Info 110 Final Reflection Paper

1

Justin Patterson

Info 110 Final Reflection Paper

Reflect on what you have learned in the course (and what you have not learned). How did the course meet or not meet your expectations and needs?

The 2008 springmarking period Info 110 course Human-Computer Interaction began by focusing on “Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning,” a concept that Professor Stahl avidly supports, to say the least. From what I gather, CSCL was originally stressed through readings and class teaching to help the students better understand why they were learning in a different manner in contrast to the contemporary teaching methods of PowerPoint presentations/teacher-oriented orations. Thusly, “what I learned” covered the CSCL-realm and in addition to Human-Computer Interaction. The class structure supported and taught these topics through (1) weekly readings, (2) weekly group discussions, and (3) cumulative readings reported through “textbook journals.”

Weekly readings were often omitted in discussions (in terms of direct-mentioning) during class, though it appeared that the presentations groups gave each week exemplified the themes of the readings for each corresponding week. Where these readings first taught me about CSCL during the first few weeks, they shifted to topics that were equally pertinent to HCI. Furthermore, the readings connected with one another, whether it related heuristic analysis to cognitive walkthroughs or knowledge-building to group cognition. Given the fact that all my (and my group’s) learning is presented in the 9 wikis we have formulated over the marking period, I do not feel that it is necessary to restate the facts. Know this: the readings were pivotal to my learning, but the few weeks I did not read one or two of the texts, I feel the discussions in class did not fully inform me of what the writings discussed. Though it is the student’s responsibility to read the articles, there are certain factors (i.e., blue screen of death two times over the course of three weeks) that may prevent them from being able to consistently read through the extensive texts provided by the Info 110 website.

Group discussions occurred both inside and outside class, though in very different forms. The more frequent group discussions over the somewhat-flawed whiteboard application the VMT website usesgenerally involved one group’s members simply reviewing the information they have gathered through readings along with what they have accomplished for the weekly design projects. Members shared their observations with one another until (theoretically) they reach“group cognition” about the subject they are discussing in a particular week. The various groups then present their observations and activities to the rest of the groups. These in-class discussions allow for discourse, an aspect I’ve learned to be both important to CSCL and HCI. It provides a semi-cognitive walkthrough when the listeners are trying to understand what the presenting group’s ideas are, as well as a method of relaying information between groups, thus precipitating that information to one whole population (the Info 110 classmates). The various group assignments helped to give me insight on the difference between collaborative and cooperative learning; collaborative learning is a much more involved process where the student or researcher covers all the information rather than just one section (like cooperative). I felt that this method of “grouping” groups together after already ensuring their understanding through a week of in-group discourse was an effective method, and may benefit the learning structure as a whole if implemented with some changes here and there.

This implementation was fully dependent on the mode of communication, in this case VMT Whiteboard, providing ample freedom to users for all situations. Whiteboard was limited to math, and it definitely showed. Though, the major group project, designing a user-oriented system to help CSCL researchers, did result in my better understanding of how users “think” through learning about methods like heuristic analysis.

The final mode of learning, and in my experience the most pivotal in my learning in this class, was the “textbook journal” assignment. Donald Norman’s “The Design of Everyday Things” along with John Rieman and Clayton Louis’ “Task-Centered User Interface Design” brought many of the aspects of Human-Interface Design to light that I feel were omitted during class discussion (save the Nan’s PowerPoint two weeks in). Through these books, I learned about the concepts imperative to HCI’s success, including reversibility, user-centered design, visibility, and qualities test users should have to be effective.

The question also provided that I detail what I felt I did not learn during this course that I feel was required or at least useful for the field of study. Given the open-endedness of the course, this question hardly seemed applicable. Students value information that they deem important (and, to borrow from Norman, retain it because they can make meaningful relationships with their own life), and are subject to take different lessons from Info 110 based upon what they relate to in design. I, for instance, am intrigued by the concept of reversibility, visibility, and the difference between cooperation and collaboration. Thusly I read more thoroughly articles from the reading assignments any information that pertained to these subjects. The information I still do not fully understand including concepts like “cognitive artifact” and “knowledge building” in relation to “group cognition” I attribute to the fact that I did not take interest in it when researching them throughout the marking period.

How was the format of the course successful in providing you with a good learning experience about interaction design? What would you suggest could be changed?

