Keynotes
Director Maastricht McLuhan Institute Manager
Maastricht Learning Lab Universiteit Maastricht
P.O. Box 6161 6200 MD Maastricht, the Netherlands
Phone: +31-43-3882526
Fax: +31-43-3252930
E-mail: eurelings@mmi.unimaas.nl
www : http://www.mmi.unimaas.nl
Title
The relevance of CSCL for day-to-day educational practice
Abstract
Bringing research into practice is a willful issue, it seems to fit
in the category of "wicked problems". Conkite defines a
wicked problem as a problem that can be characterized as an evolving
set of interlocking issues and constraints in a constantly changing
context, with many stakeholders involved. A description that we
recognize when trying to bring CSCL research findings into
day-to-day practice. If a linear approach to solving wicked problems
simple will not work, how can we find ways to cope with the dynamics
of the process. If the dynamic nature of the problem formulation and
changing constraints, make it possible to reach an ideal solution,
how can we use our learning about both the problem and the solution
and still find a solution that is "good enough". What
aspects are vital for success, and how can we learn from the
experiences gained.
Short profile
Anneke M.C. Eurelings is Director of the Maastricht McLuhan
Institute (MMI). She was trained as an electrotechnical engineer
(medical engineering) at the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven. At
MMI she has been responsible for setting up, executing and managing
of research, education and external services in the fields of
digital culture, knowledge organisation and learning technology.
Since 1987 she has been involved with ICT and education at the
Universiteit Maastricht, as Director of the Computing Centre and as
the university's co-ordinator in this field. She was also the
initiator and co-ordinator of an EU project (ELECTRA) in which four
universities in the Euregion Meuse-Rhine researched and developed
electronic learning environments. Ms Eurelings is a member of the
Steering Committee of the Memorandum of Understanding on Multimedia
Content and Training of the European Commission, Prometheus,
Brussels.
Assistant Professor
Computers, Organisations, Policy and Society (CORPS)
Department of Information and Computer Science
University of California at Irvine,
CA 9269703425 USA
Phone: +1-949-824-8127
Fax: +1-949-824-4056
E-mail: jpd@ics.uci.edu
Website
Title
Tools for evolving practice
Abstract
One of the major paradigms for learning is the gradual move from a
peripheral to a central position in a community of practice.
"Practice", according to Menger, "is first and
foremost a process by which we can experience the world and our
encounters with it as meaningful." Practice and meaning evolve
along with each other and are reflected in the various ways in which
we incorporate tools and technologies into our experience, and use
them to achieve collective ends. While this is often thought of as a
social process, it depends critically on both social and technical
foundations: traditional models of technical design erect obstacles
to this kind of open-ended, evolving use.
In this talk, I will use examples from a variety of research
investigations to explore the questions surrounding technical
support for evolving practice. Some of these are technical, some are
social, but all of them point to the ways in which technical
assumptions need to be revised to support a model of continual,
ongoing and evolving practice.
Short profile
Paul Dourish recently joined the faculty of the Department of
Information and Computer Science at the University of California,
Irvine. Before moving to Irvine, he was a senior member of research
staff in the Computer Science Laboratory at Xerox PARC, and has also
conducted research at Apple Computer and at the Xerox Research
Centre, Europe (formerly Rank Xerox EuroPARC).
Paul's main area of research is Computer-Supported Cooperative
Work. He is particularly interested in the relationship between
social and technical design sciences, and has pursued this interest
in a variety of domains, including CSCW toolkits, workflow systems,
group information systems and media spaces. Paul holds a PhD in
Computer Science from University College, London. He is an associate
editor of ACM Trans. Computer-Human Interaction and the Journal of
Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, and lately served as programme
co-chair for the ACM CSCW conference.
Director,
CREDIT,
School of Psychology
University of Nottingham
UK-Nottingham NG7 2RD
E-mail: djw@psychology.nottingham.ac.uk
Title
Contingent tutoring and computer-based learning
Abstract
My colleagues and I first put forward our model of contingent
tutoring and learning some 25 years ago. The model grew out of
experimental investigations of parent-child interaction in
situations where mothers helped their 3-4 year olds to master tasks
which, left alone, the children could not learn. I will start with a
brief historical overview of the many investigations which have
built upon this work to test and extend the model in the context of
other teacher-child and parent-child contexts, including analyses of
tutoring in school contexts.
More recently, we have formalized these principles and extended
them to the design of computer-based tutoring environments. In a
series of studies, we have achieved two main things.
First, we have shown how the same principles can be applied to
the design of tutors and lead to interesting new ways of gaining
insights into the processes of learning under tuition; insights
which could not be gained from face to face studies. Empirical
evaluations of the tutors have taken us beyond factors which
influence learning of domain knowledge into studies of individual
differences in learners' regulation of their own learning activity,
and in the way in which they regulate tutorial interactions. Armed
with knowledge from such studies, we are now extending the model of
contingent tutoring to test ideas about how learners can be helped
to improve the regulation of their own learning.
Second, our attempts to formalize the tutorial process have
helped us to etch out aspects of human tutoring which, though
important in supporting learning, we cannot, currently, implement in
our computer-based environments. These include decisions about the
timing of tutorial interventions and interpretations of certain
classes of learner actions. The decisions, we suggest, are usually
based on aspects of non-verbal communication which, we cannot yet
specify more formally, nor implement within the current limitations
on human-computer interaction.
Although our work began with an interest in tutoring, it has
raised some new issues about the dynamic, on-line assessment of
learning and its potential role in education such as helping to
support interactions in the "triangle" of
learner-teacher-system.
In parallel with our computer-based work we have also been
studying the nature of helping and contingent tutoring in children.
