Jenny's Research Journal (started 4/12/08)

NOTE: This covers articles I've read. It is in alpha-author order. For more general remarks, see JennysRandomThoughts

Azevedo, R. (2007). Understanding the complex nature of self-regulatory processes in learning with computer-based learning environments: an introduction. Metacognition and Learning, 2:57-65.

This is just the introduction to a special double issue of this new-ish journal (came out in 2006). My favorite part is the definition of metacognitive tool. I also like the references.

(p. 59-60) As indicated previously in Azevedo (2005; 2007), a "Metacognitive tool" is any computer environment, which in addition to adhering to Lajoie and Derry's (1993) definition of cognitive tool, also has the following additional characteristics:

(a) Requires students to make instructional decisions regarding instructional goals. For example, setting learning goals, sequencing instruction, seeking, collecting, organizing, and coordinating instruciton resources, deciding which embedded and contextual tools to use and when to use them in order to support their learning goals, deciding which representations of information to use, attend to, and perhaps modify in order to meet instructional goals.

(b) Is embedded in a particular learning context which may require students to make decisions regarding the ways in which the context supports learning which may lead to successful learning. For example, how much support is needed from contextual resources, what types of contextual resources may facilitate learning, locating contextual resources, when to seek contextual resources, determining the utility and value of contextual resources.

(c) Is any technology-based environment that (to some degree) models, prompts, supports, and enhances a learners' self-regulatory processes which may include cognitive (e.g. activating prior knowledge, planning, creating sub-goals, learning strategies), metacognitive (e.g. feeling of knowing, judgment of learning, content evaluation), motivational (e.g. self-efficacy, task value, interest, effort), or behavioral (e.g. engaging in help-seeking behavior, modifying learning conditions, handling task difficulties and demands).

(d) It is any technology-based environment that (to some degree) models, prompts, and supports learners to engage or participate (individually, with a peer, or with a group) in using task-, domain-, or activity-specific learning skills (e.g. critical thinking skills, skills necessary to engage in online inquiry and collaborative inquiry), which also are necessary for successful learning.

(e) It is any technology-based enviornment that resides ina specific learning context where human agent(s) (e.g. tutor, peer collaborator) or artificial agent(s) (e.g. ITS, robot) may play some role in supporting students' learning by serving as external regulating agents who model, prompt and foster students' learning.

(f) Is any technology-based environment that requires a learner to regulate (including the deployment of) key self-regulatory processes prior to, during, and following learning in order to achieve successful learning.

CAVEAT: Hilary noted that this journal committed a cardinal sin by accepting a study that was not valid. It is the article about scaffolding. This error demonstrates, she said, that we know more than they do. She also said, though not in the same breath, that we may want to publish in this journal. She said go ahead and read the other articles, as well as the scaffolding article, but read the article by Kristina Hook first, "Steps to take before Intelligent User Interfaces become real". This is the paper that explains that inauthentically designed software is invalid.

Blum, Lenore (2001). Women in Computer Science: The Carnegie Mellon Experience. Retrieved from http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~lblum/PAPERS/women_in_computer_science.pdf on May 10, 2008.

5/10/08: I got this from Katja's thesis. Just what I needed to substantiate, that is cite, the claims in my thesis outline. I got those claims from reading Katja's and Rosta's theses, but I needed to cite an article. It was suggested to me, I think, that I cite the articles and read them rather than simply citing other students' theses.

So, this article was all about the female experience in computer science and why recruitment and retention is low. Carnegie Mellon made efforts to overcome these problems and appears to have succeeded.

Button, Graham, and Dourish, Paul. (1996). Technomethodology: Paradoxes and Possibilities. Retrieved from http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/publications/1996/chi96-technomethodology.pdf on September 1, 2008.

This helped differentiate some aspects of technomethodology. It is the second paper on the topic that I have read. I feel like I need to read more before I'm on board. This paper is certainly relevant to understanding what the topic is about. At some point, rather than trying hard to find more articles, I may just need to reread the two ethnomethodology papers that I have. I need to write them up here, too. What I've written thus far is just babble.

Cooley, M. (1999). Human-Centered Design. Information Design. MIT Press, 1999. pp. 59-82.

7/21/08: The author discusses the progress of industrialized society, the directions we have taken in the past and the new directions we need to take now. He says that the past has been guided by a philosophy that strips man of his humanness. Science focuses on predictability, repeatability, and mathematical quantifiability. This precludes intuition, subjective judgment, tacit knowledge, dreams, imagination, and purpose. The scientific view is obsessed with the notion of "the one best say". All this is deeply problematic. For example, any active trade unionist will tell you that an effective way to stop anything in its tracks is to "work to rule." It is all the little things we do outside the rules, through our sense of purpose, that keep everything going. (p. 60)

(p. 61) The year 2000 marks the end of the most extraordinary millennium in human history. During it, humanity has witnessed the decline of feudalism, the growth of capitalism, and the weakening of religion as the leading edge in European society. We have facilitated the emergence of Cartesian science, the concentration of populations into modern cities, and the development of earth-shrinking transport systems. Above all, there has been the growth of industrial society. We have allowed the great storytelling traditions to all but wither away...

(p. 61) We clearly perceive ourselves to be an upwardly mobile species. Yet at no time in human history have so many of our citizens felt alienated from and threatened by the society that we have created. Through our science we have become the first generation of the only species to apparently have it within its power to destroy not only itself but life on the planet as we know it. We have become far too smart scientifically to survive much longer without wisdom.

