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Participatory Culture 1

Running Head: PARTICIPATORY CULTURE

Participatory Culture, Web 2.0, and Communities of Practice:

A Design-Based Research Investigation

Anthony Cocciolo

Teachers College, Columbia University


ABSTRACT

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the relationship amongst participatory

culture (Jenkins, 2006), Web 2.0 technologies, and communities of practice.

Specifically, this study will address the following questions: what are the effects of

introducing a Web 2.0 technology into a pre-existing learning environment, and how can

such technologies aid (or inhibit) the emergence of a participatory culture? To address

these questions, a design-based research project was undertaken where a Web 2.0

technology was iteratively designed and developed, rolled-out to a graduate school

community of 5,000 members, and its impact studied over a one-year period. The study

uses a variety of methods to triangulate the impact of this Web 2.0 technology. In

particular, the study employs a longitudinal social network analysis, a latent semantic

analysis, a cross-comparison analysis, and an ethnographic analysis. Results indicate the

Web 2.0 environment provides a forum for community members to play-out the tension

between reaffirming pre-existing socio-cultural norms and a desire to break free from

such structures. Specifically, the analysis reveals that the Web 2.0 technology allows for

new forms of participation that were not possible with earlier ICTs as well as

opportunities for radical interaction networks to form. However, the study also indicates

how the initial radicalism the Web 2.0 technology allowed for is tempered over-time to

better conform to pre-existing socio-cultural norms. In sum, participatory culture is made

possible by the innovations in ICTs; however, sustaining the culture must be the

undertaking of the community. Implications are made for organizations that may be

interested in deploying Web 2.0 technologies to accomplish a variety of goals.


Table of Contents

Introduction..........................................................................................................................4

Rationale..............................................................................................................................8

Theoretical Perspective......................................................................................................10

Literature Review..............................................................................................................14

Methods.............................................................................................................................21

Designing the Intervention.............................................................................................23

Quantitative Methods.....................................................................................................29

Social Network Analysis............................................................................................30

Latent Semantic Analysis...........................................................................................32

Data Comparison between Systems...........................................................................35

Qualitative Method........................................................................................................35

Results................................................................................................................................36

Quantitative Results.......................................................................................................36

Qualitative Results.........................................................................................................47

Discussion..........................................................................................................................50

Implications.......................................................................................................................57

References..........................................................................................................................61


Introduction

The introduction of the Internet in the late twentieth-century, and its rapid growth

and development in the early twenty-first century, raises a series of cultural and social

questions that need further exploration and elicitation. Of these, one of the most

interesting is raised by the media scholar Henry Jenkins, who sees an emerging, large-

scale transformation in how people interact with media. His viewpoint is best contrasted

against what could be considered an earlier media arrangement. Under this earlier

arrangement, media users were typically considered consumers, who read, watched, or

listened to media produced by large corporate entities or organization via television,

radio, film, or print. These large organizations were sometimes deemed to have

excessive control in shaping public discussions because of their extensive reach, power,

and resources. At worst, it has been argued that media eliminates public discourse and

rather replace it with entertainment, which is only one among dozens of criticisms made

by scholars and commentators (Postman, 1986). Given this backdrop, Jenkins sees the

affordances offered by the Internet as opening up a new media era with implications for

society, culture, and education. Under this scenario, media users move away from simply

being consumers but also become more active producers. He describes this move away

from a consumer culture to one he calls a participatory culture. In a report for the

MacArthur Foundation, Jenkins describes a participatory culture as:

… a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices. A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree


of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created. (p. 3)

This revised culture will promote skills, such as distributed cognition, collective

intelligence, multitasking, simulation, networking, performance, and play, in ways that

earlier media cultures couldn’t. Jenkins notes that the emergence of a participatory

culture is made possible by innovations in information and communication technologies

(ICTs), in particular by what is often called Web 2.0, which is a type of web technology

that is actively shaped and influenced by the interactions and contributions of its users.

Jenkins says Web 2.0 refers to:

how the value of these new networks depends not on the hardware or the content, but on how they tap the participation of large-scale social communities, who become invested in collecting and annotating data for other users. Some of these platforms require the active participation of consumers, relying on a social ethos based on knowledge-sharing. Others depend on automated analysis of collective behavior. In both cases, though, the value of the information depends on one’s understanding of how it is generated and one’s analysis of the social and psychological factors that shape collective behavior. (p. 50)

The most salient example of this type of web technology is Wikipedia, which relies on

user contributions to create its corpus of encyclopedia articles. The emergence of a

participatory culture, made possible in part through Web 2.0 technologies, has immense

implications for those concerned with education and learning for both youth and adults.

Jenkins finds that:

In such a world, students can no longer rely on expert gatekeepers to tell them what is worth knowing. Instead, they must become more reflective of how individuals know what they know and how they assess the motives and knowledge of different communities. Students must be able to identify which group is most aware of relevant resources and choose a search system matched to the appropriate criteria: people with similar tastes;


similar viewpoints; divergent viewpoints; similar goals; general popularity; trusted, unbiased, third-party assessment, and so forth. (p. 50)

Given this potential, the purpose of this study is to better understand the

relationship between the emerging participatory culture and innovations in ICTs.

In order to study the relationship between web use and the formation of

participatory culture, a specific technology was iteratively designed and developed and

deployed within a particular community to see how the technology mediates users

involvement and participation in that community. For the purposes of this study, the

Web 2.0 environment was created by the EdLab at Teachers College, Columbia

University, called PocketKnowlege (PK), and was deployed to Teachers College

community. PocketKnolwedge is much like Wikipedia in that it started as an empty

container, or simply a Web 2.0 technology waiting to be written to. This empty container

required that community members contribute to it. Like Wikipedia, PocketKnowledge

also has a number of people who act as super users by organizing, adding, and cleaning-

up content. In the case of PK, they are called librarians. However, where Wikipedia

aims to be a comprehensive encyclopedia of the world’s knowledge, the purpose of

PocketKnowledge is to store the creative, cultural, and intellectual products of the

students, faculty, and staff of the Teachers College, Columbia University community.

The Teachers College community is a graduate and professional school of education

located in New York City and is composed of roughly 5,000 faculty, students, and staff,

who teach and study in variety of fields, most notably education and spanning into

psychology and health. The research question is hence: what are the effects of

introducing a Web 2.0 technology into a pre-existing learning environment? Further,


how can such technologies aid (or inhibit) what Jenkins refers to as a participatory

culture? What conclusions can be made not only for higher education, but for other

organizational contexts who may be introducing Web 2.0 technologies to accomplish a

variety of goals? And finally, what are the implications for the culture at-large (both

national and extra-national contexts): how are people being shaped by such technologies

and how are such technologies being shaped by its users.

The study of the rise of what Jenkins describes as a participatory culture, and the

ways in which this is made possible by the innovations in digital communications

technology, would on first glance need to be studied at a larger level than what could be

provided by a single academic learning community and a single Web 2.0 learning

environment. For example, the Web 2.0 tools available to people today are numerable,

such as Flickr for sharing photos, Facebook and MySpace for interacting with friends

(among many others), and the communities that use them range from youth to adults

across the world. However, since this is such a wide and diverse group, and the tools

equally as wide and diverse, trying to investigate all of this activity in any systematic way

would appear difficult at best. Rather, choosing a relatively small community and a

relatively modest tool is appropriate because it focuses attention on the mediation

between user, tool, and community. It allows for particular design decisions in the tool

be analyzed, as well as opportunities for capturing the online and face-to-face utterances

of people living in the community as well as communicative exchanges made within the

tool. The hope is thus by focusing on a small community and a single tool, there will be

conclusions that can be drawn between the emergence of a participatory culture and how


such cultural change is afforded by Web 2.0 technologies. Of course, it could be argued

that several problems persist with this prospect. One of which might be that the Teachers

College, Columbia University community is not representative of the culture at-large but

rather most representative of a graduate school or university community. It could also be

argued that university communities are inherently and always have been participatory

cultures, and any such similar activity is simply a byproduct of the pre-existing culture

rather than any affordances offered through an ICT. Despite these problems, I will argue

that this research should have relevance for understanding the formation of participatory

culture more broadly then simply a university community. Although universities do have

a history of being more participatory than some institutions, and the users may be more

formally educated in comparison to the average U.S. population, the hope is that this

study will shed light on how the new affordances offered through Web 2.0 technologies

make this new cultural emergence possible. However, for those more conservative in

their views with respect to sample and representativeness, it is acceptable to limit your

reading of this document to the effects of introducing Web 2.0 into a graduate-level

learning community and judge for yourself the relevance to the culture at-large.