Professor Stahl’s Info 110 course attempted to use several sources in order to provide students with the information they needed. These sources all had strengths and weakness, but still sufficed. The format of the course used (1) the classroom, (2) the VMT Wiki, and (3) Whiteboard as mediums for gathering and distributing information.

The classroom dynamic evolved as the course progressed, and it was obvious that although the vision of what the class meetings wished to accomplish remained the same, the modes in which they were presented changed. The class activities during the opening weeks of the term generally involved generic PowerPoint presentations that admittedly tried the students’ patience and, based on my observations, was a major factor in why two-thirds of the class dropped out by week three. I gained nothing from these presentations, and they seemed to exist for “introductory” purposes that were already defined in the syllabus or could have been easily stated in a few sentences rather than two hours of slides. As week four approached, the class shifted from PowerPoints to in-class group presentations that both helped students ask questions about the weekly readings (and later weekly design projects) and enabled students to confer to the professor, graduates, and fellow students about things they were unclear on. I feel that the learning about HCI did not fully take place until the separate groups were given more freedom in their studies, when development of the final design system ideas began. Students were able to take the place of designers (developing their system) and users (interpreting the systems of other groups) alike.

I believe I should also note, in terms of the setup of the class, that I very much appreciated the grading system being dependent on visible work rather than arbitrary grades from tests, etc. I do not support the contemporary grading system, and this class’ scheme is certainly a step in the right direction. Stress should be built upon actual work to be done rather than performances on tests and assignments. In this aspect, professor Stahl’s methods were somewhat unconventional, but functional.

A second note in terms of classroom etiquette I feel I must make is a critique on Professor Stahl’s unintentionally hurtful comments that both alienated students in the class and inadvertently insulted students who dropped the class. It deeply affected students’ view of him, and I feel it should be mentioned so he can better avoid making such comments in the future. After several of the students dropped the class, he made a reference to them as being the “bad” students. This (1) discomforted some of the hard-working, dedicated students I am personally acquainted with who felt forced to drop the class and (2) angered some of the students in the class to the point that they themselves decided to drop the class out of disgust of the comment. He also said very little to take away from the students’ feelings of being (for lack of a better word) guinea pigs for his CSCL project. Emphasis of CSCL perhaps should be left off until later in the course so that students can become acquainted with the actual topic they are supposed to be studying rather than how they are going to ultimately learn about it. The groups and all that come with it can, just avoid fully defining the CSCL aspect of it until students get used to the groups (let them learn it through experience, not lecture). This complete shift in thought and expectations caused confusion. Combined with the already unclear structure of the class, students did not understand exactly what they were supposed to be gathering from the class.

The VMT Wiki stated the weekly tasks assigned to students, linking students to articles around the web as well as distributing the syllabus pdf among other important documents. My usage of it now is efficient enough, but I had to get used to the many gripes of the webpage. These gripes are encapsulated in an email I sent to professor Stahl earlier in the course, and I believe that they still stand as issues with the wiki page:

“Normandiscusses[in “The Design of Everyday Things”] a particular phone system that was incomprehensibly complicated, yet had a simple setup. I believe your wiki site has the same problem…Heassertsthatthephone's functions outnumbered its mapping, and thisratiocausedextra confusion for the users. This is the same issue with your wiki page; there are several links that backtrack to each other, boomerang back to the same place you started, and [are arranged in such a way that] it easy to accidently miss an important fact [about the setup and goals of the class].”

Whiteboard was the final format factor of the course. Members of any given group were expected to participate in activities through this system each week, sharing ideas on the design project and observations on assigned readings. Though the actual discussion was beneficial to our learning, the medium (Whiteboard) was insufficient for our purposes. The chat box was treated as an afterthought in the system, the browser was not always functional, it was difficult to see updated webpages, and worst of all, the space on the “Whiteboard” and “Summary” tabs did not come close to being able to fit the text we wanted to post on it. The VMT Whiteboard did not prove useful in providing me with a good learning experience. A larger chat screen and adjustable whiteboard sizes (along with a hyperlinking system, maybe!) are only the beginning of many suggestions to make the collaborative communication system more functional.

If you had another 10 weeks to work with your teammates on the group project, how would you proceed?