(p. 62) The year 2000 could, and should, provide a powerful stimulus to examine where, as an industrial society, we are going. To do so at the macrolevel, we will require the perspective of a historian, the imagination of a poet, the analytical ability of a scientist, and the wisdom of a Chief Seattle. We shall have to be capable of thinking holistically, working in multi-disciplinary groups, coping with change, and developing systems and products that are sustainable and caring of nature and humanity. Our current educational systems are fundamentally inappropriate and woefully inadequate to address this historical task. In relation to manufacturing and industry, it seems self-evident that developing the skill and competence necessary in the twenty-first century will require nothing short of a cultural and industrial renaissance.

(p. 63) To come about, this will require citizens possessed not just of knowledge but also of wisdom. It will require the courage and the dignity to ask simple questions of profound significance...

These are key issues as we approach the twenty-first century, and our educational system should be preparing people to discuss them in an informed, creative, and imaginative fashion.

The author goes on to discuss his and others' work on human-centered design:

(p. 66) One of the main processes of current technological development is to render systems active and human beings passive. Our project's objective was to demonstrate that it is possible to design forms of technology that reverse this process, thus enhancing the activity and dominance of the user. It meant providing powerful analogical systems in which it was possible to program the devices according to the traditional ways of working while enhancing them by providing very modern software and hardware tools.

(p. 67-68) Part of the competence and some of the skills required to work in such environments will be the capacity to: (1) Absorb new knowledge and transform it. (2) Draw conclusions about the unknown from the known. (3) Take initiatives. (4) Make decisions. (5) Work with a team. (6) Adopt a systematic, analytical approach. (7) Plan independently. (8) Take on responsibility.

The German company manager who identified these requirements for the future tellingly observes: "It will go without saying that in the majority of cases these skills cannot be taught in isolation during instruction or in the classroom but only in conjunction with technical exercises and concrete practical problems at the workplace."

(p. 68-70) Systems designers will need to be competent in the design of systems and organizations that display the following characteristics:

Coherence: The embedded meanings, if not immediately evident, at least must not be cloaked or obscure. A related concept here is transparency, which means rendering highly visible what is going on and what is possible.

Inclusiveness: The system should be inviting and tend to invite you in and make you feel part of a community of activities with which you are familiar and on friendly terms.

Malleability: A possibility to mold the situation to suit, to pick-and-mix and sculpt the environment to suit one's own instrumental needs, aesthetic tastes, and craft traditions.

Engagement: A sense that one is being invited to participate in the process and which creates a feeling of empathy.

Ownership: A feeling that you have created and thereby own parts of the system. A sense of belonging and even companionship as traditional craftsmen may feel with a favorite machine tool.

Responsiveness: A general sense that you can get the system to respond to your requirements and your individual needs and ways of doing things. A system that makes visible its own rules and then encourages one to learn them and to change them at will.

Purpose: Meant in the sense in which Rosenbrock describes it. The system is capable of responding to the purpose the user has in mind and then encouraging him or her to go beyond it.

Panoramic: Most current systems tend to encourage the user to converge on narrower activities. Good embedded systems should also provide windows or apertures through which one can take a wider or more panoramic view. This encourages the acquisition of boundary knowledge and allows the user to act more effectively and competently by locating what he or she is doing in the understanding of a wider context.

Transcendence: When operating the system, the user should be encourages, enticed, and even provoked to transcend the immediate task requirements. The possibility of acquiring boundary knowledge and a macrolevel vision of the process as a whole should be self-evident.

(p. 70) Hard-nosed industrialists and their compliant foot soldiers, industrial engineers, have tended to regard the type of systems described above as being at the best a diversion from "the real world of industry" or at the worst, "dangerous liberal waffle." But times are changing. A crisis in many of the rigid, hierarchical large organizations is forcing a radical re-examination of much of the given wisdom. At an economic level, a multidisciplinary report on the future of U.S. industry pointed out, "We have tended to treat our workforces as a cost and a liability, whereas our major competitors have treated them as an asset whose skills should be ever enhanced" (Dertouzos et al. 1989).

The author advocates education, not training:

(p. 73) Many of the factorylike universities have ceased any pretense at education and are instead concerned with instruction. In many cases, they are so highly structured that even the instruction becomes mere arid training. Training usually provides a narrow explicit machine- or systems-specific competence that is quickly obsolete with technological change. Education is of a much more durable quality; as one of my German colleagues put it, it is "a state of mind."

(p. 73) In a Developing European Learning through Technology Advance (DELTA) project I directed, we developed a multimedia learning environment that seeks to transmit not expertise but rather the means by which expertise is acquired. To use a crude analogy, it is to the learner what a flight simulator might be to a trainee pilot.

Cromley, Jennifer G. (date?). Metacognition, Cognitive Strategy Instruction and Reading in Adult Literacy. Review of Adult Learning and Literacy, Volume 5, 187-220, retrieved from http://www.ncsall.net/?id=493#7 on 4/14/08.

4/12/08: This was an amazing read. After reading source (1), I felt like I had a really good overview of the topic—and I did. But this book chapter related the concept of metacognition to reading comprehension alone. And isn’t that fundamentally true? Before you can learn about your own learning process, you must first understand the content of what you are reading. That’s square one. Then you can start planning, monitoring and evaluating your progress. But reading comprehension comes first.

This article was all about reading comprehension for adult literacy learners. It made it clear that there is not a lot of research on the topic for adults, but there is very good research for K-12 students.