Rationale

The need to study the effects of Web 2.0 technologies (also referred to as social

software here) are needed for a variety of reasons. The first reason is that if a cultural

shift is indeed in progress, as Jenkins suggest, understanding how and why such as shift

is occurring is essential. Secondly, since the use of social software by young people is

quickly growing, understanding its impact potential is necessary. To illustrate the growth


of social software use by young people, a 2007 study by the Pew Internet and American

Life project found that 39% of teens (young people ages 12-17) have increased the

sharing of their own artistic creations online, such as artwork, photos, stories, or videos,

from 33% in 2004 (Lenhart et al, 2007). Similarly, 28% have their own blog or online

journal (up from 19% in 2004), and 26% remix content they find online to form their own

creations (up from 19% in 2004). In addition to addressing the participatory cultural

question and the growing use of social software by young people, research is also needed

to address the widespread speculation as to what impact the introductions of such

technologies could have in education and business sectors. For example, a 2006 article in

EDUCAUSE quarterly (a publication dedicated to information technology in higher

education) declared “still new on campus, social software tools [a synonym for Web 2.0

technologies] can support students and staff beyond the classroom, reaching around the

world for learning and communication”. The stated potential of Web 2.0 technologies

extend beyond higher education and into K-12 education where there is a focus on

integrating such tools into teacher training and professional development. For example,

the Center for Urban School Improvement uses social software to promote global

awareness in teacher training programs.

In addition to educational domains, there is a perception that social software has

the potential to rectify issues involving the distribution of knowledge and the

orchestration of work activity. This perspective is most saliently expressed in the

business literature. For example, a June 2007 Gartner research report finds that the


“expansion of Web 2.0 technology [or social software] use within the enterprise is

inevitable and unavoidable”, because:

Web 2.0 can deliver value to the enterprise in many different areas. Social software can deliver better business agility by enabling people to find expertise and information faster than they do now. The community and collaborative aspects of social software can also enable organizations to react more quickly to emerging situations by quickly assembling the expertise required to respond and then more effectively to disseminate that response for general action. (Bradley, 2007)

The potential of social software for business is expressed elsewhere and in different

ways. For example, a number of books have been recently published that discuss the

business potential of social software, such as Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration

Changes Everything and The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms

Markets and Freedom, among many others (Tapscott & Williams, 2007; Benkler, 2006).

From published books to research reports, each takes a slightly different perspective;

however, all reiterate the potential for social software to transform industrial-era

businesses to more innovative, productive, and profitable organizations. However,

despite the widespread enthusiasm, little empirical research has been conducted which

investigates the structural effects of introducing such social media into pre-existing

organizations.

Theoretical Perspective

In addition to the stated value of social software, a further reason to explore the

relationship between social software and participatory culture is to form a greater

understanding of the relationship between technology, learning, and social groups. In

particular, this investigation will use the situated learning perspective as a theoretical


foundation. This viewpoint can trace its roots back to Vygotsky (1978), who focused on

individuals interacting within a society and culture as the largest factor in individual

development. This perspective is further developed by Jean Lave (1988), who articulated

the notion that cognition is situated: “cognition’ is constituted in dialectical relations

among people acting, the contexts of their activity, and the activity itself” (p. 148). Lave

later worked with Wegner to develop the notion of legitimate peripheral participation,

which describes a process of how a newcomer becomes a member a community by

gradually taking on the role of the expert (Lave & Wegner, 1991). Brown, Collins and

Duguid (1991) built on Lave and Wegner’s work to argue for greater attention to

collaborative learning, cognitive apprenticeship, group dynamics and providing

opportunities for novices. This investigation will attempt to explore how the web

environment provided opportunities for novices to become involved in communities of

practice and legitimate peripheral participation, and how the environment mediated social

relationships.

Given the socially situated theoretical perspective, information and

communication technologies (ICTs) play an incredibly important role. For the purposes

of the discussion, the role technology plays will be discussed in terms of a socio-cultural

perspective and a psychological perspective. Although these dichotomies are somewhat

artificial, they are useful in highlighting the micro- and marco-level forces at work. The

socio-cultural perspective captures the notion that information and communications

technology (ICTs) will be a factor in shaping who and what humans become. This

process will be uneven across individuals and groups, depending on the extent of


interaction with ICTs; however, as a whole, it will influence how people think of

themselves, their role in the world, and impact how their brains process information.

This strand of thought is highlighted by Chris Dede (2005), who describes how

neomillennials (or students who started college after the turn of the millennium) will

learn differently and have different expectation than earlier learners because of their

heavy use of ICTs during child development. Additionally, this perspective captures how

people will perceive the world differently because of the extent to which knowledge,

information, and culture is available at their disposal to a much greater extent than ever

before. Technology deeply impacting the way people view themselves and the world

around them is not unique to digital technology or the advent of the Internet but rather

has pervasively played this role throughout history. A single example of the phenomenon

is the impact of telegraph on humanity, which Jim Carey (1989) describes as bringing

about “changes in the nature of language, of ordinary knowledge, [and] of the very

structures of awareness” (p. 202). Other technologies can be located that have played a

profound role in shaping culture and the social order, such as parchment and the

Gutenberg press (Deibert, 1997). This macro-level force is the byproduct and in constant

dialectical exchange with micro-level forces, which includes individual psyches

interacting with technologies throughout their daily lives. The most important aspect

from this psychological or micro-level perspective is the notion of perceived affordances,

made salient by Don Norman (1988). The basic idea of perceived affordances is that an

object (be it a simple object in the real world to a complex virtual world) exhibits certain

function and features that people believe can accomplish some task. The use of the word


“perceived” highlights the notion that functions that are not perceived by humans are not

important. Of course, the ability to perceive what an object can do is not strictly a

psychological process but rather buttressed by education and interactions with the socio-

technical world. The natural corollary to this perspective is that things that are easy to do

will tend to be done, while those things that are difficult to do will happen less frequently.

For example, the affordances of social networking sites such as the Facebook, which

allow individuals to signal and keep tabs on their friends (among many other features),

make widespread communication happen in ways that were not easily afforded by earlier

communication forms. This does not mean that simply because things can be easy done

that they will; however, it highlights how once symbolic actions become possible (or

afforded by some technology), then the potential for that action to occur increases. This

notion has immense implications for society and culture because it indicates that new

technological affordances can eventually lead to widespread social and cultural change.

This can be seen at a micro-level, where low-cost communication allow for someone

living in the diaspora to stay connected to his or her home and culture in a way that was

prohibitively expensive or impossible before. It can also been seen at a macro-level,

where such changes in communications can impact markets, economies and the division

of labor (Benkler, 2006).

Given this theoretical perspective, which presumes a dialectical relationship

amongst technology, individual development, and cultural change, the role of design and

the resulting sociotechnical interaction network formed by interacting with the design is

particularly important. Following the work of Barab, MaKinster, Moore, and


Cunningham (2001), the term sociotechnical interaction network looks “to capture the

complex sociotechnical arrangement involved in a technology-intensive project,

emphasizing the reciprocal character of the interaction among people, among people and

equipment, and even among sets of technical structures and political climates” (p. 73). In

sum, design acts as a mediating bridge between technology, people, and the culture at-

large. The importance of design, and using design as a way of researching, will be

further discussed in the literature review.

