more focus will be on use, on the scenarios, and on a better understanding of how data collection should be part of proper persona descriptions.

One constant in the persona method has so far been its focus on users and not on including users in the design process, as can be seen in participatory design and co-design (see e.g. Ned Koch's chapter on action research). In the following, I present a novel way of using personas for innovation and ideation where the users are involved in the design process - personas as part of role-playing scenarios with users (co-design). Furthermore, I present an experiment with actors acting as personas to help designers become immersed in and understand the daily lives of the personas (enactment).

30.7.1 Personas and co-design

Arla Foods a.m.b.a., the leading dairy company in Scandinavia, wanted to innovate within the, until then, unknown area of canteens. For the purpose of creating new products from user knowledge, an innovation process was launched. It consisted of: scientific data gathering, customer data gathering, and data analysis. From the analysis, two personas were produced. The material was used in an innovation workshop lasting two days. The participants were to use the persona descriptions in various scenarios and come up with product ideas based on the scenarios.

The innovating participants were concept developers, marketing managers, engineers, and canteen managers. Even though the canteen managers came on the second day of the workshop, they entered the groups without hesitation and became engaged in the creative process. It was easy for them to relate to the persona descriptions and they felt on equal footing with the designers. This resulted in more than twenty ideas out of which four were picked for further development.

Another case of users innovating with personas is from a student session. This case had only one participant, but proved as successful as the first industrial case. The aim was to develop a tool that could support communication between soccer trainers, children, and parents. Prior to the session, data was gathered from observations and focus groups.

From this, two personas that had different behaviour and media use were created as well as a number of scenarios that varied in situation and context. The user was asked to go through all the scenarios from the point of view of the two personas, with the intention of creating novel solutions.
Author/Copyright holder: Unknown (pending investigation). Copyright terms and licence: Unknown (pending investigation). See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below.
The participant, the mother of a soccer-playing child, had no problem in switching between the two personas, even though only one resembled herself. She was able to draw on her knowledge of other parents and their preferences and behaviour, but when she acted as the persona that resembled herself, she often commented on the likeness, how she herself would react, and her own needs.

The two cases show how users 1) are able to act as personas and be as creative as professional designers 2) use their understanding of the area in focus to create scenarios from both the perspective of personas that are similar to them, and from personas that are different from them because they are familiar with different behaviours within the given design area.

It also shows how the users immediately are able to role-play through the scenarios and to do this both alone and together with designers and other project participants.

The use of personas enables project participants to discuss from the same understanding of context and needs and at the same time allows the users to enter the discussion as experts and relate to the innovation from their concrete knowledge of culture and work tasks. This way, the personas take the focus away from the users as the single domain experts - as is seen in participatory design - and aligns designers and users in the role as innovators.

30.7.2 Persona actors

A recent experiment by Line Mulvad, shows how actors can perform as personas and thereby enhance the engagement and understanding of the users. For the website borger.dk that is aimed at all citizens in Denmark, six personas were developed during spring of 2012. The personas vary in their knowledge of what it takes to be a citizen, their understanding of the public sector, their use of and competences within IT, and their use of digital self-services. As an experiment, Line Mulvad, producer and actor, took two persona descriptions as the point of departure - a male carpenter, age 44, single parent who found reading long text difficult; and a female healthcare assistant, age 56 and originally from Bosnia, thus speaking Danish with an accent. From the descriptions, the producer and the two actors improvised a series of scenes that introduced the personas as characters and a couple of scenarios that showed the problems they have in using public websites - for both, when it comes to understanding the language, and for the woman, the understanding of the systems. All was filmed and edited into two small films of app. 4 minutes length. The films had a dogma style with hand-held camera and the actors talking to the camera, which gave an authentic impression.
Author/Copyright holder: Unknown (pending investigation). Copyright terms and licence: Unknown (pending investigation). See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below.
The films were shown to an audience, and the following discussion showed that almost all felt that they got a better understanding of the personas from the movies than from a written description; they felt it was easier to engage in the personas and come up with design ideas. Also, the spectators never felt that they were watching actors, but were convinced that they were watching real users. A downside of this method is the second part of the movie, which incorporated a present-day scenario. The scenarios gave the film action and plot, but as the present day scenarios will change when redesign is being performed, they do not have a long-lasting effect. In the future, we will have to test the difference between the written persona descriptions and the enacted descriptions, and work out how to incorporate action and drama without focusing on problems from the present day scenarios. But by using actors instead of real users, it becomes possible to focus on exactly the information and problems you want to put forward.

30.8 Where to learn more

There are very few books written on personas, but many papers based on single case studies. Here is an overview of the books I have come across.

The goal-directed perspective:

Cooper, 1999: The Inmates Are Running the Asylum - the first book to mention the concept of personas.

Cooper, 2007: About Face 3.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design - has two chapters on personas and scenarios.

Goodwin, 2009: Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services. - gives an overview of goal-directed design including personas.

The role-based perspective

Pruitt and Adlin, 2006: The Persona Lifecycle: Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design - a thorough introduction to all steps in personas and scenario construction.

The engaging perspective

Nielsen, 2004: Engaging Personas and Narrative Scenarios - a PhD dissertation, rather heavy on theory.

Nielsen, 2011: Persona: Brugerfokuseret design. - introduces the 10 steps, step by step. (in Danish).

