Critique of various articles on Online Instruction – part 1
Below are some thoughts about some of the articles in the compilation offered in Module 7 of IDE 632: Analysis of Web-based Developmental Schemes – part 1
“Blueprint to Develop a Great Web Site” – T.H.E Journal, March, 2001
The author touches upon the salient points of good web design well enough. However, there are a few points worth noting since the article is over 9 years old.
- First, web design need not be beholden to the old rule of 640 x 480 pixel dimensions. It is presumed at this time that enough of the web population is using higher resolution monitors. This is significant from a design standpoint since 1024 x 768 pixel dimension offer more real estate for content.
- The author does not refer to the importance of making websites compatible with mobile devices, likely because it was not a feasible consideration in 2001.
- There is no mention of blog design, again, presumably because blogs were not as pervasive as they are today. The importance of this factor relates to the distinction between blogs and traditional websites because the blog introduces interactivity with the visitor. Thus, the visitor needs to operate within the conventional literacy of blog activity, such as understanding CAPTCHA, registering an account, and the etiquette of a properly composed response to a post. Given the popularity of blogs as both a personal communication medium and as a vehicle for conducting instruction, I suggest that the blueprint offered here be expanded significantly.
One of my favorite examples of a well-designed and appropriately formatted blog is Alumni Futures. Mr. Shaindlin, its owner and author, has presented an uncluttered environment for reading, and has mastered the art of composing succinct, informative articles using formatting devices (paragraphing, indentation, boldface, links) in a way that makes them both scannable and readable. Further, he has developed a sophisticated blog “voice” that is both informative and inquisitive in a way that is somewhere between journalism and professional diary. His work has served as a premier example for me as I develop my own voice. (I might not ever be accused of being succinct!). I might also mention that I have known Mr. Shaindlin personally since 1970.
“What is web 2.0? Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software” – O’Reilly Media, September, 2005
Of central interest to me in this article is the premise of Collective Intelligence. I believe that ID professionals ought to explore its meaning carefully to prevent any misunderstanding about what is meant by this term. I agree with and advocate the use of data to improve the user experience. In a highly context-specific environment such as a dedicated website, this is a good thing. But let us not confuse “intelligence” with broader meanings of “virtue” or “truth”. Intelligence is a subjective interpretation of what is deemed valuable to the society it serves (“Towards a Feminist Reassessment of Intellectual Virtue” Jane Braaten, Hypatia, Vol. 5 No. 3, 1990). In colloquial terms, “intelligence” is often errantly equated with being smart, correct, educated, having wisdom, having valid experience in an area of knowledge or skill, etc.
I feel strongly that the collective opinion based on crowdsourced data collection means nothing more than a statistical point of interest. In context, this may be interpreted as “intelligence” in the same way a spy may collect “intelligence” information on the operations of enemies or what they think. But this information does not constitute, by any objective measure, evidence of intellectual virtue, rational thinking, or consideration of viable alternatives. In a “data happy” world, we are inclined to reflexively respond to patterns and trends in information – the so-called emergence phenomenon mentioned by Stephen Downes and Connectivists in general – rather than the inherent validity of the basis for the data trends. For example, how many of us cannot help but notice the comparison of “thumbs up/thumbs down” counts beside certain public comments in current online news articles? Is it not irresistible to generalize the collective mindset of Americans based on whether 2962 people “agree” that they think Obama is a Muslim and a radical Socialist versus 426 who do not?
In essence, I believe there is pragmatic use for crowdsourcing tools that may benefit the development of ISD, such as preferences for certain methods of instruction, or presentation of information in an online interface. However, I am cynical about “the wisdom of crowds”, and with detached (anonymous, unaccountable) online crowds in particular, and I resent the notion that anyone would capitulate to the reliability and validity of information simply because crowdsourcing tools are powerful. I propose, instead, that Collective Intelligence be renamed Collective Sentiment, Collective Opinion or Collective Collection. In other words, intelligence is the byproduct of collecting data, but that its “intellectual virtue” be measured by a more comprehensive set of variables that account for, among other things, the basis upon which those opinions are based.