Literature Review

An important aspect of this investigation is attempting to understand how the

emergence of a participatory culture could arise from what is typically called a consumer

culture. One such discussion is provided by Yale law professor Yochai Benkler in The

Wealth of Networks, who sees three technological advances: “First, the physical

machinery necessary to participate in information and cultural production is almost

universally distributed in the population of the advanced economies”; “Second, the

primary raw materials in the information economy, unlike the physical economy, are

public goods—existing information, knowledge, and culture.” Lastly, the Internet

provides a way for “many diversely motivated people to act for a wide range of reasons

that, in combination, cohere into new useful information, knowledge, and cultural

goods.” These changes in technology have large-scale social implications, where he

finds that “we can make the twenty-first century one that offers individuals greater

autonomy, political communities greater democracy, and societies greater opportunities

for cultural self-reflection and human connection.” Hence, Benkler describes how


technological advances could lead to large-scale social changes. Future iterations of this

project will pull together the growing body of literature related to how technology has

been shaped and will be shaped by new technologies, as well as more literature on the

intersection of sociology of organizations and technology.

Another critical part of this project is the notion that creating a design and having

people interact with it can generate knowledge on the mediation between technology,

user, and community. The importance of design on learning is captured in the design-

based research (DBR) work currently being conducted by several scholars in the

Learning Sciences. DBR or design experiment look to create new, innovative, and

experimental learning contexts, which can then be studied to better understand the

mediation between context, groups, and individual learners (Brown, 1992; Barab &

Squire, 2004). This stance on using technology to enhance learning is compelling

because the role of the researcher is not simply someone who studies what is “already

there,” but rather performs action in the world and contributes to our understanding of

how learning occurs. Also, engaging in design experiments allow one to fully engage the

potential affordances of ICTs. Such design experiments provide the opportunity to study

a variety of instructional techniques, such as scaffolding, anchored instruction, case-

based reasoning, problem-based learning, instruction that encourages reflection,

instruction that promotes metacognitive activity, among others (Pea, 2004; CTGV, 1990;

Schrader et al., 2003; Jonassen, 2000; Lin et al., 1999; Lin, 2001). This review will

include a discussion of why to use DBR and examples of projects that have used DBR.


The reasons for using DBR in educational research are varied. On a more

systemic or political level, there is a perceived need to reconnect educational research

with the problems and issues of everyday practice and thus be able to create “usable

knowledge” (National Research Council [NRC], 2002 and Lagemann, 2002 in Kelly,

2003). Since DBR uses an interventionist approach that looks to address practice-based

problems, DBR is well-suited to better connect educational research with practice. In

addition to this political aspect, the rationale for DBR is is derived from perceived

limitations in prevailing forms of research. One such problem identified by Collins

(1999) is narrow measures (p. 18). By this, he is referring to the emphasis on “bottom-

line” measurement, such as tests, which measure ultimate outcomes rather than those

aspects which could be potentially more important, such as motivations or dispositions.

In addition to adherence to outcome-based measurements, many forms of empirical

research do not attempt to understand the “messiness of real-world practice” (Barab &

Squire, 2004, p. 3). For example, many experimental techniques only attempt to observe

the changes within one or two variables where DBR attempts to capture and comprehend

a wider-range of phenomenon.

In addition to the problem of narrow measures, the literature on DBR presents

empirical research as not adequately describing naturalistic contexts, such as classrooms.

By this, those who advance DBR argue that laboratory contexts are not sufficient or

accurate ways to depict the messiness of real world practice. The importance of context

is essential to many of the theoretical frameworks that guide DBR practices, such as

situated cognition, which is guided by the notion that “…learning, cognition, knowing,


and context are irreducibly co-constituted and cannot be treated as isolated entities or

processes” (Barab & Squire, 2004, p. 1). O’Donnell (2004) notes that the importance of

real-world practice has persisted in importance, although it has at times been neglected.

For example, she notes that during the 1970s, simpler, more measurable phenomena were

studied in laboratory contexts within educational psychology (p. 256). However, even

Thorndike (1910) recognized the importance of observing real-world contexts in addition

to the more controlled laboratory contexts. O’Donnell hence notes that DBR has the

potential to cause a “return to the kind of considerations envisioned by Thorndike” (p.

256).

Related to the importance of context, a particular motivation for DBR is the

interest in the multiple ways of studying a design. Collins (1999) articulates some of

these multiple ways, including (p. 35):

- Cognitive level: What do learners learn within a particular learning environment?

- Interpersonal: How do students act amongst each other and with their teacher?

- Group or classroom level: How is the group characterized as a whole?

- Resource level: What resources are available to learners?

- Institution or school level: Is the school supportive of the design?

The multiple ways of looking at a design call for different research methods and

employment of a variety of perspectives. For example, Collins finds that ethnographic


research could be a particularly efficacious research method for observing both the

interpersonal or the group or classroom level interactions.

Equally important to being able to look at a design in multiple ways is the

primacy of theory development in DBR. This is perhaps the most stated point amongst

those arguing for DBR in educational research. For example, Edelson (2002) notes that

what separates DBR from ordinary design is that ordinary design only concerns itself

with using “the lessons embodied in a design procedure, problem analysis, and design

solution to create a successful design product”, where DBR “retains that goal but adds an

additional one, the goal of developing useful, generalizable theories” (p. 112). This

notion is echoed by Barab and Squire (2004), who note that design-based research

“requires more than simply showing a particular design works but demands that the

researcher (move beyond a particular design exemplar to) generate evidence-base claims

about learn that address contemporary theoretical issues and further the theoretical

knowledge of the field” (p. 6).

To answer questions as to what kinds of theory development are possible with

DBR, Edelson (2002) articulates three types. These include:

- Domain Theories: “A domain theory is the generalization of some portion of a

problem analysis. Thus, a domain theory might be about learners and how they learn,

teachers and how they teach, or learning environments and how they influence teaching

and learning” (p. 113).


- Design Frameworks: “A design framework is a generalized design solution.

Although design theories are descriptive, design frameworks are prescriptive. They

describe the characteristics that a designed artifact must have to achieve a particular set of

goals in a particular context” (p. 114)

- Design Methodologies: “A design methodology is a general deign procedure.

Like a design framework, it is prescriptive. However, a design methodology provides

guidelines for the process rather than the product” (p. s115).

What is interesting about Edelson’s discussion of the types of theory generation possible

with DBR is his rather liberal use of the term “theory”. He hence allows design

frameworks and design methodologies to fall into this category. Kelly (2004) reacts

against the liberal use of this term, quoting the National Academy of Sciences definition

of theory, which states that a theory is “a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect

of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypothesis”

(p. 123). Articulating that the use of theory requires hard-fought consensus among

scientists, he argues for the use of “working words” which are less strong, such as

“framework” or “hypothesis”.

Barab & Squire (2003) provide a synopsis of the major projects that have used

DBR. Adapted from their listing, some of these projects include:

- Inquiry learning forum project: Create a more nuanced understanding of the

challenges in creating online communities


- Virtual solar system project: Exploration of relationship between project-based

learning and situated cognition

- Student apprenticeship camp: Exploration of the efficacy of apprenticeship-type

learning environments.

- Hartford Middle School project: Using interdisciplinary anchors as a way of

teachers to conceive of interdisciplinary units

One particularly interesting application of DBR is The Quest Atlantis (QA) project by

Barab et al (2005). This project combines the new affordances made available with ICTs,

with insights from game design and educational research, to address both educational and

social commitments. To study the effects of the environment on learners, the researchers

use a design ethnography. The design ethnography is a process that "involves design

work coupled with the continual production of naturalistic interpretations based on both

qualitative and quantitative data over extended time frames and at multiple sites" (p. 92).

Qualitative data is gathered when participants observe and interact with the evolving

technical structures as well as "the social relationships, interactions, member-produced

work, and conversations (online and face-to-face) through which these structures are

informed and take on meaning" (92). Hence, the design of the project is the outcome of

the interpreted qualitative data. This forms "the tapestry that is QA" (92).