This work provides some interesting insights into the processes
which underpin the development of these rather remarkable human
abilities and helps us to understand how collaboration can support
learning. This invites us to think about how and why we might
scaffold the process of peer interaction for learning.
Short profile
David Wood is Professor of Psychology in the School of Psychology
at the University of Nottingham, UK, where he is also the Director
of CREDIT (Centre for Research in Development Instruction &
Training). In addition to his time at Nottingham, he has been a
post-doctoral fellow at the Centre for Cognitive Studies, Harvard
University and was a member of the Oxford Pre-School Research Group
at the University of Oxford.
European Commission
Rue de la Loistraat 200
BU 33 2/46 1049 Brussels, Belgium
Visitors: Avenue de Beaulieu 33 2/46
1160 Brussels
Phone: +32-2-2954073, secr.: 2953761
Fax: +32-2-2962392
E-mail : wim.jansen@cec.eu.int
Websites : www.cordis.lu, www.proacte.com
Title
Information Society Technologies for Education and
Training: Past, present and future.
Abstract
Since 1988 the European Commission is actively supporting
research projects whose objective is to improve the process of
learning through the use of Information and Communication
technologies. In his talk Mr Jansen will, after a short reflection
on past collaborative learning projects, concentrate on current
Commission initiatives like the eEurope action plan and its
'spin-off: the eLearning initiative, the current priorities as
defined in the Information Technology Societies workprogramme 2001
as well as the state of affairs as regards to the position of
education and training in the upcoming framework 6 programme
(2002-2006).
Short profile
Mr Jansen was born in the Netherlands, and holds degrees in both
Geography for Education and Urban Planning. He started his
professional career at a Dutch national educational broadcasting
company where he produced several educational programme series.
After that he joined the Dutch National Institute for Educational
Measurement. In 1986 he was appointed as Educational Technologist at
the Dutch Open University and participated in many course teams in
the field of Economics and Cultural Sciences and he developed
several multimedia applications. In 1991 he moved internally to the
research institute of the Open University to do research in the
design and development of Multimedia educational software. Since
beginning 1993 he is employed as principal scientific officer in the
European Commission. Initially in the Telematics applications for
Education and Training sector, and since the start the fifth
framework programme he is co-ordinating the action line 'the
flexible university' in Directorate General Information Society, key
action Multimedia, Content and Tools.
Professor of Applied Computer Science and Computer Science
Education
Dept. of Mathematics / Computer Science (FB 11)
University of Duisburg
Lotharstr. 65 D-47048
Duisburg
Phone: +49-203-379-3553
Fax: +49-203-379-3557
E-mail: hoppe@informatik.uni-duisburg.de
Website
Title
About the relation between C and C in CSCL
Abstract
Group interaction, cooperation and collaboration, are not at all
new in educational practice nor is the reflection on these phenomena
a new invention in recent educational theories. From an educational
viewpoint, computer support can just be seen as a new means to
support old pedagogical ideas and approaches, also in group
learning. However, the CSCL community is not the extension of a
grown community of educational researchers defined by the new
instrumental use of computers. Given its origin and evolution, CSCL
research can -to a large extent- be characterized as applied
cognitive science, which implies that computational models and
theories belong to its foundations. Central concepts such as
distributed intelligence, shared (external) representations or
representational change can nowadays hardly be conceived without
using the computer metaphor. So, the first "C" in CSCL
stands not only for a technical means but also for a tool of
thought, a metaphor or a conceptual device. In this sense, the new
medium is a new message!
On this background, recent experience in several European
projects will be presented and reflected. Special topics will be the
design and practical implementation of computer-integrated spatial
settings for cooperative learning, the practical use and the
computational modeling of shared physical and virtual artifacts to
support aspects of workflow in group learning, as well as the use of
computational techniques to create a certain degree of awareness of
group situations inside the machine. Finally, specific computational
challenges set by the requirements of collaborative learning
scenarios will be defined as an open agenda for future development.
Short profile
H. Ulrich Hoppe holds a full professorship for "Applied
Computer Science and Computer Science Education" at
Gerhard-Mercator-Universität Duisburg, Germany.
His research group COLLIDE
("Collaborative Learning in Intelligent Distributed
Environments") has been engaged in several European projects in
the area of advanced computational technologies in education. In
1998, COLLIDE initiated the NIMIS project on developing innovative
classroom technology for early learning in the framework of a
European programme on "Experimental School Environments".
The specialties of NIMIS are characterized by combining a
computer-integrated classroom environment ("roomware")
with new interaction techniques (pen-based input, speech output) and
intelligent analysis and support.
With an original background in mathematics and educational
technology (Master-equivalent "Staatsexamen" in
Mathematics and Physics from Marburg University, 1978; PhD in
Educational Technology from Tübingen University in 1984), Ulrich
Hoppe has been working for about ten years in the area of
intelligent user interfaces and cognitive models in HCI (Fraunhofer
Society Stuttgart, 1984-87, GMD IPSI Darmstadt 1987-95), before he
re-focused his research on intelligent support in educational
systems and distributed collaborative environments. He joined the
University of Duisburg as a full professor in 1995. Ulrich Hoppe is
co-editor of the German interdisciplinary journal
"Kognitionswissenschaft" ("Cognitive Science",
Springer) and, together with Friedrich Hesse and Heinz Mandl, he was
one of the proposers of a new research initiative on "Net-based
Knowledge Communication in Groups" which was recently accepted
and established by the German Science Foundation (DFG). This
initiative is devoted to further developing and studying networked
media for supporting collaborative learning and knowledge management
from an interdisciplinary perspective including cognitive science,
social psychology, education, and applied computer science.
Current research interests and related projects
- Open distributed environments for collaborative learning
- Multimedia and "roomware" concepts for academic and
school teaching Analysis, modeling, and intelligent support of
collaborative learning processes
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