It gave clear steps for teaching metacognitive skills and doing cognitive strategy instruction. I think we should have some part of the tutorial devoted to the material in this article. Some of our target audience are international students whose mastery of the English language may not be that good. They may be great readers in their native language, but they may experience a lot of frustration when reading material in English. Following the strategies in this article would help to motivate and support these students to learn better by showing them specific steps for how to conquer their English-language studies. They may be very good at using metacognitive strategies in their native language, but often these skills are practiced automatically. When they turn to reading in the English language, they would have to deliberately think about these strategies, and that may be a challenge. Our tutorial would delineate these steps and help them do in English what they already do when reading their native language.

At the end of this chapter is a section called “Resources on Metacognition, Cognitive Strategy Instruction, and Reading in Adult Literacy”. It is a very rich resource.

Dale, Margaret and Bell, John. (1999). Informal Learning in the Workplace. Department for Education and Employment, RB134, retrieved from http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/RRP/u012809/index.shtml on 5/20/08.

5/20/08: Good grief. What a great resource. It simply presents the result that I claimed in my first draft of thesis outline, that informal learning makes people more employable and boosts the bottom line of companies. A very happy find. I got it from a reference in www.infed.org.

Dervin, Brenda. (2003). Human studies and user studies: a call for methodological inter-disciplinarity. Information Research. Vol. 9, No. 1, October 2003. Retrieved from http://informationr.net/ir/9-1/paper166.html on 6/18/08.

6/24/08: I loved this article. It evaluated the state of interdisciplinary research, and did not have a lot of good things to say. The author says that the state of interdisciplinary research is fractured, with everyone going off in their own corner developing their own ideas. What is needed is a will to see things in a way that doesn't necessarily tie everything together in one, grand, unifying theory, but the will to search for more meaning amidst the chaos, to try to make some sense of the chaos rather than blindly adding to it. Does that make sense? Well, here's the abstract:

Drawing on extensive literature reviews focusing, in particular, on user (and audience) research in the fields of library and information science and communication studies, the author describes the increasing chaos of human studies and user studies: the plethora of theories, concepts, approaches, methods, and findings which plague researchers within and between fields and bewilder policy maker and practitioner observers. The origins and symptoms of these disciplinary overloads and the usual forms of inter-disciplinarity brought to bear on them are traced. The author argues that most usual approaches to inter-disciplinarity act as more of the same and contribute to overload conditions. She calls for a methodological approach to inter-displinarity based on fundamental communicative principles. For library and information science, which as a field has traditionally drawn on multi-disciplinary sources, the author cautions that, as the field sets itself to the task of assisting the inter-disciplinary needs of its constituencies, it is especially important that the field also attend to inter-disciplinary needs within its own walls, between its many disparate and disconnected discourse communities.

Dervin, Brenda. (1999). On studying information seeking methodologically: the implications of connecting metatheory to method. Information Processing and Management. 35 (1999). pp 727-750.

7/4/08: This is my second Dervin article on the subject of methodology, and I am a bit confused about the topic. At this point, it just seems to me to be going against what it means to be human. That is, it seems to say that we should allow our highly ordered thinking to become much looser and expansive to the point of chaos, and then not to impose order on this chaotic intake of the research picture. Instead, just address the chaos. But doesn't this defy the human condition? Isn't it so that man has always lived in a disordered world, and civilizations and societies have enabled coexistence and long term survival by imposing structure and order on the world we live in? Isn't order simply man's way of survival, and isn't it the antidote to mental illness? For example, why do we not obsess on all the gazillion kinds of processes going on inside or outside ourselves, why do we not simply overload and crumble from inability to see what's most important to the organism? E.g. a spider crawling up my leg will not worry me if I am about be eaten by a tiger. There are biological mechanisms in place that help us prioritize the world around us according to level of importance to the organism's survival. As a person, I am assailed by a gazillion stimuli at any one point in time, but I am consciously aware of only a few of them, so that I may make quick decisions and do what is in my best interests. The sense-making methodology to me, at this point in my understanding of the issue, says we should break down our intellectual barriers that have stood us well since the beginning of time, and try to understand life on a more chaotic level. Is this wise? Can we survive such a transition in the long haul? Is it in the general public interest to change the way we perceive things to admit chaos and throw down order? I just don't get this...yet. To me, this idea is like saying the mentally ill, in their delusions and inability to cope with life, are sane, and the rest of the world is wrong. At this point in my understanding, sense-making methodology seems way over the mark. I just don't get it.

Dervin, Brenda and Foreman-Wernet, Lois. (2003). Audience as Listener and Learner, Teacher and Confidante: The Sense-Making Approach. Sense-Making Methodology Reader. pp. 215-231.

7/16/08: I read chapters 1,2,11 and 17 of the Sense-making methodology reader in order to better understand sense-making.

In this chapter, the author cautions against conceptualizing an audience as an "amorphous mass." Effective campaigns will look toward how institutions can change themselves rather than how they can change their audience.

Sense-making studies suggest that individuality has been conceptualized inappropriately. In Sense-Making, individuality based on across time-characterizations of people is replaced with a concept of individuality based on situatedness. (p. 230)

A public communication campaign conceived within a communication-as-dialogue perspective is, by definition, a campaign pointing in at least two directions: one to the public, the other to the institution. The communication dilemma for the institution is that if it expects its communicative efforts to be used and useful, it must treat communication as dialogue and it must find ways to empower publics. Recent testimony from the arena of the practice of risk communication confirms the point again and again. Even in this highly technologized arena, people are willing to involve themselves, to listen, to be reasonable, and to act, but only if empowered and heard. (p. 230)

Institutions in our societies have a long tradition of top-down, information-as-description, and communication-as-transmission practices. Habits are hard to break, but developing new ways of listening is of prime importance. The research approaches exemplified in this chapter illustrate that alternatives are possible. (p. 230)

Dervin, Brenda and Foreman-Wernet, Lois. (2003). Chaos, Order, and Sense-Making: A Proposed Theory for Information Design. Sense-Making Methodology Reader. pp. 325-340.

