HCI Final Reflections Dorian Bowen June 9, 2008

Weeks 1 & 2 My first two weeks in this class were off to a rough start. For Week 1 I had a personal obligation across the country so I was without steady Internet access, learning the Wiki, and trying to meet with my group members. I established a bit of a relationship with them and by the first Sunday night felt comfortable those who hadn’t shown up yet would, since I was going to be flying home all day Monday. Much to my disappointment I logged in to find our assignment wasn’t done and my group had dissolved as people dropped the class without letting anyone know. The same thing then happened in Week 2. I wrote you with my frustration and you immediately put me into Group B and by the end of Week 3 I finally had a working group. I did feel that was a lot of time lost. In those first couple weeks I managed to acquaint myself with the Wiki but I completely lost out on the group dynamic and was very frustrated with the class in general.

My Group B The Group I finally belonged to, Group B, consisted of Constantine, Zdravko (a.k.a. Z) and Jolene. Constantine lives in Greece, Z in Philadelphia, Jolene in New Mexico and I live in Seattle. Constantine and I were the furthest apart at 10 hours. Jolene was sort of my neighbor an hour ahead. Z was on “Drexel time” so the three hour difference was one I was used to working with. It was clear very quickly that Z and Jolene did a lot of chatting and Constantine submitted his work on the whiteboard and checked in with email, but couldn’t participate too often in chats especially during the week. Our usual meeting time of 8pm EST was 3am for him, and he worked a fulltime job as well. As Week 4 started I volunteered to work on the reading summaries because it was an easy way for me to integrate myself and get a sense of how the group worked together. Z took the lead of posting to the Wiki as Jolene and I were still getting used to it. As our sole undergraduate representative Z was also responsible for all the presentations in class.

The Wiki & Chat Our Wiki improved nicely over the weeks. We felt at a disadvantage compared to other groups who seemed to be very organized and clearly had the opportunity to communicate with a greater ease than was possible for us. Z, Jolene and I talked about the readings and the assignments in what turned into about 2-3 chats a week, usually on the weekend and Monday night right before the weekly deadline. A few weeks were very collaborative, where we composed entire Wiki submissions on the whiteboard. I can recall only one time when all four of us were able to chat at the same time, because Constantine had just returned from New

1 York and because of his jetlag was up at an unreasonable hour, and it was like a chat party. It was a very pleasant gathering and we got a taste of what we imagined the other groups were experiencing in terms of true cohesion. Over the weeks we experimented with using colors and different display formats for our postings. We didn’t usually take specific credit for what we posted because we all looked over all the materials and we all edited or offered input into the final posts. After some exploring I found the Wiki very easy to use. It really isn’t very complex but offers a clean, uniform format that doesn’t distract from the information itself. The chat rooms locked up occasionally for each of us, but considering how much we relied on them and how often we logged in and out, they were negligible difficulties. I enjoyed the chat room setting. I like the chance to review the last 100 posts so if I came to a chat a little late I was completely caught up. I like the web browser inside the tabs. Something I found frustrating was that you can’t use the italicize or bold command within a text, for say a sentence or a word, because it turned everything within that text box either italicized or bold. Oftentimes I wanted to highlight something in that way, or if we had a list of items we were slowly plowing through, to demonstrate what had been done and what was still left. It seemed a simple command that was not available. I have to admit we enjoyed making our text boxes different colors, however, once Z started making the notes he left us as colorful as possible.

Midterm Conceptual Design & Week 5 My conceptual design was the Global Film Archive. When I read about other people’s topics and we eventually employed Constantine’s Automatic Summary Maker, I felt unsure my topic was on the right track. As Z and Constantine are IT students their ideas were on a much different scale and in a much different realm. However I believe in my proposal and I applied something I know a lot about into a real, solid concept. I approached this class, as with others I take to work toward my MLIS degree, with the goal of finding ways to apply it to my background in film history, production, and archiving. While I don’t know if or when archiving would embrace Wikis and collaborative learning, by the end of my proposal I was pleased that I had conceived of a platform that was very plausible and held great potential. My personal project, my book research, was also my sounding board for what would be an improvement to the field. My book subject, Robert Montgomery, spoke about the evolution of the creative arts and communication, and in line with his theories I felt CSCL was an excellent example of such a progression. I was excited to explore the possibility that I could use CSCL to present my work on him so that I not only discussed his theories of creative evolution but actually utilized a system that was an example of it. I am still thinking of ways to apply this class to my project. That is one of the most valuable things I take from this class.

2 Working individually on our midterm papers and not meeting during Week 5 seemed to disrupt the group momentum. It was, coincidentally, a very difficult week for Constantine, Jolene, and myself personally. And Z, at the very least, was under the usual midterm class load pressures. We also received an email from Wing during Week 5 so he became an unexpected factor in our dynamic.