Nielsen, 2012: Personas - User Focused Design. Human-Computer Interaction. Springer. - introduces the 10 steps, step by step.

Web-based design:

Mulder and Yaar 2006: The User Is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web. - focuses solely on web

30.9 References

Abbott, H. Porter (2002): The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge University Press

Brooks, Peter (1984): Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. Harvard University Press

Bruner, Jerome (1990): Acts of Meaning: Four Lectures on Mind and Culture. Harvard University Press

Bødker, Susanne (1999): Scenarios in User-Centered Design - Setting the Stage for Reflection and Action. In: HICSS 1999 1999.

Bødker, Susanne and Christiansen, Ellen (1997). Scenarios as springboards in design of CSCW.

Carroll, John M. (1999): Five Reasons for Scenario-based Design. In: HICSS 1999 1999.

Carroll, John M. (2000): Making Use: Scenario-Based Design of Human-Computer Interactions. MIT Press

Chang, Yen-ning, Lim, Youn-kyung and Stolterman, Erik A. (2008): Personas: from theory to practices. In: Proceedings of the Fifth Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2008. pp. 439-442

Chapman, Christopher N, Love, Edwin, Milham, Russell P, ElRif, Paul and Alford, James L. (2008): Quantitative Evaluation of Personas as Information. In Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting Proceedings, 52 (16) pp. 1107-1111

Chatman, Seymour (1990): Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film. Cornell University Press

Cobley, Paul (2001): Narrative. Routledge

Cooper, Alan (1999): The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity. Sams

Cooper, Alan, Reimann, Robert and Cronin, David (2007): About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design. Wiley

Djajadiningrat, J. P., Gaver, William W. and Fres, J. W. (2000): Interaction Relabelling and Extreme Characters: Methods for Exploring Aesthetic Interactions. In: Proceedings of DIS00: Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, & Techniques 2000. pp. 66-71

Egri, Lajos (1960): The Art Of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives. Simon and Schuster

Erickson, Thomas (1995): Notes on Design Practice: Stories and Prototypes as Catalysts for Communication. In: Carroll, John M. (ed.). "Scenario-Based Design: Envisioning Work and Technology in System Development". John Wiley and Sons

Floyd, Ingbert, Jones, M. Cameron and Twidale, Michael (2008): Resolving Incommensurable Debates: a Preliminary Identification of Persona Kinds, Attributes, and Characteristics. In Artifact, 2 (1) pp. 12-26

Goodwin, Kim (ed.) (2009): Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services. Wiley

Laurel, Brenda K. (1991): Computers as Theatre. Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley Publishing

Madsen, Sabine and Nielsen, Lene (2009): Using Storytelling to Improve Scenarios. In: Nunes, Miguel Baptista, Isaías, Pedro and Powell, Philip (eds.) IADIS International Conference Information Systems 2009.

Mandler, Jean M. (1983): Stories: The Function of Structure. In: Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association 1983.

Mulder, Steve and Yaar, Ziv (2006): The User Is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web. New Riders Press

Nielsen, L. (2003): Constructing the user. In: Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2003. pp. 430-434

Nielsen, Lene (2012): Personas - User Focused Design. Springer

Nielsen, Lene (2011): Persona: Brugerfokuseret design. Aarhus Universitetsforlag

Nielsen, Lene (2004). Engaging Personas and Narrative Scenarios - - a study on how a user-centered approach influenced the perception of the design process in the e-business group at AstraZeneca - PhD thesis. Copenhagen Business School

Pruitt, John and Adlin, Tamara (2006): The Persona Lifecycle: Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design (Interactive Technologies). Morgan Kaufmann

Rönkkö, Kari, Hellman, Mats, Kilander, Britta and Dittrich, Yvonne (2004): Personas is not applicable: local remedies interpreted in a wider context. In: Clement, Andrew and Besselaar, Peter Van den (eds.) PDC 2004 - Proceedings of the Eighth Conference on Participatory Design July 27-31, 2004, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. pp. 112-120

Sutcliffe, Alistair G. (2003): Scenarios, Models and the Design Process in Software Engineering and Interactive Systems Design. In: Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction 2003. pp. 579-583

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A persona is not the same as an archetype or a person. The special aspect of a persona description is that you do not look at the entire person, but use the area of focus or domain you are working within as a lens to highlight the relevant attitudes and the specific context associated with the area of work.

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Open University

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Being Digital | Open University Library Services

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Being digital is a collection of short, easy to follow activities. They cover the skills we all need to be effective online, whether it's searching efficiently, critically evaluating information, communicating and sharing online, or selecting the right online tool for your needs. Being digital can help you develop essential skills for study, work and lifelong learning.

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A Force Map is a graphical representation of the context of a design challenge. It includes iconic representations of the key elements in this context (social, material and intentional factors), and lines noting the relationships between them. These relationships are marked "+" when supportive, and "-" when indicating a tension. The design challenge can often be defined in terms of resolving some of these tensions.

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A Force Map is a graphical representation of the context of a design challenge. It includes iconic representations of the key elements in this context (social, material and intentional factors), and lines noting the relationships between them. These relationships are marked "+" when supportive, and "-" when indicating a tension.