7/21/08: I read this again from the book, Information Design, by Robert Jacobson. MIT Press, 1999. pp. 35-58. Just a couple comments. First, Jacobson says in his book that Dervin's theories are morality-based. I don't understand that. Also, I wanted to note that what I appreciate aside from the theory of sense-making itself is that Dervin is so adept at describing her ideas clearly and articulately. She's a joy to read. One thing I notice is that the other theories don't seem quite as developed, but that may be just a factor of the authors not going to great lengths to describe their theories the way Dervin does.

7/16/08: (p. 339) In this chapter, I have traced briefly a history of theories of information design and have proposed that we must change our theory if we are to pursue a practice that is maximally helpful to the human condition. I have also presented an exemplar approach called Sense-Making, whose theory and methodology calls for a looking at information design as a dialogic circling of reality, a reality that can be reached for but never touched, described in gossamer but never sculpted. This practice focuses on metadesign--design about design--and explicitly acknowledges that its work involves not merely transferring information from here to there but assisting human beings in their information design.

(p. 339) If we are to pursue this challenge, we will have to examine our use of terms traditionally held to be fundamental to information processes--_fact, knowledge, data_--and, even, the concept information itself. Our views of information are challenged by what many observers call the most important philosophic rupture of our time, with order on one side and chaos on the other. Traditional views of information define it as serving the former and threatened by the latter. What I proposed in this chapter is a reconceptualization that chooses both order and chaos and that focuses on the ways humans individually and collectively design the sense (i.e., create the information) that permits them to move from one to the other. Some may see this reconceptualization as diminishing the role of information design, but an alternative view suggests that it may enrich that role to one of far-reaching consequences for the human species.

Dervin, Brenda and Foreman-Wernet, Lois. (2003). Communication Gaps and Inequities: Moving Toward a Reconceptualization. Sense-Making Methodology Reader. pp. 17-46.

7/16/08: (p. 45-46) This chapter has attempted to track through time a number of related but relatively isolated themes in the communications and information science literature and set them in the context of the fundamental assumptions upon which they rest. It has been concerned with communication gaps in the most generalizable sense. First, the "gaps" seen by observers between potential message receivers and the hoped-for-impacts of those messages. Second, the "gaps" seen by receivers between the pictures they now have in their heads and the sense they require to design movements for their lives.

Both types of "gaps" are communication gaps. In the former, it is assumed that communication occurs when sources throw messages at receivers. In the latter, it is assumed that communication occurs when receivers reach out to use input useful in their lives. The contrast between the traditional view of "gaps" and the recent, phenomenological perspective, is not idiosyncratic to research focusing on gaps per se. The "gap" idea is central in any concern for communicating. For this reason, a review of literature dealing with the idea is, in itself, a review of the trends of the literature in general.

In looking at the movement toward reconceptualization of the "gap" idea, this chapter has reviewed two significant challenges to traditional conceptualizations. The first of these--expounded primarily by Third World researchers--sees communications research as having primarily blamed receivers for being in "gap"--for not becoming informed, innovating, developing as a result of exposure to messages. In this view, research has been blaming the victim rather than focusing on the nature of systems which create gap conditions and the nature of communication campaigns which reinforce the rich while letting the poor fall further into gap. This first challenge draws two conclusions. One is that communication itself is limited in its power to change structural inequities in systems, that this requires a specific focus on system changing. The second is that communication campaigns must become receiver-oriented.

It is at this point where the first challenge leaves off that the second challenge enters. This challenge sees communications research as having been led astray by inappropriate assumptions about the nature of information, the thing that it is assumed is transmitted by messages. In this view, communications research is seen as having dealt with mythical gaps--those seen when an observer measures a receiver against a standard not relevant to that receiver--while ignoring the kinds of gaps that are crucial in communication--gaps that individuals see in their pictures of the world and sometimes try to fill with input from messages.

While these moves toward reconceptualization often seem cast as if they represent marked polarizations between points of view, this appearance is, in itself, more myth than reality. The literature of the first challenge does deal more with power while the literature of the second challenge deals more with fundamental premises. Yet, both call for a move to a more receiver-oriented social science and both call for more receiver-oriented communication programs. And, both contribute to the move toward reconceptualization in different but not contradictory ways.

Dervin, Brenda and Foreman-Wernet, Lois. (2003). Rethinking Communication: Introducing the Sense-Making Methodology. Sense-Making Methodology Reader. pp. 3-16.

7/16/08: (p. 10) Dervin argues that there are tremendous possibilities for new technologies but as long as we use them in the same old ways we will not be tapping their potential (or ours). To the detriment of the species as a whole, most procedures for communicating are derived from non-communication theories (i.e. transmission-based rather than dialogic). For humanity to genuinely handle massive amounts of information and difference in an effective manner, the invention of new communicative procedures is required. Sense-Making suggests that in order to achieve more effective democratic forms, we need to attend to the ways that power interrupts communication efforts in daily practice, and we need to develop procedures for dialogue that can transcend materially anchored differences. The Sense-Making Methodology offers one possible guide for progress toward this goal.

