WebGuide: Guiding Collaborative Learning
on the Web with Perspectives
Abstract:
We are developing a Web-based tool called WebGuide to mediate and structure collaborative learning. This software uses an innovative mechanism to define a flexible system of perspectives on a shared knowledge construction space. WebGuide provides an electronic and persistent workspace for individuals and teams to develop and share distinctive points of view on a topic. We are designing the software and associated usage practices by trying it out in a middle school classroom and an advanced graduate seminar. Our experience in these use situations has raised a range of questions concerning theoretical and practical issues, which are driving our research. This paper is a reflection on what we are learning collaboratively about how software artifacts can mediate learning and shared cognition.
1. Introductory Narrative
For some years now I
have been interested in how to personalize the delivery of information from
knowledge repositories to people based on their preferred perspectives on the information (Stahl,
1995, 1996).
For instance, designers often critique an evolving design artifact from
alternative technical points of view; different designers have different
personal concerns and styles, requiring considerations based upon access to
different rules of thumb, rationale, constraints, standards and other forms of
domain knowledge. Computer design environments should support these important
interpretive perspectives (Stahl,
1993a, 1993b). I am now primarily
interested in applying similar mechanisms of perspectival computer support
within contexts of collaborative learning (Stahl,
2000).
Last year, Ted Habermann – an information architect at NOAA who makes geophysical data available to school children over the Web – suggested to me that we try to develop some computer support for a project at his son’s middle school. Dan Kowal, the environmental sciences teacher at the Logan School for Creative Learning in Denver, was planning a year-long investigation of alternative perspectives on the issue of “acid mine drainage” (AMD) – the pollution of drinking water supplies by heavy metals washed out of old gold mines. The fact that Dan and I were interested in “perspectives” from different perspectives seemed to provide a basis for fruitful collaboration. Ted obtained NSF funding for the project and we all spent last summer (1998) planning the course and its perspectives-based software. Each of us brought in colleagues and worked to create a Java application (WebGuide), a set of auxiliary web pages, a group of adult mentors representing different perspectives on AMD and a course curriculum.
The class started in September and the software was deployed in October. The students in Dan’s class were aware of the experimental nature of the software they were using and were encouraged to critique it and enter their ideas into WebGuide. Feedback from these twelve-year-old students provided initial experience with the usability of WebGuide and resulted in a re-implementation of the interface and optimization of the algorithms over Christmas vacation.
In January 1999, I organized an interdisciplinary seminar of doctoral students from cognitive, educational and computational sciences to study theoretical texts that might provide insight into how to support collaborative learning with perspectives-based software. The seminar uses WebGuide as a major medium for communication and reflection, including reflection on our use of the software. This provides a second source of experience and raises a number of issues that will need to be addressed in software redesign this summer.
In this paper I would like to begin a
reflection on the issues that have arisen through our WebGuide
experiences because I think they are critical to the ability to support
collaborative learning with computer-based environments. The potential for
computer mediation of collaboration seems extraordinary, but our experience
warns us that the practical barriers are also enormous. Certainly, our
experiences are not unique, and similar projects at the universities of