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Brief description:

Design scenarios borrow the form of design narratives, adapting it from an account of documented past events to a description of imagined future ones. Design scenarios retain the same basic components that constitute design narratives: context, challenge, theoretical framework, events and actions, results and reflections. However, these elements reflect a hypothesis about possible future states of the world. The context describes a current, existing situation, which is perturbed by the introduction of new material, social and intentional elements such as new technologies, new practices, or new objectives. Consequently, the challenge component may describe an existing conflict of forces, which is altered by the introduction of new contextual elements. Alternatively, it may consist of altogether new requirements arising from the reconfiguration of forces, such as the satisfaction of novel objectives. The protagonists in a design scenario do not need to refer to specific individuals in the real world, but they must describe persons who could, convincingly be present in the domain of practice being explored and be ascribed with the intentions and social relations included in the described context. Such constructs are often denoted Persona in HCI methodology - fictitious characters representing a typical person within the domain.
At the heart of a design scenario are a sequence of actions the protagonists may take to achieve their objectives, events which they may encounter and their reactions to these, and finally - the ensuing results of this sequence. These actions, event, and consequent results are afforded or driven by the qualities of new artefacts introduced into the context. Thus, they express a design claim: that introducing such artefacts into such a context may induce such results. However, this claim is stated in a thickly grounded form, submitting it to elaborate scrutiny.
The claim embodied in a design scenario can be judged theoretically, heuristically and empirically. Theoretical assessment would evaluate the statements in the scenario by comparing them to prior knowledge. For example, if the scenario includes an event to which a protagonist responds in a particular way, we can ask if this response is consistent with evidence of human behaviour in similar situations. Heuristic evaluation is a technique borrowed from usability research, where a group of experts is asked to assess a particular design using a given rubric (set of heuristics). It offers a low-fidelity rapid evaluation which often uncovers design flaws at an early stage. Finally, empirical evaluation consists of implementing the proposed design, introducing the new artefacts into the domain of practice, observing real participants reaction to them and comparing their actions (and their results) to the ones in the scenario.

Links to extended descriptions:

Scenario based design is an established approach in HCI. Here, we extend it to apply to all aspects of techno-pedagogical design.

Rosson, M. B. & Carroll, J. M. (2009), ' Scenario-based design', Human-computer interaction: Development process, 1032-1050 .

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16760174/Papers/SBDforHandbook.pdf

Scenario-based design is a family of techniques in which the use of a future system is concretely described at an early point in the development process. Narrative descriptions of envisioned usage episodes are then employed in a variety of ways to guide the development of the system that will enable these use experiences. Like other user-centered approaches, scenario-based design changes the focus of design work from defining system operations i.e., functional specification to describing how people will use a system to accomplish work tasks and other activities. However, unlike approaches that consider human behavior and experience through formal analysis and modeling of well-specified tasks, scenario-based design is a relatively lightweight method for envisioning future use possibilities. A user interaction scenario is a sketch of use. It is intended to vividly capture the essence of an interaction design, much as a two-dimensional, paper-and-pencil sketch captures the essence of a physical design.
Bødker, S. (2000), ' Scenarios in user-centred design - setting the stage for reflection and action', Interacting with computers 13 (1) , 61-75

http://www.clab.edc.uoc.gr/application/scenarios_in_user-center.pdf

This paper discusses three examples of use of scenarios in user-centred design. Common to the examples are the use of scenarios to support the tensions between reflection and action, between typical and critical situations, and between plus and minus situations. The paper illustrates how a variety of more specific scenarios emphasising, e.g. critical situations, or even caricatures of situa- tions are very useful for helping groups of users and designers being creative in design. Emphasising creativity in design is a very different view on the design process than normally represented in usability work or software/requirement engineering, where generalising users' actions are much more important than, in this paper, the suggested richness of and contradiction between actual use situations. In general the paper proposes to attune scenarios to the particular purposes of the situations they are to be used in, and to be very selective based on these purposes.

Mor, Yishay (2013). SNaP! Re-using, sharing and communicating designs and design knowledge using scenarios, narratives and patterns. In: Luckin, Rose; Goodyear, Peter; Grabowski, Barbara and Winters, Niall eds. Handbook of Design in Educational Technology. London: Routledge, (In press). http://oro.open.ac.uk/33861/

In order to enable a culture of critical, informed and reflective design practice we need a linguistic framework for communicating design knowledge: the knowledge of the characteristic features of a domain of practice, the challenges which inhabit it, and the established methods of resolving them. Such an infrastructure must "serve two masters"; on one hand, it should adhere to the requirements of scientific rigor, ensuring that the proposed conditions and challenges are genuine and the solutions effective. On the other hand, it should maintain pragmatic adequacy, ensuring that the insights it encapsulates are readily available for practitioners to implement in real-world situations. Several representations have been proposed to this effect: design narratives (Mor, 2011; Barab et al, 2008; Bell, Hoadley and Linn, 2004; Hoadley, 2002; Linn & Hsi, 2000), design principles (Kali, 2006, 2008; Linn, Bell, & Davis, 2004; Merrill, 2002; Quintana et al., 2004; van den Akker, 1999), and design patterns (Derntl & Motschnig-Pitrik, 2005; Goodyear, 2005; Mor & Winters, 2007; Retalis et al, 2006), to name a few. The aim of this chapter is to characterise two of these forms - design narratives and design patterns, and propose a third form - design scenarios, and suggest how these could be embedded in a cycle of reflective learning design.

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Design Scenarios - The Learning Design Grid

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Design scenarios borrow the form of design narratives, adapting it from an account of documented past events to a description of imagined future ones. Design scenarios retain the same basic components that constitute design narratives: context, challenge, theoretical framework, events and actions, results and reflections.