Dourish, Paul and Button, Graham (1998). On "Technomethodology": Foundational Relationships Between Ethnomethodology and System Design. Human-Computer Interaction. Volume 13, pp. 395-432.

8/20/08: This was part of some recommended reading by Hilary after my decision to abort the thesis. This, along with Writing Up Qualitative Research, and another book I need to get the title of from Ifi, will help set me up to start writing on the research already completed.

This article explained Technomethodology, a term created to signify that it is different from Ethnomethodology and Computer Science. It used an example of file copying to explain itself, though this is just one instance of using this method. I have a loose grip on the concepts, and would like to read more to get a firmer understanding of what was introduced in this article.

Foreman-Wernet, Lois. (2003, May). Connecting the dots: Methodology as guide. Paper presented at a non-divisional workshop held at the meeting of the International Communication Association, San Diego, CA.

This author is a prominent figure in the sense-making methodology field. I found this short piece to be a good pointer to other resources. It left me with a lot of questions, but also a lot of resources to go find answers in.

Hartman, H.J. (2001). Developing Students' Metacognitive Knowledge and Skills. Metacognition in learning and instruction. 33-68.

4/20/08: Great article, and particularly useful for thesis outline. (p. 33) This chapter discusses research on metacognition in learning and tutoring and describes ways to help students develop and apply metacognitive knowledge and strategies. In this chapter, a strategy is defined as a conscious, deliberate use of a specific method, whereas a skill is defined as a refined strategy which is used selectively, automatically and unconsciously as needed. From an information processing perspective, metacognitive, executive control processes, which guide the flow of information through the mind and regulate cognition, explain why some students learn and remember more than others (Woolfolk, 1998). High achieving students have been found to possess more metacognitive awareness and engage in more self-regulatory behavior than low achieving students. Indeed, metacognition in general has been found to be an important characteristic of expertise (Meichenbaum & Biemiller, 1998; see Sternberg, Chapter 12). The kinds of metacognition discussed in this chapter can "make or break" academic success; they are the kinds of knowledge and strategies that successful people tend to figure out for themselves and that some people must be taught. When used extensively and in varied contexts, metacognitive knowledge and strategies can be used automatically in skilled performance.

Use of metacognition has been demonstrated to be essential to learning. General strategic, metacognitive knowledge and strategies, and domain-specific knowledge have been shown to have important roles in thinking and problem solving (Bransford, Sherwood, Vye and Rieser, 1986). Extensive research and the componential subtheory of Sternberg's triarchic theory of intelligence suggest that high-achieving students are more metacognitive than low-achieving students (Sternberg, 1985). Zimmerman (1990) characterizes the metacognitive processes of self-regulated learners in terms of planning, setting goals, organizing, self-monitoring and self-evaluating at various times during the learning process. Zimmerman (1995) points out that it is not enough for students to have metacognitive knowledge (or skills); they also must self-regulate its use when confronted with stress, competing attractions and fatigue. Context-dependent motivational issues, such as effort, self-efficacy, persistence and task choice are also important determinants of self-regulation. Metacognition is necessary, but not sufficient, for academic success.

Hartman, H.J. (2001). Metacognition in Science Teaching and Learning. Metacognition in learning and instruction. 173-201.

This was an amazing and relevant article. I will have to comment on it in my JennysRandomThoughts section. I have so many reflections about it. On the research end of things, this article presents a kajillion ideas for our own efforts to integrate metacognition into the tutorial as well as methods of training our content team about metacognition. It describes how reading comprehension is aided by actively organizing the information you are reading as you come across it. Better than underlining (what I'm doing now...haha, not funny), better than highlighting, better than less active forms of processing material is the gist of it. So, so much material in this article. I delayed writing because of it, but it was well worth it. One of my "last two articles" was a dud, so I was fishing around amongst my pile of potential articles, and decided to give this one a second look-see. I'm glad I did. I underlined practically the entire article. That's what a rich resource it was to my thesis topic. I will definitely have to process this in a more meaningful, metacognitive way. Few articles I've read deserve that kind of thorough processing from paragraph to paragraph, but this one does. So does the other Hartman article above ("Developing Students'..."). I thought I had hit all the paydirt I possibly could by locating the bigwigs Mc Keatrie and Pintrich. I was so wrong. What kept me from quitting reading was the titles of these articles. They were so on topic, I wanted to read them. Just goes to show that a title is a very big deal.

Hook, K. (year?). Steps to take before Intelligent User Interfaces become real. Retrieved from our bibtek repository. Also available by googling. Get bibliographic information later...

This article approaches the whole Intelligent User Interface arena from a humanistic standpoint. It considers things such as trust, privacy, and ... treating systems as fellow human beings (!). It stresses the importance of not conveying the idea that computers are intelligent humans because that distorts the expectations of humans toward software systems, giving the impression that software systems can take responsibility for their actions and that they will act rationally, similar to human beings, which is just, er, wrong.

I was floored to read the assertions in this article not because they were bold and daring and unconventional, though that's all true, but because it was so deeply rooted in common sense, and because the author was ...right! But what's so surprising is that these are issues that seem to be forgotten in all the hoopla of software that does this or that, or the madness of deadlines, or the obsession with profit. What seems to have been forgotten amidst all the excitement of what computers can and might be able to do is that they are ultimately just devices meant to support mankind, and that to be responsible, we must not lose sight of this fact. This fact must permeate at all levels of software development, but especially at the point of design, where dreams of what might be tend to crowd out the commonsensical, essential, and human-based issues brought up in this article.