The design ethnography is an important aspect of researched-based design. It

shares many aspects with critical ethnography, which "goes a step further [from the basic

ethnography] to leverage this understanding to develop a critique with the goal of


transforming the context that is being research." (102). However, the design ethnography

goes further than the critical ethnography by "reifying this critique into a design" (102).

The qualitative data which comes to form the design ethnography is collected from field

notes, submitted articles, email exchanges, student work, student interviews, and

reflection of first-hand experiences. These observations lead to the four braids of QA's

design. These braids include 1) vision, 2) participatory design process, 3) meta-context,

and 4) support for project implementation. With regards to the vision for the project, the

authors claim that participation from local sites changed over time:

… in the beginning we believed that we had a fairly solid vision of what needed to be designed and so treated these sites more as usability sites than as participants of a fundamentally altered vision. Over time, however, these sites becomes less of a repository for our predesigned vision and more of a collaborative group with whom to co-construct a vision of QA. Toward this end, we spent more and more time listening, eventually choosing to build an ethnographic account of one after-school site… (96)

Given the examples as well as the strengths and weakness of design-based

research, the experiences of other design-based researchers were taken into

account in the making of the technical environment as well as the methods for

studying the impact of the design on the environment.

Methods

This study will use the design-based research approach to study the effects of

introducing a Web 2.0 technology into a pre-existing learning environment. Barab and

Squire (2004) describe design-based research as “not so much an approach as it is a series

of approaches, with the intent of producing new theories, artifacts, and practices that


account for an potentially impact learning and teaching in naturalistic settings” (Barab &

Squire, p. 2). Design-based research basically works in the following way: the researcher

or researchers come up with an innovative design that they think has potential for

improving learning in some context. They then intervene in such a context (for example,

a classroom), where they observe, record, and begin to refine the initial design based on

how the populations are interacting with the design. Theoretical development could

occur through noting the ways in which design changes lead to improvements or the ways

in which hypotheses are discounted or confirmed through interactions with the design.

Design-based research is an appropriate method for this investigation because it involves

a design of a technical environment (PocketKnowlege, the Web 2.0 learning

environment), and a mixed-method study of the interaction between the users and the

environment. In addition to studying PocketKnowledge, and to better highlight how

particular design affordances within this Web 2.0 environment led to divergent user

interaction behavior, data from the pre-cursor to PocketKnowledge (named Community

Program Collections) will be discussed. Community Program Collections could be

considered a non-Web 2.0 system and was in use for the same purpose as

PocketKnowledge in the time period immediately preceding the launch of

PocketKnowledge. Given this additional factor, the research project will be described in

the following order: First, I will describe the design of the intervention and highlight

some design differences between PocketKnowledge and Community Program

Collections. Second, I will describe the quantitative method of the mixed-method study,

which includes a social network analysis and semantic analysis of user contributions


within PocketKnowledge. Here I will also introduce user contribution data from

Community Program Collections to highlight how design differences led to divergent

user behavior. Third, I will introduce the qualitative method of the study in effort to shed

light on the interaction between the design, users, and community formations. Although

the research agenda is divided into three areas, these distinctions are somewhat artificial

because both the design, and the mixed-method study, influence one another and are

bound. For example, the mixed-method study could influence the design, where the

design could influence those things that are able to be studied.

Designing the Intervention

Designing the technical environment (or designing the intervention), involves

leveraging knowledge resources on best design practices, as well as introducing new

innovations whose efficacy may not be well researched. For the design of this technical

environment (PocketKnowledge), Web 2.0 design patterns were explicitly employed,

most notably the patterns that a) users control their own data, b) users should be trusted,

c) flexible tags are preferable to hierarchical taxonomies, d) the attitude should be

playful, and e) the expectation that the software gets better when more people use it

(O’Reilly, 2005). Figure 1 is a screen capture from PocketKnowledge which illustrates

some of these concepts, such as the primacy of the individual user in the context of the

system as a whole. These particular design patterns are made particularly salient when

compared against other similar systems that do not use Web 2.0 design patterns. For

example, a system in use for the same community (Teachers College) called the

Community Program Collections aimed to provide the same basic functionality of


allowing community members to share their knowledge products and resources they

think others would be useful. However, Community Program Collections did not

specifically employ Web 2.0 design patterns. Instead, it used more traditional

hierarchical models, such as a) organizing information based on a taxonomy derived from

institutional structures (e.g., programs and departments), b) lack of user control over their

own content (e.g., a user cannot remove their content from the site), and c) centrality of

authority (i.e., a user can only suggest content to be added to the collection; however,

ultimate authority resides with an institutional librarian). Figure 2 is a screen capture

from Community Program Collection which illustrates how information is organized

according to institutional structures.


Figure 1: A user's view of his collection of materials in PocketKnowledge


Figure 2: Community Program Collections is organized by institutional structures

The design differences exhibited in PocketKnowledge and CPC are most evident

when viewed in terms of affordances and constraints (Norman, 1988). With a web-based

system, this refers specifically to those functions and features that allow a user to

accomplish some action, as well as the barriers (intentional and unintentional) that the

system enforces. One particularly salient constraint that CPC enforces is the inability for

users to directly post materials to the system, but rather to make “suggestions” for

addition. Before a user is allowed to make a suggestion, a warning message is displayed

in caps and bold that reads “IMPORTANT – PLEASE READ CAREFULLY” as well as

a three paragraph statement on copyright (see Figure 3).


Figure 3: CPC shows a warning message and information on copyright before a suggestion can be made

After a user makes a suggestion, the system displays the following message:

Thank you for your suggestion. We will review the item, and if possible, make it a part of the Arts & Humanities Program Collection. You will receive an e-mail either way.

This particular set of constraints highlights certain attitudes towards the end-user. First,

the warning message in bold and caps indicates that the system distrusts that the user will

read the copyright statement. Secondly, the system reinforces the knowledge authority

relationship between library or university and the individual by allowing users only to

make “suggestions” and if a suggestion if made, it must be “reviewed”. Given these set

of constraints, it is plausible to believe that many users, especially those who are less


confident in their knowledge expertise (e.g., students), would hesitate to make a

suggestion out of fear of being rejected by the knowledge authority.

This design approach is in sharp contrast to PocketKnowledge, which allows any

user to post any files instantly and trusts that an addition does not violate copyright laws.

Figure 4 shows the “add an item” window, which asks the user if the file violates

copyright laws, giving the option for cases where the user “doesn’t know” if copyright

would be violated. This type of design choice illustrates that the system trusts the user to

a high-degree, with the realization that true violations of copyright are relatively rare and

can be handled on a case-by-case basis. In sum, this singular example illustrates a broad

distinction in design approach between PocketKnowledge and CPC system. There are

many more design differences that will not be discussed for the sake of brevity; however,

the point is that the design patterns captured by the terms Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 lead to

very different systems when employed in practice. As the research here will show, these

design differences lead to divergent user behavior.


Figure 4: PocketKnowledge includes a simplified copyright compliance policy

Quantitative Methods

In brief, the quantitative methods are divided into three parts. The first part is a

social network of communication data captured and collected within PocketKnowledge.

The second part is a Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) of user contributions within

PocketKnolwedge. The third part includes the introduction of user contribution data

from Community Program Collections.