Over the past few weeks, my group and I have tweaked our hyperlink project with classmate, Stahl, and Nan’s comments in mind. Though, I can’t help but feel we sacrificed too much time altering already defined functionalities (the “Reference” and “Edit or Entry” tabs) rather than better defining its original main task: hyperlinking. Yes, we added a button that allowed users to turn the system on and off. Yes, we modified the system to allow for manual searches without relying on someone providing the text to create hyperlinks. No, we did not elaborate on the hyperlink visual style, expand upon the options users have with hyperlinking text to better suit their needs, fully investigate ways to better the article entries or optimize the presentation of eLibrary articles.

From the wiki pages formed by Group H members and myself, it would appear that the hyperlinks only highlight in blue with underline. This, as Nan pointed out, will cause potential problems when the amount of hyperlinks in the chat increases. It can be disorienting to navigateand discern onehyperlink from the otherwhen the system makes each hyperlinklook thesame. The user may feel overwhelmed with so many clickable objects when he or she is unable to tell where one hyperlink ends and another begins. If I had another ten weeks to tackle this issue, I would attempt to use multiplecolors to separate hyperlinks from one another much like the chat window of the VMT Chat has different colors for each user’s text. Perhaps the colors could indicate what sources are available for that particular keyword. Unfortunately, this method may harm more than help; it is just one more way users can be confused. Without pressing on the link, there is no way for a first-time user to know what source is what color. Instructions may help, but optimally a design should be instantly interpretable through the user’s mental model without instructions.

A second issue still plaguing the proposed hyperlink system is the complete lack of options, save on-or-off. Surely, a way of streamlining hyperlink results can somehow be crafted, much like streamlining search results with detailed queries. One possible solution, for example, is an options tab that (among other options for the rest of the VMT Chat)enables the user to select what sources he or she would like to (or not like to) get information from. Also, the user could limit their results based on subjects, i.e. sources tagged by a certain keyword. Either way, the options that the user can perform on hyperlinks are far too limited as is.

The final improvement I can warrant given the input from class discussions is to the general layout of the results and the general structure for “CSCL eLibrary” sources. As of now, they are listed in no clear order. Perhaps this order should also become an option-based setup, permitting users to change the presentation from order-by-name or order-by-rating. Unlike the other sources, eLibrary entries do not present any information that the user can read and select a “more” hyperlink if they are interested. For the major aspect of consistency if little else, a brief segment of the user-submitted article should be presented that ends with a “more” hyperlink to allow the reader to view the whole article. The sorting of information in the eLibrary is a pivotal factor for the success of the system, and the current scenario and images provided do not thoroughly explain how this will work.

What do you think should be implemented and adopted by the CSCL research community?

Each group in the HCI course formulated their own design that they believed would better the CSCL community. After several revisions and Q&A sessions, these designs took more definite forms. The designs’ functions are clear enough and although I question some of their innovations’ direct applicability, I foresee in the CSCL research community in some shape or form. The basic needs of the CSCL research community parallel many other research-based in that it needs quick and easy access to as much information as possible, ranging from information on articles to information on the community’s members. My group’s hyperlink concept, Group F’s user-based “CiteULike” community and Group B’s summarization tool attempted to ameliorate CSCL researchers’ need for journal/concept-based information. Group C looked into the other side of information needs, i.e. allowing researchers to access information on other people who are a part of the CSCL community at large.

So, back to the question, “what do you think should be implemented?” I will attempt to venture away from directly referencing the groups’ design projects, and instead address the implementation needs of the CSCL community through more general means. As mentioned before, these additions must somehow better the users’ sense of community through enhanced information-sharing options. Databases and other networking covering articles and people help allow researchers to vast quantities of information, but very few exist inside community-centric realms. What should be incorporated into the CSCL community system (for arguments sake this system resembling VMT’s Whiteboard) should be (1) a section allotted to users being able to communicate and share contact information with each other (via some sort of messaging client, perhaps) and (2) a section dedicated to the free, open distribution of eBooks, journal articles, other scholarly information, and user-submitted research. The latter suggestion may at some point implement Group B’s summary option and other quick-navigation tools, but the base work for it merely needs to distribute information and enable the user to upload his or her own findings. Much like CSILE to CSCL, The amalgamation of this information may bring about greater research findings, and even help evolve CSCL into the next mode of collaborative learning.