Horn, R.E. (1999). Information Design: The Emergence of a New Profession. Information Design. MIT Press, 1999. pp. 15-34.

7/21/08: (p. 15-16) What is information design? Information design is defined as the art and science of preparing information so that it can be used by human beings with efficiency and effectiveness. Its primary objectives are: (1) To develop documents that are comprehensible, rapidly and accurately retrievable, and easy to translate into effective action; (2) To design interactions with equipment that are easy, natural, and as pleasant as possible. The involves solving many problems in the design of the human-computer interface; (3) To enable people to find their way in three-dimensional space with comfort and ease--especially urban space, but also, given recent developments, virtual space.

The values that distinguish information design from other kinds of design are efficiency and effectiveness at accomplishing the communicative purpose.

(p. 24-25) Tensions in Information Design. As a profession, information design is currently experiencing a variety of tensions. Often these result from the clash of different ideologies or value positions that have grown up in the course of solving particular problems and have been extended to uses beyond their original boundaries. (see figure 2.2)

(p. 25) Value Differences. There is, for example, considerable tension between (1) graphic designers--who learn in art school to worship the gods of Style and Fashion, Novelty, Impact and Self-expression--and (2) technical communication people--who worship the gods of Clarity, Precision, Legibility, Comprehensibility, and (often) Simplicity. The graphic designers grew up in schools where Advertising and Fashion were the Senior Deities. The technical people's Senior Deity is Communication.

(p. 30) If the profession becomes more unified and practitioners understand that it rests on a multifaceted foundation of both creative design and rigorous research, it will continue to make major contributions to solving human communication problems. This future will require greater professional self-consciousness, the development and sharing of good practices, and increased incorporation of research findings into the design process. And, finally, it will require all of us to accept the democratization of information design.

Jacobson, R. (1999). Introduction: Why Information Design Matters. Information Design. MIT Press, 1999. pp. 1-10.

7/21/08: (p. 4) I signed up the core group of contributors to this book at the SEGD event and asked them three questions: (1) Is there such a thing as information design?; (2) If there is, what might constitute a formal theory of information design?; and (3) How can we implement this theory in a systematic practice that can be described to others and taught to new entrants to our field?

The contributions that resulted are among the finest expositions on information design as a discipline. Their contributions range the full ambit of information design.

Information design makes its mark in both the traditional arena of two-dimensional graphics and in the postmodern domain of interactive, computer-driven media. In these fields I was fortunate to find the individuals whose insight, creativity, and unique perspectives enrich this book.

Lesk, M. (2005). Understanding Digital Libraries. Second edition. Elsevier. pp. 424.

8/25/08: I reviewed this book today. I only read the table of contents because, I soon realized, all the material in here was covered in library school. All the topics. Now, I do realize that the book was published in 2005, and I left library school in 2003, but material in books is always a couple years old by the time it hits the bookshelves. All the topics were old hat. I just wanted to put an entry in here so that I don't spend a lot of time rethinking my opinion of this book in the future after forgetting that I had previously reviewed it. It was sort of a wasted investment, but I bought the book because it was highly touted by the lab rats, and I never really gave it a hard look until today. I sort of held it in awe, and put it aside until I had time to really look at it.

There's a lesson here. Review a borrowed copy of a book before buying, or I might be wasting my money. This will be the precedent I cite to myself whenever I'm tempted to buy first and read later.

Mayer, R.E. (2001). Cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational aspects of problem solving. Metacognition in learning and instruction. 87-101.

The gist of this article is to see how information transfer, that is, the application of skills to new situations, can be effectively taught. The author stresses that there is more to this type of problem solving than using basic skills alone. It also requires metacognitive skills and motivational skills.

p. 89: The theme of this chapter is that successful problem solving depends on three components--skill, metaskill, and will--and that each of these components can be influenced by instruction. When the goal of instruction is the promotion of nonroutine problem solving, students need to possess the relevant skill, metaskill, and will. Metacognition--in the form of metaskill--is central in problem solving because it manages and coordinates the other components. In this chapter, I explore each of these three components for successful problem solving.

Nerur, S. and Balijepally, V. (2007). Theoretical Reflections on Agile Development Methodologies. Communications of the ACM. Vol. 50, No. 3, March 2007. pp. 79-83.

6/24/08: This article, along with Senge, was recommended reading by Hilary. She was critical of both papers. She said this paper presents design as a drop in replacement for Computer Science, and she disagrees with this idea.

Passini, R. (1999). Sign-Posting Information Design. Information Design. MIT Press, 1999. pp. 83-98.

7/21/08: The author defines his use of the term information design in this article as communication by words, pictures, charts, graphs, maps, pictograms, and cartoons, whether by conventional or electronic means. The author cites that information design is a design approach that is clearly emerging and that promises to evolve into a distinct design practice. The author reviews basic criteria for this new design practice, and illustrates the importance and the meaning of those criteria in a particular field of application--the design of information for helping people find their way around in complex settings. (p. 84)

As such, this article focuses a lot of wayfinding in physical spaces, and only by extrapolation it seems to me, to digital spaces. When I walked away from this article, I felt like I understood the author's theory of wayfinding, but didn't feel like I was given a lot to think about in terms of digital spaces. Of course, one must realize that this article was published in 1999, so the reach of electronic environments wasn't as developed or as pervasive back then as it is now. The article seems to be more in a predictive mode, and that is appropriate for the time period during which this article was written.