Social Network Analysis

The need to understand the interplay between communication and community

formation is increasing in emphasis within fields concerned with learning, in particular

the computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) field. For example, Cho,

Stegaone and Gay (2002) describe the need for greater research emphasis on the

“communicative processes involved in successful (and unsuccessful) peer interactions

rather than just learning outcomes” (p. 43). The method used by Cho, Steagone and Gay,

as will be used in this study, is a social network analysis (SNA). SNA has been used to

shed light on several Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) contexts. For

example, SNA has enabled researchers to identify central and peripheral actors in a

CSCL course. Moreover, it has elucidated how the actors’ positionalities mediate

“learners’ perceptions and behaviors related to community-based information sharing

practice” (p. 49). Other researchers such as Reffay & Chanier (2003) have investigated

the influence of group cohesion in Computer Supported Collaborative Distance-learning

(CSCDL). Others have used SNA to clarify the impact of social structures on knowledge

construction in an asynchronous learning environment (see, for e.g., Aviv, Erlich, Ravid,

& Geva, 2003). Despite the insights that SNA affords, there are a number of concerns

regarding the scope, depth, and richness of network data (de Nooy, Mrvar, and Batagelj,

2005). To address this concern, Martínez, Dimitriadis, Rubia, Gómez, Garachón, &

Marcos (2002) augmented their SNA with qualitative research to gain a deeper

understanding of a CSCL environment. For the purposes of this investigation, a social

network analysis was used to show on a macro-level who is communicating with whom,


and to what extent. Similar to Martínez et al, a qualitative method will be employed to

augment the results of the SNA.

In the context of this study, we used Systems Theory to define the uploading and

downloading of materials as “communicative acts,” system users as “actors,” and the

cumulative communicative exchanges as “interactions” (Buckley, 1967). Although this is

only one configuration for evaluating sociality1, this particular systems arrangement is

useful because it provides a readily available metric for assessing actors’ interactions

within a network. A longitudinal examination of PK usage data will be conducted. The

first snapshot of data was collected and analyzed during a thin time-frame (September

2006 to November 2006) and reporting upon by Cocciolo, Chae, Natriello (2007, June).

We will call this analysis “SNA 1.” The second snapshot was collected and analyzed

from September 2006 to January 2007 and also reported upon by Cocciolo, Chae,

Natriello (2007, November). We will call this “SNA 2.” This final analysis (“SNA 3”)

covers September 2006 to January 2007. All analyses do not include downloads from

users who were not logged in. The usage data was converted to a matrix and visualized as

a network using NetDraw (Boragatti, 2002). Network attribute data, which indicated

institutional role (e.g., masters-level student) and color, was added to indicate user/node

role. The reason to include this role data is that it will show the communicative

exchanges between students, faculty, and staff. Additional analyses were conducted with

NetDraw, including segmenting the network into components and filtering out key actors

using cutpoints analysis. As described by Hanneman (1997), “cutpoints may be

1 Another measure of sociality could be community commenting on materials within PK.


particularly important actors — who may act as brokers among otherwise disconnected

groups.” A cutpoints analysis was conducted to reveal those key actors/nodes whose

removal would leave the network divided into unconnected systems. For the purposes of

this investigation, the term cutpoints will be used interchangeably with the term key

knowledge facilitators.

Latent Semantic Analysis

In addition to finding the cutpoints, and indicating the institutional roles,

additional analysis related to content was conducted. The need for this additional

analysis was raised by several researchers during early iterations of this project because

of the importance of not only knowing who is communicating with whom, but also what

is being communicated. Since the Web 2.0 environment is open, and anyone is allowed

to share any files or materials they wish (family photos, academic research articles, etc.),

uncovering what is being shared is as important as who is sharing. To uncover what is

being shared, the entire corpus of uploaded materials were entered into Latent Semantic

Analysis software and coded by uploading user. Latent semantic analysis (LSA),

introduced by Landauer, Folktz, and Laham (1998), is a statistical theory and method for

extracting and representing the contextual meaning of words. According to Landauer,

Foltz, and Laham (1998), LSA is different in that it “represents the meaning of a word as

a kind of average of the meaning of all the passages in which it appears, and the meaning

of a passage as a kind of average of the meaning of all the words it contains” (6). LSA

has been used in a variety of applications, most notably in search engines. For example,

assume that we were concerned with finding documents about “violence” in a Latent


Semantic Analysis-backed search engine. An LSA-backed search would not necessarily

find the result with the highest occurrence of the word “violence” in its text, but rather

the result that is most about “violence” compared to the other texts within the corpus.

Although LSA “allows us to closely approximate human judgment of meaning similarity

between words and to objectively predict the consequences of overall word-based

similarity between passages”, there are certain inherent limitations (Landauer 4). The

most striking limitation its results are “somewhat sterile and bloodless” in that none “of

its knowledge comes directly from perceptual information about the physical world, from

instinct, or from experimental intercourse with bodily functions, feelings and intentions”

(4). It also does not make use of word order or the logical arrangement of sentences (5).

Although its results work “quite well without these aids”, “it must still be suspected of

resulting incompleteness or likely error on some occasions” (5). Laudauer, Foltz and

Laham analogizes LSA’s knowledge of the world in the following way: “One might

consider LSA’s maximal knowledge of the world to be analogous to a well-read nun’s

knowledge of sex, a level of knowledge often deemed a sufficient basis for advising the

young” (5). Hence, LSA’s knowledge is based on word counts and vector arithmetic for

very large semantic spaces, and is deprived of more sense-driven information.

In addition to viewing LSA as a practical means of obtaining text similarity and

performing keyword searches, Landuaer, Laham and Foltz claim that LSA is also a

“model of the [human] computational process and representations underlying substantial

portions of the acquisition and utilization of knowledge” (4). Thus, along with having a


practical component, LSA is hypothesized to underlie human cognitive processes. This is

not directly based on neurological evidence, but rather on how well it works in practice:

It is hard to imagine that LSA could have simulated the impressive range of meaning-based human cognitive phenomena that is has unless it is doing something analogous to what humans do. (33)

Hence, the authors claim that since it works most of the time, then it must have some

underlying basis in human cognitive processes. Although the authors admit that “LSA’s

psychological reality is certainly still open”, they do believe that the “brain uses as much

analytic power as LSA to transform its temporally local experiences to global

knowledge” (34).

Using Latent Semantic Analysis, the Document Atlas visualization tool was used

to visualize the key concepts within the entire text corpus and the similarity of concepts

are indicated by their closeness to each other. Given this analysis and visualization, the

corpus of text can be divided into two clusters. Although these two clusters are arbitrary

(we could just as easily divide the text into 10 or 20 clusters), dividing the text into two

segments illustrates a number of properties that will be discussed in the results section.

To create the corpus of text, all Microsoft Word documents and Powerpoint slides are

converted into text documents and assembled in large text files with the name of the text

file being the indicator for the user. All titles and abstracts are included with the full-text

documents within the text documents. One limitation of this method is that it only allows

written texts to be included in the semantic analysis (and is therefore unable to include


visual imagery or scanned documents in the analysis). For example, JPGs and PDFs are

unable to be included in the semantic analysis.

Data Comparison between Systems

In addition to the social network analysis and latent semantic analysis, an analysis

of “Suggested Additions” to the Community Program Collections separated by users’

institutional role was completed. Optimally, a SNA of Community Program Collections

would have also been completed. However, the system did not log detailed enough user

data to perform the SNA. Despite this limitation, “Suggested Additions” data was

sufficient for the purposes of this study.

Qualitative Method

In addition to the methods already described, participant observation was also

conducted within the community to corroborate the findings from the quantitative

methods. Participant observation “puts you where the action is and lets you collect data...

any kind of data you want, narratives or numbers” (Bernard, 2006, p. 344). For this

investigation, I participated as a member of the Teachers College community, and closely

observed the impact the Web 2.0 environment had on the community. I recorded field

notes of what I heard people say and email exchanges that were sent amongst the

community. The objective was to see what impact this ICT had on the environment as a

whole.


Results

The findings will be discussed in terms of the results obtained from the

quantitative and qualitative methods. The discussion and implications sections of this

paper will pull together how these results could and should be interpreted with respect to

the research questions posed.

Quantitative Results

During SNA 1 (or the brief data collection period between September 2006 and

November 2006), there were several observations made about the network visualization

of social network data (see Figure 5) . These observations were initially made in a paper

by Cocciolo, Chae and Natriello (2006, June). These include the existence of several

clusters of actors: 1) isolated actors (users who only use the system to store their own

work and choose not to share with others), 2) a large and varied community of actors and

interactions, and 3) close-knit communicators who are isolated. Within the large

community of actors and interactions, there are two clusters. These can be found by

visual inspection. Cluster one illustrates interactions for a course offered by a doctoral

student, and cluster two illustrates interactions around library-contributed materials (e.g.,

historical dissertations). These two clusters illustrate the importance of community

members who are specifically responsible for communicating knowledge or content (in

this case, an instructor and an academic library).