Further, we should not equate the function of Collective Intelligence in the development of a business model, or in discerning audience preferences with the functions of Collective Intelligence in education. People can be persuasive, influential – and flat-out wrong, or unable to defend their position other than to point to statistics of “what other people think”. (This has been an annoying aspect of polls related to health care reform, where it seems most people express opposition to it because it “sounds Socialist”, but agree with certain separate principles that comprise the bill. The poll data is meaningless beyond describing what people think, not what they actually believe.)
Another point of contention is the threshold we may soon discover where persons attempting to do research will find that many of them are referring to the exact same online articles or “online sentiments” because those are the most readily available resources “crowdsourced” into highest relevance. This may be acceptable for an elementary project on the solar system, but not necessarily for aspects of higher education where the student is expected to synthesize research and derive an opinion of their own. I am intrigued by the absence or shallowness of risk assessment by any of the comments made on this article in its present form (March 31, 2010), other than the author alluding in a rather cursory sense that Collective Intelligence can foster an “echo chamber effect.”
This phenomenon appears to be addressed in John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler’s article “Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0″ EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 43, no. 1 (January/February 2008): 16–32.
The authors advocate the forming of practicums, or “learning to be” in realistic learning contexts that are similar to the journeyman experience of traditional crafts. These Learning 2.0 environments are intended to benefit from both the social learning collective building of knowledge as well as the mentorship guidance needed to lead the course of learning towards “intellectual virtue”:
We need to construct shared, distributed, reflective practicums in which experiences are collected, vetted, clustered, commented on, and tried out in new contexts. One might call this “learning about learning,” a bootstrapping operation in which educators, along with students, are learning among and between themselves. This can become a living or dynamic infrastructure—itself a reflective practicum (p. 28).
I am more inclined to operate as an ID professional under these circumstances.
More to come…
Hi Steve-
You make some interesting points here about the nature of “intelligence” and the validity of collective thought. I agree that “intelligence” is too often bandied about, when it isn’t really something that can be measured when we’re talking about simple intellectual capacity. “Knowledge” is something that I feel is a lot more quantifiable (i.e., can you test for intelligence, or test for whether someone knows a particular piece of information?), but it still doesn’t apply to a great deal of the information out there.
Reading your thoughts about [seemingly often misinformed] mass consumption of media made me think of a strip from PhD Comics:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1271
Your words about public opinion polls really brought this to mind.
On the other hand, I think we need to be very aware of what exactly the masses think, in ISD, FEA, and any other acronym that deals with anything involving people. Is what people believe as a whole necessarily correct or well-informed? No. Could understanding that help us to better design and plan for misconceptions that can happen along the way and affect our otherwise well-planned and well-provided-for outcomes? I think so. Unless we understand where people might misunderstand or even screw something up, we’ll be at a loss when our designs fail for reasons unknown.
Maybe this all sounds misanthropic, but I can also argue that the “masses” might also be in favor of simpler and more effective ways to complete a task. For example, our team’s evaluation project in 641 was saved time and money due to electing to use an online questionnaire delivery service than worrying about printing and postage. The pervasiveness of surveymonkey.com and the like may have resulted in goofy polls on facebook, etc., but also may have provided researchers and instructional designers with a novel approach to data collection, analysis, and evaluation.
-Leigh
Leigh – Your sentiments about “us ID folk” taking collective sentiment into consideration is a valid one, as I said, in the context of development of systems and interfaces. No doubt. My main concerns are that the power of the tool itself is misconstrued as a means for “fomenting the emergence of intelligence” in the context of learning. Or better put, the “instructional enactment function”, as Merrill (1991) says in the ID Expert Systems article (p. 89) is the domain where Collective Intelligence may serve best to refine an instructional system toward continuous improvement for delivering learning content. In the actual learning process, however – meaning the encounter between student and exercise/activity/interaction – I feel most skeptical about the extent to which Collective Intelligence can serve beyond awareness. This is, of course, arguable, and I am not a learning scientist like Dr. Koszalka! – Steve
Gross mass-based phenomena such as yes-no votes are not emergent phenomena and are not what is meant by ‘collective intelligence’.
