The hci Disciplinary Commons

Sally Fincher & Janet Finlayhci Disciplinary Commons

6th June 2008

The hci Disciplinary Commons

• We’ve been meeting for 10 months.

• You’ve been focussed on creating your portfolios.

• And Janet & I have been focussed on you creating your portfolios, too.

• Doesn’t seem fair, somehow. So here is our hci Commons portfolio.

evaluation

instructional designcontent

assessmentcontext

context

• Why is this thing we’ve been doing called a Commons?

• There are several interpretations – mostly not what we intend.

context

• Our Commons is not one of physical territory.

• So we do not draw on the “Common Treasury” of Gerrard Winstanley

context

• Nor is it concerned with the internal spaces celebrated by Lee Shulman

• "[N]o setting represents the intellectual and resonant richness of the place [the University of Chicago] more than a space on the first floor of Judd Hall, the Judd Commons rooms.”

• “In those rooms we drank coffee or tea each morning and each afternoon. Faculty members and students gathered together and exchanged ideas and gossip, tough criticisms, and good yarns"

context

• Nor yet a conceptual territory of common endeavour, as delineated by Huber & Hutchins

• “The scholarship of teaching and learning invites faculty from all disciplines and fields to identify and explore those questions in their own teaching―and, especially, their students' learning―and to do so in ways that are shared with colleagues who can build on new insights. ... In this teaching commons, as we call it, communities of educators committed to pedagogical inquiry and innovation come together to exchange ideas about teaching and learning, and use them to meet the challenges of educating students for personal, professional, and civic life in the twenty-first century”

context

• Nor yet a conceptual territory of common endeavour, as delineated by Huber & Hutchins

• “The scholarship of teaching and learning invites faculty from all disciplines and fields to identify and explore those questions in their own teaching―and, especially, their students' learning―and to do so in ways that are shared with colleagues who can build on new insights. ... In this teaching commons, as we call it, communities of educators committed to pedagogical inquiry and innovation come together to exchange ideas about teaching and learning, and use them to meet the challenges of educating students for personal, professional, and civic life in the twenty-first century”

context

• Rather, our usage is derived from the work of Vincent and Elinor (and especially Elinor) Ostrom.

context

• Four sorts of goods

Consumption Joint useSubtractiveIn

feas

ible

Fea

sibl

eE

xclu

sion

Private Goods: bread, shoes, cars, haircuts, books …

Toll Goods: theatres, libraries, telephone service, toll roads…

Common Pool Resources: water from the ground, fish from the sea, crude oil …

Public Goods:peace & security, pavements, weather forecasts …

context

• One of Elinor Ostrom’s huge contributions was to identify social behaviours that regulate Common Pool Resources (“Commons”).

• Behaviours that are intimately adapted to local circumstance and condition, but which share patterns with other similar situations.

• For example, behaviours which limit “free riding”, which police boundaries and which allow for extraction in cases of real need.

context

• Depending on your (political) perspective, education might be regarded as a Toll Good or a Public Good.

• But if we think of teaching information as a Common Pool Resource, then the Disciplinary Commons is a a metaphor of how access to (and use of) common resources are negotiated and boundaries maintained.

• In the 21st century educational environment, this seems especially important

Artefactcontext: artefact

context

instructional design

• The most obvious thing about the Commons is that the “teacher” is not the expert.

• It’s not about “teaching”, it’s not about transmitting material.

• The participants are the knowledgeable experts, skilled in their own practice. (It may be that this is a necessary characteristic of all intellectual Commons).

• So, the only option, the only possibility that this will work, is via facilitation.

Condition of the Commonsinstructional design

• Are there models for this sort of work?

• Donald Schön in Educating the Reflective Practitioner gives “reflection-in-action” as the definition of professional practice, and the way to improve practice as “reflection on reflection-in-action” In the varied topography of professional practice, there is a

high ground overlooking the swamp. On the high ground manageable problems lend themselves to solution through the application of research-based theory. In the swampy lowland, messy, confusing problems defy technical solution(Schon 1987, opening paragraph)

Reflective Practitionersinstructional design

instructional design

• So instructional design was twofold:1. To tie what happened in the Commons closely to practice;

to get down in the swamp2. To make space for reflections and explorations to emerge

(safety first)

Artefactinstructional design: artefact

Reflective practitioner model

instructional designcontent

Participation & Reificationcontent

• The Commons, as a model, is about two things. Participation & reification

Participation & Reificationcontent: participation

• We meet every month over the course of an academic year (the lifetime of the courses we are focussing on).

• We reflect, we share. We observe, we review.