Figure 5: Components of community network visualization from SNA 1

Upon further analysis, there are many more critical community members than Figure 5

might suggest. A cutpoints analysis was conducted to reveal those key actors/nodes

whose removal would leave the network divided into unconnected systems. As described

by Hanneman (1997), “cutpoints may be particularly important actors — who may act as

brokers among otherwise disconnected groups.” Figure 6, which shows the cutpoints or


key facilitators, reveals that there are other actors—in addition to those highlighted in

Figure 5—who play a significant role in knowledge sharing.

Figure 6: Cutpoints, or key facilitators of sharing, from SNA 1

In SNA 1, this analysis reveals that knowledge facilitators occur in proportion to their

total numbers within the system. For example, ~11% of all cutpoints are faculty, and ~7%

of all actors are faculty. Similarly, ~72% of all cutpoints are students, where ~75% of all

actors are students (see Table 1). Our analysis also reveals that students (i.e., novice) play

an equally important role in facilitating knowledge sharing as do faculty (i.e., experts). At

the time this study was conducted, we concluded that this analysis indicates that novice

learners (in a relative sense) are able to come to occupy the role of the expert facilitator,


gradually “fashioning relations of identity as a full practitioner” (Lave & Wegner, 1991,

p. 121). We argued that much like a Community of Practice, experts are not dispensed

with, but rather novice learners are provided “with opportunities to make the culture of

practice theirs” (p. 95).

Table 1: SNA 1 - Cutpoints (or key actors) by role, % of all cutpoints, and % of all users

Library Doctoral Student

MA Student Faculty/instructor Staff Other

Cutpoints 2 4 9 2 3 0% of all cutpoints

11.1% 22.2% 50.0% 11.1% 5.6% 0%

% of all users

.9% 28.9% 46.5% 7.5% 4.8% 11.9%

SNA 2 (or the cumulative data collection period between September 2006 and

January 2007) results showed a key knowledge facilitators being spread across a variety

of institutional roles (Table 2). However, what is noticeable is that the comparative

knowledge experts, in this case faculty, are starting to become more key knowledge

facilitators in comparison to their total numbers within the system (for example, an

increase from 11.1% to 21.6% from SNA 1 to SNA 2). This increase can also be seen in

the network visualization of the cutpoints (see Figure 7).

Table 2: SNA 2 - Cutpoints (or key actors) by role, % of all cutpoints, and % of all users


MA Student

Faculty/instructor Staff Other


5.4% 32.4% 29.7% 21.6% 5.4% 5.4%


% of all users

.4% 30.3% 43.5% 7.0% 3.4% 15.3 %

Figure 7: SNA 2 Key Knowledge Facilitaors

During SNA 3 (or the cumulative period from September 2006 to November

2007), the most noticeable difference is the overall increase in cutpoints (see Figure 8).

Additionally, another noticeable increase in use is from users in the “Other” category (see

Table 3). These are mostly people who created an account and decided to download

someone’s materials. Doctoral students and masters students increased slightly in their

status as key knowledge facilitators (or cutpoints), where faculty slightly dropped off

(although their percentage of total system users changed). Given the results from SNA 2

and SNA 3, do the conclusions made in SNA 1 still hold (or to reiterate, the idea that the


Web 2.0 environment provided the opportunity for novices to play expert roles)? This

issue will be more thoroughly discussed in implications of the results.

Table 3: SNA 3


MA Student

Faculty/instructor Staff Other


4.3% 32.2% 30.4% 19.1% 6.1% 7.8%

% of all users

.3% 22.2% 35.5% 4.0% 1.9% 36.2%

Figure 8: Cutpoints from SNA 3


In order to address not just who is communicating with whom but what is being

communicated, results of the content analysis using latent semantic analysis are included

below. The first part of the results is the visualization of the concepts of the corpus of

text using Document Atlas. The image show small orange Xs which indicate the position

of a document in relation to the other documents within the corpus. A document

(symbolized by an X) includes all the cumulative works someone has in PK. For

example, all of the items I have uploaded would be symbolized by an X. Related

concepts are included in white lettering. The image in Figure 9 shows a fairly dense

cluster of Xs in the middle, followed by a fairly dispersed set of Xs around the center.


Figure 9: Words in relation to each other within the text corpus. A high-resolution version of this image is available at http://www.thinkingprojects.org/lsa.jpg

Given this visualization, users fall into either one of two clusters: the content-

focused cluster or the divergent cluster. The words representing the first cluster are very

http://www.thinkingprojects.org/lsa.jpg


focused on core topics critical in the field of education. These include students, school,

education, teachers, children, and learning. The second cluster is representative of a

more divergent set of words. These include: vacation, ADHD, music, photo, art, and

technology.

Of the 1,756 logged-in users who participated in a communicative act (either by

uploading or downloading a file), 345 users had content that was uploaded and available

to be analyzed by the semantic analyzer. Of this 345 users, most (209) users fell into the

content-focused cluster, while 136 fell into the divergent-content cluster. Of the

cutpoints, or the key knowledge facilitators, 61 came from the content-focused cluster

and 42 came from the divergent cluster.


Figure 10: Key Knowledge facilitators came from both focused and divergent content clusters

These results are interesting on a number of levels. It illustrates how key

knowledge facilitators are not limited to those discussing the core content areas

associated with the institution, such as schools, but may just as likely be sharing

information related to their vacation or sharing a photo. Inspecting the key knowledge

facilitators visualization in Figure 10, as well as reading Table 4), one sees a relatively

even dispersion of those belonging to the content-focused and divergent clusters. This

phenomenon will be more thoroughly reviewed in the discussion section.


Table 4: Breakdown of all users and key knowledge facilitators by content

Cluster / User Types

Focused Divergent

All users 209 (61%) 39%Key Knowledge Facilitators

61 (59%) 42 (41%)

In addition to the analysis of PocketKnowledge, data was also collected and

analyzed from Community Program Collections. Whereas PocketKnowledge allowed

users from different levels of expertise to occupy key roles, Community Program

Collections (the non-Web 2.0 environment) prompted involvement predominantly from

knowledge experts (faculty) at a rate twice that of knowledge novice (student). This is

illustrated in Figure 11, which shows the higher proportion of faculty who choose to

make content suggestions over students, even though students far outnumber faculty in

population size. The meaning of these findings will be covered in the discussion section.


Figure 11: Number of “Suggested Additions” to Community Program Collections by role

Qualitative Results

In addition to conducting the social network analyses and the content analysis, I

also participated as a member of the community as a graduate student as well as a full-

time staff member at the EdLab (a research, design, and development unit at the

Gottesman Libraries at Teachers College) during the entire time-span of data collection

(September 2006 to November 2007). During this time, I was able to hear what people

were saying and doing with ICTs, and PK in particular. I collected field notes from face-

to-face meetings as well as stored community emails that I thought had particular

importance for this project. The observations will be recounted.


For the first part of the investigation span, there was little direct evidence that PK

had any mediating impact between individual users and the community at-large. This

could be considered a period of time where people were becoming familiar with the

existence of such a system where they could share their intellectual and cultural creations

alongside other members of the community. This is also a time where extensive outreach

was conducted by members of the Gottesman Libraries staff to let people know about the

system’s existence and encouragement was giving for participating. The system was

used in a relatively straightforward manner: for sharing files with others by sending

around hyperlinks. For example, a student group used it as a way for sharing their

podcast around issues of Organizational Psychology, or a professor would use it as a way

for sharing a pre-publication paper. However, an event occurred in October 2007 that

showed that the introduction of the Web 2.0 may have had a larger impact than

previously thought. During this time, a noose was found on the door of an African

American professor at Teachers College. The incident, widely reported in both the local

and national press, was followed by outrage from angry students, faculty and staff at the

institution that prides itself on diversity and progressive thought (e.g., Gootman & Baker,

2007). In response to the incident, a forum was held where community members could

share their feelings and plan actions towards improving the environment for those of

different race or class. During the community forum, an African American student

expressed one way that he thought the community could respond: by using

PocketKnowledge to come together to share ideas, discuss the issues, and acknowledge

and learn from those of different backgrounds. The use of PK to address issues difficult


issues of racism was used again in connection with this event, where another African

American faculty member used it as a way of circulating a document via email which

expressed things that the community could and should do to address issues of racism.