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Brief description:

The EoR Design Framework can be used to help understand learner context and support the design of learner centred interventions and/or
technologies that fit contextual constraints and exploit available resources.

Context

The design framework employs a model of context as individual to the learner and created by a learner's historically situated interactions with ecologies of resources; "context is dynamic and associated with connections between people, things, locations and events in a narrative that is driven by people's intentionality and motivations. Technology can help to make these connections in an operational sense. People can help to make these connections have meaning for a learner" (Luckin 2010, p18).

Learning & Context

The EoR framework focuses learning designers' attention on the various resources that designers, teachers, collaborators and learners can use to help learners make meaningful connections and access to these resources. The framework is derived from analysis of learning design experiences over many projects and grounded in an interpretation of Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development and the pedagogic strategy of scaffolding ( Luckin 2010). Designers look to re-design learner context so as to optimise opportunities for interactions with social and other resources capable of assisting learners perform towards their objectives (design a Zone of Proximal Adjustment ZPA).

Process

The EoR framework consists of three iterative phases:

1. Phase 1 - Creating a model of the resources potentially available to assist learners and the filters that constrain learners interactions with these resources.

2. Phase 2 - Identifying the relationships between learner, resources and filters so as to better understand how these are interdependent and opportunities.

3. Phase 3 - Designing adjustments that make the right resources available at the right times, and scaffolding so as to provide and fade help in response to learners' and collaborators' needs and learners developing competence.

Any appropriate methods can be employed to acquire data and support analysis and design in these three phases. However, the EoR model emphasises the importance of learner agency and understanding the learner's perspective and consequently participatory methods are particularly appropriate.

Links to extended descriptions:

Luckin, R. (2010), Re-designing learning contexts: technology-rich, learner-centred ecologies, Routledge http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415554428/

The EoR Design Framework Wiki provides a number of example applications of the framework http://eorframework.pbworks.com

Luckin, R.; Clark, W.; Garnett, F.; Whitworth, A.; Akass, J.; Cook, J.; Day, P.; Ecclesfield, N.; Hamilton, T. & Robertson, J. (2010), Learner-Generated Contexts: A Framework to Support the Effective Use of Technology for Learning, in Mark J.W. Lee & Catherine McLoughlin, ed., 'Web 2.0-Based E-Learning: Applying Social Informatics for Tertiary Teaching' , pp. 70--84 . http://www.igi-global.com/bookstore/chapter.aspx?TitleId=45017

Luckin, R. (2008), 'The learner centric ecology of resources: A framework for using technology to scaffold learning', Computers & Education 50 http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/2167/1/Luckin2008The449.pdf

Luckin, R. (2006), 'Understanding learning contexts as ecologies of resources: from the zone of proximal development to learner generated contexts', http://www.editlib.org/INDEX.CFM?fuseaction=Reader.ViewFullText&paper_id=24037

Luckin, R. (2005), 'Learning contexts as ecologies of resources: Issues for the design of educational technology', COGNITIVE SCIENCE RESEARCH PAPER-UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX CSRP 578 http://www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/cogslib/reports/csrp/csrp578.pdf

Luckin, R.; du Boulay, B.; Smith, H.; Underwood, J.; Fitzpatrick, G.; Holmberg, J.; Kerawalla, L.; Tunley, H.; Brewster, D. & Pearce, D. (2005), 'Using mobile technology to create flexible learning contexts', Journal of interactive media in education 22 (22) , 2 . http://jime.open.ac.uk/2005/22/luckin-2005-22-paper.html

Professor Rose Luckin
http://www.lkl.ac.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=128

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The Ecology of Resources (EoR) Design Framework - The Learning Design Grid

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The EoR Design Framework can be used to help understand learner context and support the design of learner centred interventions and/ortechnologies that fit contextual constraints and exploit available resources.

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Visibility of system status

The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.

(Read full article on visibility of system status.)

Match between system and the real world

The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.

(Read full article on the match between the system and the real world.)

User control and freedom

Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked "emergency exit" to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.

Consistency and standards

Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.

Error prevention

Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.

(Read full article on preventing user errors.)

Recognition rather than recall

Minimize the user's memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.

(Read full article on recognition vs. recall in UX.)

Flexibility and efficiency of use

Accelerators - unseen by the novice user - may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.

Aesthetic and minimalist design

Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.

Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors

Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.

Help and documentation

Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user's task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.

I originally developed the heuristics for heuristic evaluation in collaboration with Rolf Molich in 1990 [Molich and Nielsen 1990; Nielsen and Molich 1990]. I since refined the heuristics based on a factor analysis of 249 usability problems [Nielsen 1994a] to derive a set of heuristics with maximum explanatory power, resulting in this revised set of heuristics [Nielsen 1994b].

See Also

References

Molich, R., and Nielsen, J. (1990). Improving a human-computer dialogue, Communications of the ACM 33, 3 (March), 338-348.

Nielsen, J., and Molich, R. (1990). Heuristic evaluation of user interfaces, Proc. ACM CHI'90 Conf. (Seattle, WA, 1-5 April), 249-256.

Nielsen, J. (1994a). Enhancing the explanatory power of usability heuristics. Proc. ACM CHI'94 Conf. (Boston, MA, April 24-28), 152-158.