Week 6 Now that we had five people in our group and we had lost a week in our routine, it was difficult getting back to work on Week 6. We didn’t know when to meet with one another and suddenly we had to come up with an interactive prototype and we were all at a loss as to how to reinitiate ourselves and approach our assignment. We decided early that we would use the Automatic Summary Maker but creating screenshots was a very time consuming and frustrating process. It was impossible for it to be a truly collaborative effort. Constantine submitted an incredible series of notes, but as they were all very specific and we had no chance to discuss much of it with him due to the time difference, the rest of us were at a loss to interpret them properly. The night of the deadline Z, Jolene, Wing, and I met in our chat. Z compiled images in Paint and I edited them in Photoshop and we were running hours over. We tried to find ways for Jolene and Wing to contribute and they researched the other groups for us and browsed online, consulting resources, but ultimately it was a clumsy collaboration. Jolene was tired and left early, Wing didn’t have much to do so he left also. For Z it was the middle of the morning so I finished the screenshots and posted them with a summary I took from Constantine’s midterm paper. We didn’t want to post information that was inaccurate so we opted for something that oversimplified the concept. As you know, we all woke up to an email from Constantine who was very upset, feeling we had discarded his work in favor of our far less thoughtful version. It was a misunderstanding that was cleared up quickly. I knew immediately that he felt underappreciated and once we made it clear that it was poor time management and organization and not at all an extension of disrespect, we moved on. However by this point, in an unrelated situation, Jolene had become so overwhelmed with the class and the material that she informed us that she just couldn’t participate in group work any longer. We all tried to talk to her individually. She had always commented on feeling lost and falling behind. I tried to let her know that I never felt much on top of things in this class either. She said she appreciated the support but ultimately she did not return for the remaining weeks. Wing checked in once or twice in the next week but it seemed he too felt he was too far behind. Z said he was part of the presentations in class but for Weeks 7, 8, and 9 the work of Group B was done by Constantine, Z, and myself. I adored Jolene and for the weeks she participated she came prepared and eager to help despite her reservations. I was

3 very sad that she felt so overwhelmed that she felt she had to leave. Wing, from what I understand, came in sort of halfway through the quarter so I don’t know if I would have been able to catch up in that situation either. I was very worried at first that with only three of us we would be at a huge disadvantage. None of us knew the protocol and that is why (at least Z and I) did not inform you about these changes in our group. From my perspective I don’t want Jolene to be penalized because she was a wonderful group member and contributor. However at the same time, Constantine and Z consistently put forth tremendous effort, especially at the end to compensate, and I want them to receive the credit they deserve. For my part I was pleased that during these weeks our projects involved the screenshots. I was able to make a significant contribution because of my experience in Photoshop while Constantine and Z focused on mechanics, evaluations, and feedback. When it came to our prototype the three of us were an excellent, efficient, and balanced team. Our Wiki suffered when it came to the reading analyses. Augmenting Human Intellect is a 139 page report and it was impossible for us to find the time to analyze that on top of all our other work. It was my idea to summarize the impact of the article in lieu of our analysis. For Week 8 we were grateful for your much shorter Chat on Collaborative Knowledge Building and Constantine offered a wonderfully unique analysis incorporating Greek history. For Week 9 we again simply didn’t have the time to do an analysis so we felt it had to be what we let slip so we could focus on the prototype which was far more important. Z and I spent nine straight hours on the screenshots alone the day of our deadline. I learned the hard way that for all the fonts available in Photoshop, the Arial he used in Paint was not something I could duplicate. Except for that we were very pleased with our final product. The difference between our first and last sets of screenshots reflects our hard work.

Textbook & Weekly Readings I didn’t have very much spare time from week to week to keep up with my textbook journal. I liked the textbook but it seemed like an afterthought most of the time from the actual experience of chatting, working on the assignments, and doing the weekly article readings. The weekly readings were very valuable but I really didn’t like doing the analyses week after week. I understand the need to make sure we absorbed the material but regurgitating the essence of these dense reports became more of a frustrating chore, took time away from comprehension, and placed an inappropriate focus on key points to place on a bulleted summary list. The textbook journal was an involved process but that exercise helped me collect the essence of the concepts by allowing me to take notes in my own way. My approach was to take notes as if I was going to use them for an open book test. It was easy to capture the main ideas with that method. But something about turning readings, that were already so condensed and pithy, into new summaries felt futile. I liked the group

4 readings and I liked discussing them with my group. I would have preferred if we had only needed to come up with a paragraph or two about our responses. I understand the group summary/analysis assignment in theory, but it was something we grew to resent.

The Class Experience Overall I take a lot from this class. The CSCL premise, the practical experience of chatting and collaborating with my group, and coming up with our prototype and going through the detailed process of testing it, was all very valuable to me. I had no expectations going into the class. As I complete it I am pleased it was a very unusual and ultimately rich experience. Given another 10 weeks I think our group would be a streamlined machine. Toward the end we had a much better sense of how much time we needed for things and when we could meet. We began to use weekend mornings to touch base with Constantine which I’m sorry we couldn’t have done more often. We had to rely on emails because of the time differences but that kept each of us abreast of the group progress and provided some precious opportunities for necessary debate and brainstorming. I enjoyed my group very much. Constantine overcompensated for his inability to take part in chats by submitting an impressive volume of thoughts and work. Z was always taking the lead in terms of getting us organized, was a conscientious and supportive collaborative partner, and represented our work in class. Jolene was always eager to help and asked questions that aided our understanding of the topics. It was a delight to meet and work with all of them. I have no idea what my grade will be in this class which, to be honest, is rather disconcerting. We all put in a tremendous amount of time and work and I know I always felt like I was barely keeping up. The work load did detract from my other classes and rearranged my schedule by forcing me to accommodate to the lives of others which at times was exceptionally difficult. However collaborating with my group, the articles themselves (offering a wonderful insight into the true beginnings of computers and the theories of learning and interaction design), the midterm conceptual design paper and the Wiki were indeed highlights. Those components alone are what I take from this class that made it a fulfilling adventure.

The CSCL Community I am still processing the practical aspects of CSCL. There seems like a huge gulf between the way things are done now and the changes that will optimize CSCL. I do think it is exciting and I very seriously am considering ways to implement my midterm conceptual design into my personal research. In a worldwide environment where researchers are all acquainted with online collaboration and are eager to share knowledge with one another, CSCL has stunning potential. I do feel grateful that through this class I have become aware of this wave of future learning so I can share it with others, participate in it, and use it to my advantage by being at the crest of such an exciting revolution.

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