That would be like attempting to analyze the meaning of a set of pixels by counting how many are ‘off’ versus ‘on’, instead of looking at the organization and recognizing in that a picture of Richard Nixon.
The fruit of collective intelligence, which I (and others) have described as an emergent phenomenon, results from the linkages and connections between individuals, and not a counting of properties (such as survey results) of those individuals.
This emergent knowledge is not intended to compete with, or replace, qualitative or quantitative knowledge. The assessment of whether Obama is a Muslim is not the subject of collective intelligence, no more than the assessment how many children he has would be based on what colour jacket he is wearing. Just as we should not confuse qualitative and quantitative data, we should not confuse wither of those with data describing connections and relations.
As to whether observation of emergent phenomena based on linkages or relations is based on “inherent validity”, or “objective measure, evidence of intellectual virtue, rational thinking, or consideration of viable alternatives”, depends on “reliability and validity of information”, and demonstrates “smart, correct, educated, having wisdom, having valid experience in an area of knowledge or skill”, such data – just like assessments of quality or quantity – are and ought to be subject to assessments of reliability, and not accepted as fact uncritically.
Just as nobody would accept a claim like “Obama is purple” or “Obama is really two people” uncritically, and without corroboration or verification, nor either should we uncritically accept statement like “Obama is a Muslim” or even “this arrangement of pixels depicts Richard Nixon” uncritically, without corroboration or verification.
The idea of emergent properties, or collective intelligence, or (as I would call it) connective knowledge, is not inherently opposed even to the strong realism assumed in the assessment above. It is not inconsistent to assert that “there are facts of the matter” and “these facts are expressed as connective knowledge”.
The point of an assertion that there is _is_ connective knowledge is to assert that “this domain of facts is not exhausted by observing qualities and counting entities or their properties; there is a distinct set of facts represented by the *connections* between these entities.” This is a proposition, even when granting the naive sort of realism assumed above, that is difficult to refute, and is not refuted by assertions such as “a large quantity of people express the belief that Obama is Muslim.”
If we wanted to learn about Obama’s religion – which is not a simple observable or countable property – then we would not sample what people unconnected to him express as beliefs. That’s like determining the colour of grass by counting pebbles on the beach. Rather, we would amass and collect the set of Obamas *connections* and *interactions* with other people and things, and determine whether this constitutes a set of patterns that more typically resembles a person we typically call a “Muslim”.
Does Obama go to Muslim assemblies, such as Mosques, or does he typically assemble with and interact with Christians? Does he regularly consult Islamic texts, or would his readings be more typical of work read by Christians? Can connections in his thought be drawn to Islamic Law, or does an analysis of his texts demonstrate a stronger affinity with Christian thought? Do the utterances and texts of people connected to Obama describe him in terms typical of those describing Muslims, or do they tend to connect him to terms typical of those describing Christians?
Asserting that “Obama is a Muslim” based on a poll would be irresponsible, and no person advocating any form of collective intelligence or connective knowledge would assert otherwise.
But asserting that there is some simple observable property that verifies or confirms that “Obama is not a Muslim” is equally irresponsible. Naive realism does not refute connective knowledge when the reality being described is complex, when there is no simple observable or countable fact of the matter.
Connective knowledge, in other words, does not refute or overturn existing knowledge; rather, it offers us a *new* type of knowledge, that *cannot* be confirmed or refuted by simple observation of data; the employment of connective knowledge *is* to assess and evaluate such assertions *is* a demonstration of being “smart, correct, educated, having wisdom, having valid experience in an area of knowledge or skill”.
Hi Steve-
Thanks for the clarification for my sleep-deprived mind. =) I can see your point, and understand your concern. Like you mentioned, it could all depend on how influential you believe social learning theory and the like to be in terms of influencing an individual’s thought processes rather than the masses as a whole. Social pressure may affect more than just awareness, in my mind, but to what extent? That’s really difficult to determine, and assumes that people do look to others for guidance, intentionally or not.
-leigh