Nielsen, J. (1994b). Heuristic evaluation. In Nielsen, J., and Mack, R.L. (Eds.), Usability Inspection Methods, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY.

Note: Many people ask if they can use these heuristics in their own work. Yes, but please credit Jakob Nielsen and provide the address for this page [nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics] or cite the paper above [Nielsen 1994a]. If you want to print copies of this page or reproduce the content online, however, please see the Copyright link below for details.

Copyright © 2005 by Jakob Nielsen. ISSN 1548-5552

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10 Heuristics for User Interface Design: Article by Jakob Nielsen

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The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time. (Read full article on visibility of system status.) The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.

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35 page pdf boooklet

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20 ways of thinking about digital literacy in higher education - 

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20 ways of thinking about digital literacy in higher education - 

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Dig Lit @ Universities

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First define what you mean by digital literacy: The definition I most frequently use is this one: digital literacy = digital tool knowledge + critical thinking + social engagement. Then it's worth knowing its main characteristics:

First define what you mean by digital literacy: The definition I most frequently use is this one: digital literacy = digital tool knowledge + critical thinking + social engagement. Then it's worth knowing its main characteristics:

* It supports and helps develop traditional literacies
* It's a life-long practice
* It's about skills, competencies and critical reflection on how these skills and competencies are applied
* It's about social engagement

Top tips for developing the digital literacy of non-traditional students: Begin by exploring the ways in which the group are already using mobile and web based technologies. Many of them will already be engaging with tech for personal use, for example Skyping relatives, keeping in touch on Facebook or using mobile phones. If you have a group who aren't using technology in any of these ways, personal use might be where you start the conversation.

Literacy is not static: I like Bélisle's three models of literacy: functional, socio-cultural and transformational. The functional and practical skills required to function within a community; Socio-cultural refers to literacy only being meaningful within a social context, and facilitating access to cultural, economic and political structures. Transformational recognises that new ways of seeing and thinking about the world become possible as new cognitive and processing tools come into play.

All education sectors are facing many of the same challenges with digital literacy, so we can learn from one another: Some of the obvious issues are: how do we get staff to engage? How do we resource digital literacy support in an on-going and sustainable way? How do we make sure that organisations embed digital literacy as a cultural approach and expectation rather than as a discrete thing that one or two staff members are responsible for 'delivering'? What does a successful approach to digital literacy look like?

We have set up a partnership group, the Digital Leicester Advisory Group, with both Leicester universities and with community activists to support the promotion and expansion of digital literacy, inclusion and citizenship. I'm keen to support a move away from a perception of education as something that happens at specific times and in designated places, and towards planning and provision which takes the affordances of digital environments seriously and sees the city itself as the learning environment.

Helen Beetham, consultant, JISC, the UK's expert on information and digital technologies for education and research

Recognise that students arrive with their own digital practices: We have some very well established practices in universities that traditionally we have tried to 'pass on' to students. But students are arriving with some well established digital practices of their own. It isn't always a question of 'both/and'. For example, referencing and plagiarism are areas where students' own digital practices and cultures clash with those of the university. We should identify the the values and history behind those academic practices, rather than slavishly learning Harvard style punctuation. We can't just see students as empty vessels to be filled up with what we do over here in academia.

Developing digital literacies in practice requires:
* Providing authentic contexts for practice, including digitally-mediated contexts
* Individual scaffolding and support
* Making practices of meaning-making explicit
* Anticipating and helping learners manage conflict between different practice contexts
* Recognising and helping learners integrate their prior conceptions and practices

This is a person-centred, culturally-situated approach to student development and it's important that developing digital literacies programme involves groups of staff that have always taken approach seriously, such as careers and employability staff, learning skills staff, as well as student-facing staff in libraries.

Establish guiding ethical principles: If you look at the graduate attributes that universities now ask their students to aspire to, many of them are really values. Developing digital literacy should also have an ethical dimension. What does it mean to behave well as digital professionals, researchers or citizens? How do we act ethically in environments where public and private are blurred?

Mid-career is the worst time for academics and professional staff to be up to date with technology: I've just been reviewing some audits that show that older and more secure academic staff may actually have more time to experiment and are more confident to admit they need to learn. It's all about having time, having opportunities for 'peer supported experimentation' - which turns out to be the best way to learn new technical tricks, and of course, having some incentive.

Elizabeth Losh, director, Culture, Art, and Technology program, Sixth College, University of California, San Diego

'Digital natives' need a basic understanding of computers as technical platforms, or of coding: As a teacher I am constantly aware of my own ignorance of coding skills and electronics, but still make a case for the value of not keeping technology in a black box and getting students to have a little more mastery by writing programs in an object-oriented language. I worry that our computers are becoming like our cars: we are increasingly dependent on them but when we open the hood and don't know what to do. I teach poets to program, so I feel it is valuable to everyone.

Acknowledge that there is also anxiety about technologies in the classroom and take the lead: Too many people in universities have been shirking their responsibilities to educate students about this important subject either because they feel anxiety about their own technical literacy or they feel the barbarians are at the gate, with many faculty members feeling that traditional literacies are under attack. If professors are going to be considered as experts rather than merely fodder for funny remixes like this one or this one they need to take the lead.

On managing your online identities: For years search engines treated Liz Losh and Elizabeth Losh as separate people, so my identity as a blogger and digital activist was very separate from my identity as a scholar and academic. No more. Google now knows that both names are me and that I can't have a divided personality. My only piece of advice is don't friend your students until after they graduate.