The reference to PocketKnowledge and its use as a way of circulating materials

for dealing with difficult issues of racism would indicate an important transition point in

how people viewed the system and ICTs in general: a web-based, virtual environment has

the potential to act as a forum where people can come together and discuss difficult

issues and learn from one another. In essence, the notion that the activities, dialogue, and

actions performed within an ICT could have social, real-world consequences, had

reached a critical awareness. It is of course unclear how many members of the Teachers

College community have had substantial learning experiences from ICTs, or whether the

belief that such a potential exists was widespread among the audience. However, despite

these unknowns, the belief that ICT use can have social consequences had reached a level

of awareness. This event was also illustrative of the role that ICTs can have within

culture: for deep-seated issues that take time to resolve, an ICT may be an appropriate

forum for addressing such issues because of its availability regardless of time constraints.

Additionally, the fact that PK was mentioned as a forum for addressing things that may

be difficult for some to discuss in a face-to-face environment would indicate that within

ICTs, people feel more free to discuss things then they might otherwise feel unable or

uncomfortable to in a face-to-face setting.


Another interesting point associated with this event is how PK is viewed as

malleable to the needs of the community at the moment in which it is needed. This

would seem to be the hallmark of Web 2.0 design patters, or that the interaction and

contributions by the community will ultimately shape what the environment is. For

example, the view that the system can be used from storing a range of academic and

personal content and shifting to represent content around helping community members

deal with racism, would indicate that there is a perception of malleability. This type of

impression would not be possible with systems where the “what it is” and “what it will

be” are already set forth in terms of service or working policies. In sum, the use of Web

2.0 design patterns would seem to allow people to perceive such a system as being

malleable to their immediate needs and providing a way for dealing with community

issues that need to transgress time and space.

Discussion

Given the results of this study, which looked at a three Social Network Analyses,

a content analysis using Latent Semantic Analysis, a comparison with an older system,

and an ethnographic analysis from being within the community, what implications can be

made? We will first discuss the quantitative results. If we first look at the data from

Community Program Collections, it is clear that this particular system prompts

contributions from knowledge experts at a much higher level than other contributors, as

indicated by the fact that faculty contribute at a rate twice that of students. We can

conclude that the design of this Web 1.0 system, with its design patterns that adhere to a

control and authority paradigm, does not significantly attract participation from students.


However, once PocketKnowledge is introduced, we see that this trend significantly shifts.

In the paper associated with the data collected and analyzed in SNA 1, the authors made

the case that the Web 2.0 environment provided opportunities for novices learners (in the

comparative sense) to take on the role of the expert (Cocciolo, Chae, Natriello, 1997,

June). Additionally, the argument was made that this looked much like a community of

practice because the role of key knowledge facilitator, taken on by newcomers, appeared

to be a form of legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wegner, 1991). An

interesting aspect of this argument was that newcomers were able to become key

knowledge facilitators within this Web 2.0 system, although within the community at-

large they were unlikely to be considered the key knowledge brokers (this would

typically be reserved for the library or faculty). A similar argument was also made in a

later paper, which included the analysis for SNA 2 (Cocciolo, Chae, Natriello, 2007,

November). In this paper, the case was made that “Web 2.0 design patterns such as

increased user control and freedom over the learning environment, combined with a

decrease in authority structures, led to conditions that prompted engagement from both

knowledge expert and novice” (p. 8). However, the data began to show that the system

was becoming more expert oriented, as seen with the increased proportion of faculty

acting as key knowledge facilitators. By SNA 3, the trend continues where the system

begins to not only exhibit signs of being an expert system, but also an increase in

consumptive tendencies, as seen by the increase in non-community members who are

downloading and unable to contribute (at least within the Web 2.0 environment—they


may be contributing elsewhere). Given this increased trend, what can be concluded? At

a basic level, this analysis indicates the following series of events:

1) Community Program Collections design patterns discouraged student

participation.

2) PocketKnolwedge was launched and it provided the ability for a radical

interaction network to form (e.g., relative knowledge novices acting as key knowledge

facilitators).

3) Over time, the PocketKnowledge interaction network became less radical as it

started to be more expert oriented and take on consumptive tendencies.

Hence, PocketKnowledge was initially able to provide a space where pre-existing roles

and structures (novice/expert, faculty/student, library/non-library) could become

destabilized by allowing community members of all levels to become key knowledge

facilitators. However, this initial radicalism was tempered over time to more closely

resemble formal institutional structures. On a more broad and theoretical level, what

does this mean? Given the data and analysis presented, the resultant interaction network

resembles a dialectic ranging from control (or the tendency of the system to provide

affordances for replicating and reaffirming pre-existing institutional structures) to

emancipation (or the tendency to break free from such structures and start something

new). This is evidenced both in the social network analysis and the content analysis. The

social network analysis revealed at first that there was an even distribution of key

knowledge facilitators among all role types within the institution. For example, a first-


years masters student was just as likely to be a key knowledge facilitator as a faculty

member. However, as time progressed, this trend shifted to allow the system to also

resemble an expert system, as seen when faculty members represented a larger portion of

the total key knowledge facilitators. This initially radical arrangement of knowledge

sharing power was, over time, tempered to resemble more of an even flow between the

traditional arrangement and the radical arrangement. This is further evidenced by the

content analysis, were key knowledge facilitators we balancing between content areas

that are acceptable discursive areas within the institutional climate, such as schools,

children, and learning, to a more divergent set of content, which is less focused and

seemingly unconcerned with acceptable academic discourse. This leads us to a number

of important implications. First, it reveals that simply because a design affords expansive

freedom, it doesn’t necessarily mean that such freedom will be taken. Rather, Web 2.0

does provide opportunities for more free expression; however, in many cases that

freedom will allow it to take on the character of the context in which it is situated. The

point is thus, the Web 2.0 environment provides a forum for people to play-out the

tension between reaffirming pre-existing socio-cultural norms and a desire to break free

from such structures. Although in this study, the situation is quite particular (Teachers

College), the observation should be made that all technologies are situated in some kind

of social, political and legal culture. For example, Nicolas Carr makes the observation in

his book that the emancipatory tone of the early Internet was tempered by a legal decision

made by a French court that made Yahoo responsible for all the seller transactions on the

site. After the legal decision, it became clear that the Yahoo was not simply an isolated


ICT, but rather would come to conform (by legal requirement) and be shaped by the

cultural, political, and legal contexts in which it was situated. In essence, because all

Web 2.0 technologies are situated in some contexts, the free expressions that the design

affords can be made, yet they will persist in adjacency and in tension with those elements

that are expressions of pre-existing social, cultural, and political norms.

This tendency is not unique to this project, nor Web 2.0 technologies, but is

pervasive in the history of ICT use. Nicolas Carr maps out this historical tendency in Big

Switch, where he notes how this tension is omnipresent in the history of technology. For

example, he notes how the personal computer meant to emancipate people from

mainframe computing (and all the accompanying organizational control), but was

eventually tied back into bureaucratic control through client-server computing (p. 197).

Similarly, the early Internet was prophesized to emancipate people from traditional

controls, as evidenced by John Perry Marlow’s 1996 manifesto “A Declaration of the

Independence of Cyberspace.” Similarly, the Web 2.0 revolution (which can be

separated from the early Internet by the dot com collapse), is filled with similar rhetoric

of emancipation. Carr describes this rhetoric in describing Web 2.0 in the following way:

It’s natural to think of the Internet as a technology of emancipation. It gives us unprecedented freedom to express ourselves, to share our ideas and passions, to find and collaborate with soul mates, and to discover information on almost any topic imaginable. For many young people, going online feels like a passage into a new and radically different kind of democratic state, one freed of the physical and social demarcations and constraints that can hobble us in the real world. (p. 191).

