Aldo de Moor, UAH Distinguished Speaker Series Lecture, January 21, 2009

1. From Inspiration to Activation:
Making Online
Collaborative Communities
Work
Aldo de Moor
CommunitySense
the Netherlands
WWW.COMMUNITYSENSE.NL

2. Yes we can…
but how?

3. The Internet is key

4. Wicked problems
 Society faces many wicked problems (Rittel & Webber,
1973)
 These are difficult to solve due to
 requirements that are
 incomplete
 contradictory
 changing
 hard to recognize
 Interlocking problems
 solving one often creates many others

5. Seeing the system for the tools?

6. Collaborative communities
 Communities
 Strong, lasting interactions
 Bonds between members
 Common space
 Collaborative communities
 Common goals
 Effective/efficient communication
 Perform/coordinate work
 Community governance structures/processes
 Sense of community
 Common space: Internet + face-to-face

7. Tool systems
 Tool system
the system of integrated and customized information and
communication tools tailored to the specific information,
communication, and coordination requirements of a collaborative
community
 No standard solutions
 Socio-technical systems design
 Collaborative communities need to evaluate the functionalities in
their unique context of use
 Understand the purpose of the technologies in this context
 Adopt a process view
• Example: co-authoring a call for papers

8. Co-authoring tool system v1
Version
Author 2
Author 2
Version
Version
Author 1
Author 3
Author 1 Author 3

9. Co-authoring tool system v2
Version
Author 2
Author 2
Conference
Version
Version
Author 1
Author 3
Author 1 Author 3

10. Co-authoring tool system v3
Version Version Version
Author 1 Author 1 Author 1
Agreed
lines
Conference
Author 1 Author 2 Author 3 / Editor
Chat
(Modified)
paragraphs
Version-in
Progress

11. Towards socio-technical solutions
 Research problem online collaborative communities
 Not lack of motivation
 Many self and other-oriented motives to get critical mass, e.g.
in Wikipedia
 Lack of activation
 Fragmentation of communicative acts across tool system
functionalities
 R&D objectives
1. Frame these activation problems
2. Model socio-technical design solutions

12. Socio-technical system view
 Domains
Community Context  Purposes
 Activities
Social  Focused
Communication
System Purposes
 Sustained
 Evolving
 Discussing
Communication  Debating
Forms  Questioning
 Consoling
 …
Technical
System
Communication
Support ?

13. Modeling pragmatic communication
processes
 Theories
 Language/Action Perspective
 Language as coordination mechanism, focusing on
communicative interactions
 Pragmatic Web
 Applying appropriate web technologies to help improve the
quality and legitimacy of collaborative, goal-oriented
discourses in communities (Schoop et al, 2006)
 Build a socio-technical infrastructure that supports the
negotiation of meaning and the coordination of action
(Aakhus, 2007)
 Research question
 How to model activation in collaborative communities using
distributed tool systems?

14. Collaborative community activation
 Collaborative community activation
 supporting the initiation, execution, and evaluation of
goal-oriented (online) communication processes to
increase the effectiveness and efficiency of
collaboration
 Outline
 Digital class case
 Conceptual model of online collaborative
communities
 Collaboration patterns
 Applications

15. Case: a digital class community
 Who
 19 Information Management students
 What
 create group report on design of parliamentary research
information system
 When
 8 weeks + evaluation session
 How
 Face-to-face lectures, parallel digital class
 Tool system
 Blackboard (Learning Management System)
 Set of blogs
 GRASS (Group Report Authoring Support System)
 Scoring tool

16. The GRASS authoring tool

17. Group report authoring workflow
Theory interpretation (blogs)
Case information collection (blog)
Report authoring (GRASS)
Wk1 Wk 2 Wk3 Wk4 Wk5 Wk6 Wk7 Wk8

18. Results
 63-page report created in 8 weeks by 18 authors
 Most students scored much higher than the minimum
required
 Survey among students
 Digital study class better than face-to-face study class
 Overall design of tool system plus workflow adequate
 Blog posting/commenting plus GRASS position definition/taking
and argument creation functionalities easy to learn
 Problems
 Blog creation easy, however, following what was
happening too difficult
 Fragmentation of discussion considered a major problem
→ ‘blog monitor’ helped to reduce sense of fragmentation and to increase
participation

19. Activation lessons learnt
 Incentives for individual students to participate
 Minimum score required to qualify for exam
 Overview of current scores per student visible to all
 Vouchers
 Improving the overview of activities within individual tools
 Indented instead of linear comments in blog
 Creating “meta-tools” to keep overview of activities
across tools
 “Blog monitor”

20. A conceptual model of online
collaborative communities (1)
 Tool system
 the system of integrated and customized information and
communication tools tailored to the specific information,
communication, and coordination requirements of a
collaborative community
 Tool system levels
 Systems: “group report writing system”
 Tools: “blogs”, “courseware”, “authoring support tool”
 Modules: “position definition/taking”, “argument creation”
 Functions: “add argument pro”, “add argument con”

21. A conceptual model of online
collaborative communities (2)
 Usage context
 Goals
 Activities: operationalized goals, with deliverable
 “writing a group report”
 Aspects: abstract goals, across processes and structures
 “legitimacy”, “efficiency”
 Actors
 Detailed role ontologies
 “Administrator”, “Facilitator”, “Member”
 “WikiChampion”, “WikiZenMaster”
 “Position Defender”, “Argument Summarizer”, “Report Conclusion
Editor”
 Domains
 Professional culture, work practices, …

22. The power of patterns
• WikiPatterns site
– http://www.wikipatterns.com
• Public Sphere project
– http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/pattern.pl/public

23. Collaboration patterns
 Patterns
 Define relatively stable solutions to recurring problems at
the right level of abstraction
 Collaboration patterns
 Capture socio-technical lessons learnt in optimizing the
effectiveness and efficiency of collaboration processes
 Typology of collaboration patterns (De Moor, 2006)
 Goal patterns
 Communication patterns
 Information patterns
 Task patterns
 Meta-patterns

24. Goal patterns
 Capture community and individual objectives
 “finished group report within two weeks”, “produce 3
arguments contra position X”

25. Communication patterns
 Communicative workflow and norm definitions
describing acceptable and desired communicative
interactions (focus on (1) initiation, evaluation stages of
communicative workflows, (2) roles played by
members)
 “Each student must define positions and pro-arguments for an
assigned report section. All students may comment on these
positions, but assigned students must define arguments pro
or con. At the end of this stage, all students must take the
defined positions.”

26. The case: an enabled communication
pattern (before)

27. The case: an enabled communication
pattern (after)

28. Application: communicating across
virtual worlds

29. Application: collaboratories

30. R&D agenda
 Activation of online collaborative communities not trivial
 The concept of activation needs to be better understood
 LAP, PragWeb
 Socio-technical design patterns still in their infancy
 Pragmatic collaboration support patterns
 Norm-driven activation mechanisms
 Other fields need to contribute: community informatics,
coordination theory, CSCW, interoperability research,
empirically grounded pattern languages, conceptual
graphs…
 Numerous applications

31. Yes we will
 Many wicked problems: credit crisis, hunger,
environment, climate, war...
 Collaborative communities are key
 ICT is a crucial enabler, but not sufficient
 Tool systems are needed matched to collaborative
context of use
 Collaboration patterns help capture and apply
lessons learnt
 Inspiration + activation = collaboration
 Towards a “World 2.0”