David White, researcher, University of Oxford

We need to understand learners personal digital literacies before ploughing into 'supporting' them: Many of the learners we have interviewed for our Visitors and Residents project still make quite a hard distinction between the 'real' i.e. books, lectures and so on and the digital. They have many highly effective digital literacies but often feel that they are not 'real' or legitimate approaches.

HEIs need to help legitimise digital practices without trying to own them: In my experience academics don't engage with digital tech because they don't need to. Their way of working is successful within the system. Has anyone been rewarded by their institutions for tweeting? Digital tech can improve the quality of what we do but often comes with an associated additional time/effort side effect, which is rarely officially acknowledged.

A key digital literacy is how you manage distraction: How to not get walked all over by Facebook et al. Many of the learners we have spoken to recognise that they are poor at managing this.

Sarah Knight, programme manager, e-Learning, JISC

Engage students in this debate and ensure that they too have ownership of this agenda: Our terms may not mean anything to students. In the JISC Developing Digital Literacies programme projects have been involving students as partners in their research and giving them a voice to express their views and ideas on what the term means to them, what skills they feel they need to live, learn and work effectively in a digital environment. See the PRIDE (University of Bath), CASCADE (University of Exeter) and DL in Transition (University of Greenwich) projects as excellent examples of how institutions are engaging students in this debate.

Reticence to adapt is less about the fear of the technology itself but about the fear of doing this differently from the way they've have always been done: Those of us who work in this space must show the benefits: for example how technology can save time or help HE staff do things easier. This is where we can also utilise the expertise of students to work with staff and assist them with gaining confidence in using new technologies. There is a lovely example from the University of Wolverhampton on students as partners in blended learning.

Sue Thomas, professor of new media, De Montfort University

Digital literacy as an important part of transliteracy: Transliteracy is the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks. It is the literacy of convergence, unifying literacies past and present across different platforms, media and cultures. This means it encompasses all kinds of communications from scratching pictures in the sand to editing photos in Instagram, or from inscribing tablets to text-messaging. When promoting digital literacy on its own, we can alienate people who are already very literate in other areas, and that's why I prefer to take an holistic approach and be as inclusive as possible.

Tristram Hooley, head, International Centre for Guidance Studies, University of Derby

The idea that you build some kind of identifiable career capital online is likely to have a big influence on your ability to get a job: There is an assumption that the issue of digital literacy will go away because students are good with computers and have Facebook accounts. I think that in the context of learning organisations the question is how they can apply the skills that they have to new areas such as employability skills. Have a look at the site Dear Lisa Rogers, one social media fanatic's attempt to get the job of social media director at the University of Michigan, as an example of this.

Abhay Adhikari, digital strategist, Digital Footprints, a digital communication, social media training consultancy

Digital engagement shouldn't be lead by a platform or task-specific agenda: What is required is a change in consciousness in how we relate to technology. The underlying principle is that all technology should facilitate critical reflection - awareness of the self and the ability to articulate ideas. We need people to make judgements on the information they consume and the contexts they create whilst sharing information. Technology is becoming increasingly seamless but our relationship with it isn't intuitive.
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20 ways of thinking about digital literacy in higher education

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First define what you mean by digital literacy: The definition I most frequently use is this one: digital literacy = digital tool knowledge + critical thinking + social engagement. Then it's worth knowing its main characteristics: First define what you mean by digital literacy: The definition I most frequently use is this one: digital literacy = digital tool knowledge + critical thinking + social engagement.

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Update 1: if you're interested in this thesis, you'll be interested in Mozilla's Web Literacy Map. This currently stands at v2.0 and I led this work (up to v1.5) after writing this thesis.

Update 2: I've written an e-book entitled The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies that explains the concepts in this thesis in a more accessible way, and adds work that I've done since completing my Ed.D. studies. Use the code gimme10 for 10% off!

Welcome to Doug Belshaw's #neverendingthesis!

On Monday 3rd October 2011 I submitted my doctoral thesis to Durham University: What is 'digital literacy'? A Pragmatic investigation.

"A movie is never finished, only abandoned." (George Lucas)

Just like a movie director, I don't feel that I 'finished' my work in order to submit. Instead, there came a time when I had to draw a line under which was written 'submission date'. This wiki is a chance for me to continue working on my thesis long after it's been submitted. In the sidebar you will see links to the various chapters that make up my thesis. Depending upon when you access this wiki, the content may be very similar or completely different from the version I submitted.

The version I deposited in Durham University's e-theses repository is available in Microsoft Word (.doc) and Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format below:

Word (6.1MB) PDF (6.8MB)

My Presentations on Digital Literacies

My most up-to-date presentations can be found on my Slideshare profile

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Update 1: if you're interested in this thesis, you'll be interested in Mozilla's Web Literacy Map . This currently stands at v2.0 and I led this work (up to v1.5) after writing this thesis.

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Digital and Information Literacy Framework

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Digital and Information Literacy Framework

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Understand and engage in digital

Describe own 'digital footprint' - the tools and sites that show own presence as an internet user.

Demonstrate basic use of a range of tools and websites for finding and recording information online: internet browsers, search engines, copy/paste and download functions.

Successfully follow instructions for accessing and using generic tools and sites for information relevant to OU study.

Demonstrate the successful use of OU VLE tools that are required for study at this level.