However, Carr finds that “most of the major advances in computing and networking…

have been spurred not be a desire to liberate the masses but by a need for greater control


on the part of commercial and government bureaucrats, often ones associated with

military operations and national defense” (p. 195). In the case of the Internet, Carr notes

how such innovations as the Blackberry , connected “wirelessly to corporate servers….

forms an invisible tether tying employees to their jobs”, hence strengthening the control

businesses have over their employees (p. 202). In the case of this project, it should not be

understood as the system moved from being less controlling to more controlling, but

rather that there exists a constant dialectic between control and emancipation. This

tendency plays itself out frequently in organizational environments and often appears in

the form of acceptable or non-acceptable behavior. For example, many members of an

academic community might feel hampered by social norms related to what is “good

research”, “worthwhile projects” or “relevant to scholarly inquiry.” The desire to break

free from these norms, and the need to adhere to them, are in constant tension and

exchange.

Roll-outs of new technologies often show early signs of radicalism. For example,

companies thought to be paradigm breaking, such as Google, are over time perceived to

be more controlling, bureaucratic, and institutional. This is not to say that radical

tendencies don’t persist in such organizations, but rather they are tempered through

exchanges with the more controlling and orderly end of the continuum. Such tendencies

are not only limited to businesses: examples of other institutions can be found where

radical roots later led to rather typical everyday collective behaviors. In a sense, this

situation and context (or PK in the Teachers College environment) can be considered a

microcosm for all other ICTs situated in particular contexts. New technologies can be


deployed into contexts and at first seem quite radical, but later it will reveal that such

radicalism is tempered by those aspects that are already existing with the social and

cultural norms. Free expression or radically divergent behavior does not disappear, yet

lives alongside and is in exchange with those more established and controlling sets of

norms.

The qualitative method, or participant observations, confirmed the quantitative

measures. This is seen in the way that the system was used to support the cultural and

social practices and on a normal basis (e.g., someone using it as a way of storing a

scholarly article and circulating via email). However, the emancipatory potential and

radicalism of ICTs were also exhibited. This is best seen in the case of the perception

that the ICT could act as a forum for the community to rectify issues of racism. The idea

that a tool could somehow provide a way of emancipating a community from this form of

hate illustrates how an ICT can be perceived as having profound potential while still

advancing pre-existing cultural and social practices. As this example illustrates, the

rhetoric of technology to provide capabilities to “fix the world” (or at least make it easier

for humans to do so), has pervaded discourse, especially during and after the industrial

revolution. However, this is tempered by rhetoric that emphasizes the controlling and de-

humanizing nature of a technological rationality. For example, Marcuse’s One

Dimensional Man is a primary example of this strand of thought. In this work, Marcuse

argues how “industrial society which makes technology and science its own is organized

for the ever-more-effective domination of man and nature, for the ever-more-effective

utilization of its resources” (p. 4). Similar strands of thought, captured by critical


theorists like Marcuse, see technology as the tool by which control and de-humanization

are made realizable. Marcuse’s argument can be juxtaposted against John Perry

Marlow’s 1996 “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” who stated that “We

are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race,

economic power, military force, or station of birth.” In sum, an understanding of the

social and cultural impact on ICTs should take into account this continuum of tensions

that range from control to emancipation. This continuum is not only expressed in

rhetorical utterances (as indicated by the qualitative analysis), but can be actively seen in

the structures of behavioral interactions (as indicated by the quantitative analysis).

Implications

Given the results and the implications of the analysis, we can make some

conclusions with respect to the research questions posed. The first is a conclusion related

to the question: what are the effects of introducing a Web 2.0 technology into a pre-

existing learning environment? The analysis reveals that the introduction of a Web 2.0

environment into a pre-existing learning environment can initially lead to a socio-

technical interaction network which is relatively radical when compared to the pre-

existing social organization. For example, this analysis reveals how key knowledge

facilitators within the Web 2.0 system were occupied equally by all members of the

community, from masters students, to doctoral students, and to faculty. This was also

revealed in the content analysis using latent semantic analysis, where the content

contributed by the key knowledge facilitators spanned acceptable academic discourse

(e.g., discussions of children, learning, and education), to more divergent discourse.


However, as time passed, the system begins to take on more elements from the pre-

existing social environment. This reveals that the Web 2.0 system begins to conform to

the social and cultural norms of the context in which it is situated. This is not to suggest

that those radical elements do not continue to exist, but rather the result is a dialectical

exchange between the pre-existing social norms and a more radical and divergent set of

tendencies.

As the analysis reveals, this particular Web 2.0 technology allowed community

members to participate using ICTs in a way that were not afforded by earlier ICTs.

Jenkins notes that one element of a participatory culture is the ability to negotiate

between multiple perspectives: “It becomes increasingly critical to help students acquire

skills in understanding multiple perspectives, respecting and even embracing diversity of

views, understanding a variety of social norms, and negotiating between conflicting

opinions” (p. 53). In the case of PK, the analysis reveals that the system captured both

those elements that form what can be considered acceptable discursive areas within an

educational school (such as topics of school, children, and learning), but also provided

opportunities for divergent discussions to take place. Also, community members at

varying levels were able to come to occupy key roles, which indicates how participation

and becoming an important contributor were options available to all those in the

community. However, as the analysis reveals, the system also reflects the social norms

of the context in which it is situated. This means that creating a Web 2.0 space in

cyberspace doesn’t allow people to “start over” or be freed from existing controls and

contexts, but rather those elements will persist in tension with those more radical


elements. Jenkins discusses these tensions, finding that the technology alone does not

guarantee the sustainability of a participatory culture: “nothing inevitably grows out of

the technology and there is not guarantee unless we collectively put our energy together

around ensuring the survival of participatory culture” (Jenkins, 2007). Hence, Jenkins

sees that the discussion must move from being about access to technology to being more

about fostering “the skills and cultural knowledge necessary to deploy those tools toward

our own ends” (Jenkins, 2006). In sum, participatory culture is made possible by the

innovations in ICTs; however, sustaining the culture must be the undertaking of the

community.

Conclusions can be made for organizations and institutions that may be interested

in introducing Web 2.0 technologies into their environments. Implementers of such

solutions should be aware that designs that afford complete openness and freedom of

expression will allow such expressions to take place, but there will also be reflections of

the existing organization. So for example, reflections of institutional roles, power

dynamics, and hierarchies within pre-existing institutions can be expected to be reflected

to some extent with a Web 2.0 environment. In terms of conclusions for the culture at-

large (both national and extra-national contexts), the important point worth making is that

all technologies are situated within some context, and that context will be reflected to

some extent in the Web 2.0 environment. In the case of the example cited earlier, which

showed that the web properties of Yahoo were not simply something existing in

Cyberspace (or some other world free from pre-existing political and legal structures),

but rather an extension and in tension with the social context in which it is situated.


Similarly, attempts to create a new culture (be it a participatory culture or some other

type of culture) is mired by the weight of pre-existing structures. By this, we mean the

collective familiarity and comfort with what is often called consumer culture may make

the arrival of a participatory difficult to spread at a sufficiently large scale. This is not to

suggest that it is impossible, but rather that the affordances that new technologies may

offer are not sufficient to cause cultural change. Rather, the technologies will reflect the

pre-existing culture as well as any new and emerging culture. Given this supposition, we

should expect that Web 2.0 technologies on the web for use by the culture at-large will

exhibit both of these tendencies: a tendency towards free expression and creativity,

coupled alongside with expressions of a consumer culture. Further research needs to be

completed to verify how Web 2.0 technologies across communities and contexts create a

continuum for expressing the prevailing cultural forms, alongside the desire for a newer

and more participatory culture.


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