• We have the deep and meaty discussions about the minutae of our practice.

• We gain an unusual depth of knowledge about practice in other communities. (Knowledge normally only otherwise acquired through a process of “charismatic embedding”).

Participation & Reificationcontent: reification

• We expose details of our work, through documentation, peer review, peer- and self- observation.

• We record our otherwise invisible practice—via course portfolios—so it exists without our continuing presence.

• By working together, using a common form, individual portfolios are enhanced by being part of the larger archive.

content

• Participation: exercises and readings that shed a new light.

• Reification: ordering the content to support portfolio production. 9 meetings: 1 overview, introduction. 1 personal context. 1 each for each portfolio section (6: context, content,

instructional design, delivery, assessment, evaluation). I portfolio presentation and evaluation.

Artefactcontent: artefact

contentdelivery

Reflection: privatedelivery

• There were two major differences in the delivery of this Commons

• Firstly, we had no shared meeting space. Dotting about the country was an uncertain (albeit exciting) business.

• Secondly, this was a two-hander. Two facilitators, more companionship, more de-briefing, better value.

• And hard to imagine the one without the other

Reflection: privatedelivery: artefact

assessment

delivery

assessment

• So, if you can’t “teach” a Commons, you can’t “assess” it either. Assess it in the sense of “making judgement on others’ work”.

• But there is a separate way of “assessing” - in the tradition of the design school, the fine arts “crit”, the reflective practicum of Donald Schön.

• In that tradition, you expose your work to a “coach” and your peers. You see your practice reflected in theirs – and theirs in yours – and inside this “hall of mirrors” you learn your way to your own expertise.

• “Assessment” in the Commons then becomes a sense of calibration. About an individual and collective reflection on a common endeavour.

Three phasesassessment

• “Assessment”in this sense of engaging in peer and group reflectionswas planned in three phases:

• Structural: can we effectively identify artefact & commentary for each of the six elements? (Context, Content, Instructional Design, Delivery, Assessment, Evaluation)

• Absolute: can we say “this reaches this standard” given some reasonable definitions?

• Fit for purpose: do our portfolios demonstrate a relationship between our actions and the student learning that is the purpose of the course?

Three artefactsassessment: artefact

© 2008 Sara Hannant

evaluation assessment

• A continuation of the “delivery” debrief into the public level.

• Change is neither one-dimensional nor one-shot: nor should evaluation be.

evaluation

Public

• Summative questionnaire in the last sessionall participants.

• A more reflective e-mail survey in a week or soall participants.

• Over the Summer, selective telephone interviews (selected to provide a representative cross section of opinions and reactions).

evaluation

Publicevaluation: artefact

evaluation

evaluation

instructional designcontent

assessmentcontext

delivery

evaluation

instructional designcontent

assessmentcontext

delivery

"The Kunstkammer was regarded as a microcosm or theater of the world, and a memory theater. The Kunstkammer conveyed symbolically the patron's control of the world through its indoor, microscopic reproduction."

hcidc Cabinet of Curiosities

Finally

• It’s been a great Commons

• We’ve enjoyed it, we’ve enjoyed reflecting on it

• We’ve added to our collection of “curiosities and wonders” – wonders are collectable

• Thank you!

References

• Slide 6: Lee Shulman Foreword to Mary Huber & Pat Hutchings The Advancement of Learning: Building the Teaching Commons Jossey-Bass (2005).

• Slide 11: Vincent Ostrom and Elinor Ostrom Public Goods and Public Choices in Alternatives for Delivering Public Services: Toward Improved Performance E.S.Savas (ed) ,1977Not quoted here, but very influential on the thinking that informed the Commons is Elinor Ostrom’s book Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action C.U.P. (1990)

• Slide 13: "Whenever a communication medium lowers the cost of solving collective action dilemmas, it becomes possible for more people to pool resources. And ‘more people pooling resources in new ways’ is the history of civilization in... – pause – ... seven words“ spoken by Marc Smith, p. 31, Smart Mobs, Harold Rheingold, 2002

References

• Slide 16: Donald Schön Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions Jossey Bass, 1990

• Slide 25: Charles E. Glassick, Mary Taylor Huber, Gene I. Maeroff, Scholarship Assessed: Evaluation of the Professoriate Jossey Bass, 1997

• Slide 32: “Hall of Mirrors” photo © 2008 Sara Hannanthttp://www.sarahannant.com/cgi-bin/dirread.cgi?area=2

• Slide 41: Francesaco Fiorani, reviewing Bredecamp 1995 in Renaissance Quarterly 51.1 (Spring 1998:268-270) p 268.

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