Describe the ways in which mobile communication devices might be used for personal study purposes.

Identify instances of digital technologies being used for the creating and sharing of knowledge in a specific subject area.

Demonstrate the ability to integrate time spent online into a study schedule.

Successfully carry out the task of finding a person online, (e.g. a discipline expert) and establishing contact details.

Articulate the characteristics of digital scholarship in the relevant subject and/or professional area.

Apply digital techniques to conduct and share research.

Give evidence of proactive participation in academic and/or professional online networks outside the OU study community.

Find information

Identify a range of key sources of information in the subject area.

Successfully carry out instructions for using a range of formats of information (e.g. bibliographic records, full text, abstracts).

Demonstrate the ability to independently select appropriate resources for a task.

Apply the principles of effective searching.

Distinguish instances of search features that are common to different databases and the web.

Demonstrate the ability to use a range of database functionality (e.g. truncation, phrase searching, date limits, combining search terms, sorting, saving, exporting) within a single database and to interpret results (e.g. bibliographic or full text).

Independently and successfully carry out a simple subject search within a single database.

Critically evaluate information, online interactions and online tools

Manage and communicate information

Demonstrate accurate and appropriate referencing of the thoughts and ideas of others.

Distinguish between different tools and techniques for managing and exporting references; select and use as appropriate for a specific task.

Engage in appropriate and effective communication online, in a variety of contexts (study, informal, transactional etc.) and using a variety of tools (e.g. research networks, social bookmarking, blogging).

Collaborate and share digital content

Produce a shared digital asset or output in collaboration with others as part of an assessed activity.

Contribute a re-purposed, shared or collaboratively produced artefact for the benefit of a wider online audience.

Contribute benefits from personal engagement with external social and subject-related networks to the work of a study group.

Demonstrate leadership in an online professional community, e.g. take the initiative in proposing appropriate media and working methods, facilitate the group working through agreed processes, evaluate group outputs.

Give evidence of engagement in online communities and professional (subject) groups using multiple technologies and demonstrate successful management of group interactions.

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- Digital and Information Literacy Framework - Open University

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Understand and engage in digital Describe own 'digital footprint' - the tools and sites that show own presence as an internet user. Demonstrate basic use of a range of tools and websites for finding and recording information online: internet browsers, search engines, copy/paste and download functions.

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A collaborative Book about MOOCs

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The purpose of this document is two-fold:
- to offer an online history of the development of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)
- to use that history to describe major elements of a MOOC

Each chapter of this guide looks at one of the first MOOCs and some early influences. It contains these parts:
- a description of the MOOC, what it did, and what was learned
- a description of the element of MOOC theory learned in the offering of the course
- practical tools that can be used to develop that aspect of a MOOC
- practical tips on how to be successful

Contribute to this Book

You are invited to contribute. If you participated in a MOOC, add a paragraph describing your experience (you can sign your name to it, so we know it's a personal story). If you know of resources or can add information about an element of MOOC theory, add to or edit the text that already exists. If you know of tools, provide a link to the tool, a short description, and your assessment of the tool.
If you have a tip, add the tip.

In order to participate, please email or message your contact details, and we'll you to the list of people who can edit pages. Send your request to stephen@downes.ca

Your contributions will be accepted and posted under a CC-By license.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Thanks for your participation. The finished product will be published online and made freely available on the web.

Stephen Downes

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The purpose of this document is two-fold: - to offer an online history of the development of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) - to use that history to describe major elements of a MOOC Each chapter of this guide looks at one of the first MOOCs and some early influences.

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Learning Outcomes:

Diligent students will:

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Mindful use of digital media means thinking about what we are doing, cultivating an ongoing inner inquiry into how we want to spend our time. I outline five fundamental digital literacies, online skills that will help us do this: attention, participation, collaboration, critical consumption of information (or "crap detection"), and network smarts. I explain how attention works, and how we can use our attention to focus on the tiny relevant portion of the incoming tsunami of information. I describe the quality of participation that empowers the best of the bloggers, netizens, tweeters, and other online community participants; I examine how successful online collaborative enterprises contribute new knowledge to the world in new ways; and I present a lesson on networks and network building.

There is a bigger social issue at work in digital literacy, one that goes beyond personal empowerment. If we combine our efforts wisely, it could produce a more thoughtful society: countless small acts like publishing a Web page or sharing a link could add up to a public good that enriches everybody.
Download the Introductory Chapter and Table of Contents

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Mindful use of digital media means thinking about what we are doing, cultivating an ongoing inner inquiry into how we want to spend our time. I outline five fundamental digital literacies, online skills that will help us do this: attention, participation, collaboration, critical consumption of information (or "crap detection"), and network smarts.

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Net Smart

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K-12 Digital Citizenship Curriculum Scope & Sequence

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Common Sense Education provides educators and students with the resources they need to harness the power of technology for learning and life. Find a free K-12 Digital Citizenship curriculum, reviews of popular EdTech apps, and resources for protecting student privacy.

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Digital and Information Literacy Framework

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Digital and Information Literacy Framework

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What is digital literacy and how is it different from information literacy?

Digital literacy includes the ability to find and use information (otherwise known as information literacy) but goes beyond this to encompass communication, collaboration and teamwork, social awareness in the digital environment, understanding of e-safety and creation of new information. Both digital and information literacy are underpinned by critical thinking and evaluation.