While reading this article, I wondered about the translatability of wayfinding to digital environments. Finding one's way in a website, in my opinion, is so strongly tied to the information one the various pages and the relevance of the information found to one's (ever-changing) information goals, yet this theory seems to me to be focused strictly on movement through a website based on markers that aren't related to the meaning of content on the pages. I may have read too much into this.

To show my point, I am including here the section in the article called What Information Is Needed:

According to our conceptualization of wayfinding, people need information to make and execute decisions. Therefore, the wayfinding decisions they make determine the content of the required information. (So much for internal consistency of the argument!) But what does that mean for the design of information"? How can a designer know what decisions future users are going to make?

Two empirical observations help in answering these questions. First, for similar tasks, decisions very a great deal from one type of setting to another. Second, within the same setting, the decisions of different users tend to be similar for a given task (Passini 1984). These observations suggest that the key decisions are determined more by the setting and its architectural characteristics than by individual characteristics. It also indicates that information, if it is relevant and consistent with the wayfinding task, will be used. The more efficient the support information, the more similar the wayfinding solutions of its various users. It is interesting to observe that settings with poor wayfinding information lead to more exploratory decisions, whose objective is usually to find relevant information.

The issue is slightly complicated by the observation that some users tend to rely more on information of a linear, sequential order that leads them from one point on a route to the next, whereas others are more likely to rely on information of a spatial nature that provides them with on overall picture of the setting. These two wayfinding styles are only partly user-specific; they are also affected by the setting's architectural and spatial characteristics. Most people will rely on a linear sequential style when finding their way in complex underground spaces where cognitive mapping is difficult. This suggests that, as a rule, designers should provide information for both wayfinding styles.

There is a tendency to see wayfinding information only in terms of signs. The analysis of the decisions people make in real wayfinding situations, however, shows clearly that most decisions are actually based on information of an architectural nature--entrances to buildings, transition points from one zone to another, exits, paths, stairs, escalators, elevators--as well as information about overall spatial features--for example, the layout of a building or the pattern of a street system (Arthur and Passini 1992). For this reason, the content of wayfinding information should not be limited to signs but should also include such architectural and spatial features. Each of the three elements depends on the presence and articulation of the others.

To establish a list of decisions for which they have to provide information, designers must first identify the locations of the main access points of a setting and--from the users' point of view--the key functions of the space (i.e., the key destination zones). The principle wayfinding decisions can be established by considering the following user tasks: (1) going from each access point to the destination zone and back, (2) going from one destination zone to another; and (3) circulating within the destination zone. The designer can identify the need for more detailed decisions by recording the points along the circulation routes where the users have to choose among directional options. (p. 89-90)

Clearly, this author prescribes to a theory of communication that isn't consistent with Dervin. Passini treats information as blocks of information, and he treats the audience in terms of a small group of distinct packs that tend to behave the same under similar circumstances. I think under Dervin's theory, you would need to consider that everyone responds to similar stimuli, such as signs, in different ways depending on the circumstances in a person's life and factors in the environment at that moment. That's not to say that we need signs and such to be flexible enough to respond to thousands upon thousands of different situations. By virtue of the fact that we cannot personalize signs in a building, maybe Passini's interpretation of his audience shouldn't be criticized so harshly by people like myself. But can digital spaces have a thousand different configurations? Is that even desirable? On a similar note, can signs in a building be considerate of the fact that there are many and varied ways of interpreting those signs by just as many people? This is why people get lost.

I personally feel that Dervin's theory of communication is the deeper, more thoughtful analysis of a wider scope of the world as we know it. Somewhere in Dervin's theory, there is a space that will explain how to deal with wayfinding. I think that the opposite is not true--Passini cannot explain Dervin's theory within his own.

Pintrich, P.R., Brown, D.R., and Weinstein, C.E. (1994). Self-regulated learning in college students: knowledge, strategies, and motivation. Student Motivation, Cognition, and Learning: Essays in Honor of Wilbert J. McKeachie? . 113-133.

4/14/08: This article was a great overview of the theories about how knowledge, strategies, and motivation affect college students' self-regulated learning. It would be useful for quotes in the thesis or thesis outline.

It cited so many other sources that deserve to be read. Unfortunately, I don't know that I will be able to get to them all. But I will take time later to add the citations to the IEAH resource page.

p. 114: The purpose of this chapter is to review several general themes that have characterized Bill McKeachie? 's research as well as our own research in the College Student Research Group, and to propose future directions for research on self-regulated learning in college students. We have identified three general themes that reflect both Bill's contribution to the field and to our own research program: the role of knowledge; the role of general learning and thinking strategies; and the role of motivation, emphasizing the integration of motivation and cognition.

p. 114-115 quotes Bill McKeachie? in his Teaching Tips (1994): "...human beings are learning organisms--seeking, organizing, coding, storing, and retrieving information all their lives; building on cognitive structures to continue learning throughout life, (certainly not losing the capacity to learn); continually seeking meaning. (p. 289)"

p. 115, referring to above quote: "This quote has served as an important assumption in all of our research on college students." Despite this declaration, the article does consider how motivation can be reduced by lack of interest in or a need to know about a subject. It does assert that students who have low intrinsic motivation can still have drive to learn based on extrinsic factors, such as needing or wanting a good grade.

This chapter is definitely a good read. I have marked up my copy extensively. The references are invaluable. This very short synopsis doesn't do it justice. It is enough for me to remind myself of this article. That is why I am leaving it this short.