What does the DIL framework cover and how is it structured?

For the purposes of the DIL framework, digital literacy refers to the skills, competences, and dispositions of OU students using digital technologies to achieve personal, study, and work-related goals. The framework describes five 'stages of development' of digital literacy skills, competences and dispositions and maps them against the 'levels' of OU study.

This website allows you to view the Framework in different ways.

View all allows you to view the entire Framework.

The Framework is divided into five competence areas, which can be viewed individually:

Competences for each of the areas identified above have been divided into levels and stages, which can also be viewed individually:

These levels determine the complexity or depth of learning involved, and map to the levels of OU study.

What is the DIL Framework for and who is it aimed at?

The purpose is to provide a common reference point for module, programme, and qualification teams to use in determining markers of progression in digital literacy that can be integrated with other learning outcomes and student attributes.

What do we mean by levels and stages?

The 'Stages' of the DIL Framework represent progression in the sophistication of students' engagement with the digital, both within and outside their OU studies. The 'Levels' attempt to capture what students should be able to do by the end of each level of OU study. Stages correspond only very broadly to levels; there may be considerable areas of overlap, and differences in different subject areas. For this reason we recommend flexibility in the way the framework is applied to any scheme for progression.

How do the stages of the DIL Framework relate to the stages of the Qualifications Framework?

The DIL stages can be overlaid on the Qualifications framework, but a prescriptive approach may not be helpful in every situation. The DIL Framework is designed to be interpreted flexibly.

How can the Framework be used by qualification and module teams?

The DIL Framework enables appropriate learning outcomes for digital and information literacy to be integrated into qualification pathways.

Developing digital and information literacy skills can make a strong contribution to employability, for example, by developing collaborative and team-working skills, effective research and information handling skills, and communication / self-presentation in a virtual environment

What supporting materials are available?

The Being digital site contains a growing collection of bite-size learning materials covering the skills in the DIL Framework.

A self-assessment checklist is available from Being digital, to help students focus on which skills they need to develop.

Why aren't basic ICT skills covered?

The framework pre-supposes that students have, or will acquire, the functional ICT skills to use a computer and carry out basic functions such as using a word-processing package, sending emails and doing simple searches using a search engine etc. at Access stage/Level 0.

What is the thinking behind the DIL Framework?

The framework builds on the existing OU Information Literacy Levels Framework. It also draws on other relevant frameworks, both internal and external. A range of stakeholders from across the OU have been involved in developing the Framework.

Using and reusing the DIL Framework (Creative Commons)

The DIL Framework was created in order to be used within The Open University, and to share with the wider community. Therefore, it is being made available under a Creative Commons licence. This means that it is free to use and reuse, subject to the terms of the licence. For more information, read Using and reusing the Digital and information literacy framework.

Reflecting on skills

Students should be encouraged to record and articulate the value of their digital and information literacy skills and to link them to their personal and / or career goals.

Contact us

For further information, please contact the OU Library Helpdesk

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- Digital and Information Literacy Framework - Open University

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Digital literacy includes the ability to find and use information (otherwise known as information literacy) but goes beyond this to encompass communication, collaboration and teamwork, social awareness in the digital environment, understanding of e-safety and creation of new information. Both digital and information literacy are underpinned by critical thinking and evaluation.

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Just an initial demo map, so that you don't start with an empty map list ...

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Welcome to Cloudworks, a place to share, find and discuss learning and teaching ideas and experiences.

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Digital Literacy

Tasks for team

Decide on tools for collaboration

Here is a link to a Wallwisher wall where you can post notes.
Here is a link to a Googl Doc workspace for Digital Literacy.
http://tinyurl.com/oldsmooc-diglit
I left it open so feel free to contribute.

Choose Twitter tags

#diglit #digilit #jiscdiglit

Mindmeister map
http://www.mindmeister.com/244201495/digital-literacy
Share useful links

Digital Literacy OLDSMOOC Scoop.it

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Here is a link to a Wallwisher wall where you can post notes. Here is a link to a Googl Doc workspace for Digital Literacy. http://tinyurl.com/oldsmooc-diglit I left it open so feel free to contribute. #diglit #digilit #jiscdiglit http://www.mindmeister.com/244201495/digital-literacy Digital Literacy OLDSMOOC Scoop.it

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ARTiFactor: My Dream: a Digital Literacy MOOC

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ARTiFactor: My Dream: a Digital Literacy MOOC

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My dream is to help create a MOOC that will enable world wide Digital Literacy.

I envision a map of learning activities for raising ones digital literacy competencies. Learners could jump in at any time, anywhere on the map, and find guidance to master that particular skill set.

The map would be dynamic, continually being improved and expanded, much like in wikipedia.

Structure

Digital Literacy includes an enormous range of competencies.

Mapping out the ever growing skill sets could perhaps be structured as a massive outline with collapsing/expanding branches (or a MindMap)

Multi-level Marketing techniques - newbies would sign up and be given a number of tokens/coins. They would offer to pay a coach/mentor/teacher coins in order to master a particular competency. Eventually they would advance into the mentor-coach role and pay their former mentor coach for back-up or support.

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ARTiFactor: My Dream: a Digital Literacy MOOC

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My dream is to help create a MOOC that will enable world wide Digital Literacy. I envision a map of learning activities for raising ones digital literacy competencies. Learners could jump in at any time, anywhere on the map, and find guidance to master that particular skill set.