NOTE: I may want to extend this summary in the future.

Senge, Peter M. (1990). The Leader's New Work: Building Learning Organizations. Sloan Management Review. Fall 1990, Vol. 32, No. 1. pp. 7-23.

6/24/08: This article and the Nerur article were recommended reading by Hilary. I noted that Hilary wasn't in agreement with either article. Here are her criticisms of the paper: This paper is a metatheory paper for Nurer. It gives an interpretation of generative learning. It gives no distinction between data and code. (?) It is the opposite of participatory design (??) and Dervin (right now). It was written 20 years ago.

Smith, Mark K. (2008), Self-direction. Retrieved from http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-selfdr.htm on 5/20/08.

This is another section of the www.infed.org site that I found today. See JennysPlaySpace for description. I found the Further Reading section very interesting and am going to read 2 books from it.

4/13/08: The article reduces to the last sentence, as follows: (p. 137-138) All abilities, including metacognitive ones, are not fixed, but rather forms of developing expertise. Rather than correlating individual aspects of abilities or achievement--such as metacognitive functioning or reaction time or whatever to scores on tests of abilities or achievement--we need to undertand all these aspects not as precursors, but as integral elements in the development of varied forms of expert performance, including those required to achieve high scores on tests.

In sum, a tempting title, but not really helpful for my purposes. It seems to say that if we teach metacognitive skills, we are only teaching one aspect of what creates student expertise. Further, expert students may be only that, expert students. Student scores don't necessarily lead to career success. Correlation, which is clear, is not indicative of causation.

The point of my thesis is that metacognitive skills will increase learning, in particular online learning with ACUT. This article almost seems to say that expertise in learning does not necessarily lead to success in life, so what's the point? It seems to say that all we are creating are expert learners, not necessarily successful people in life.

This article is good in terms of cautioning us to be aware that good learning skills are necessary but not sufficient for life success. So many other factors come into play. Okay, fine, but we are enabling people to work toward success, and that's a big contribution. So there.

Tully, Claus J. (1996). Informal Education By Computer--Ways to Computer Knowledge. Computers and Education. 27(1), 31-43.

5/10/08: Turns out this is a re-read. It was assigned for lab reading in Summer 2007. I thought the author sounded familiar, but I didn't recall with certainty that I had read it before. It reads a lot differently now that I am much more focused on the topic and in the process of writing the thesis outline. I found it again by reviewing Katja's thesis and finding that this article was a good citation for the Problem Statement I had written for my first draft of thesis outline.

This article talks about how computer knowledge is necessarily a task for informal education, not formal education. The only thing really appropriate for formal education is the very basics of how to use a computer. The other kinds of computer knowledge, what he calls functional and combinatorial, must be learned in an on-time basis. You can't learn software in high school and expect those skills to be relevant after college because software changes so frequently and can easily become obsolete in that amount of time.

That's all for now. I'm on a deadline. Meeting with Kate on Monday, and have to write version 3 of thesis outline.

Wolcott, Harry F. (2001). Writing Up Qualitative Research, 2nd edition. Sage Publications. 202 pp.

8/18/08: This book explains how to get started writing about qualitative research. It tells what to do and what not to do in your writings and/or dissertation. It concludes with a lot of publishing tips, which are available elsewhere. It was a good, quick read. It was highly recommended by Hilary.

Woolfolk, Anita. (date?) Module 20: Cognition, Metacognition, and Teaching. Educational Psychology: Active Learning Edition, 10^th Edition.

4/12/08: I really enjoyed reading this book. I bought a copy because I find it endlessly fascinating, which means that I really like the writing style as well as learning about all aspects of educational psychology. I plan to read it cover to cover in the future.

This chapter defined the three main metacognitive skills as planning, monitoring and evaluating. The three kinds of knowledge involved in metacognition are declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, and conditional knowledge. The author went on to explain how to develop the three kinds of metacognitive knowledge.

I don’t want to outline the article here, which is what I’d have to do to cover what it discussed. I felt it defined the concept and broke it down in a clear outline. It wasn’t a descriptive, qualitative type of discussion. It simply defined concepts, gave practical hints on how to practice it, and didn’t really discuss the why’s and wherefore’s. At least that’s my impression now after reading the next article, which made me think about metacognition from a different angle.

Zimmerman, B.J. and Risemberg, R. (1994) Investigating Self-regulatory Processes and Perceptions of Self-efficacy in Writing by College Students, Student Motivation, Cognition, and Learning: Essays in Honor of Wilbert J. McKeachie? , 239-256.

4/15/08: This work began with a discussion of the importance of the work of Wilbert McKeachie? in the field of metacognition, motivation and learning. See section in article called "College Teaching and Students' Self-Regulation of Learning".

The article then described the results of an experiment which demonstrated that metacognitive skills improve student achievement in a writing task. See my mark up of p. 253.

p. 252-253: In light of the accumulated evidence, greater priority in the college curriculum must be given to McKeachie? 's recommendations to teach "thinking about thinking" and to enhance students' motivation and interest in learning. Students can be taught to use metacognitive as well as other self-regulatory processes, such as goal setting and self-evaluation, through special courses in learning strategies or as part of their regular classes (Zimmerman, Greenberg, and Weinstein, 1994.) When metacognitive and other self-regulative strategies are internalized together, students will improve not only their immediate performance in school but also their self-efficacy beliefs and motivation to reach their ultimate academic goals.

- 13 Apr 2008