INFO 782 — Spring 2009 — Gerry Stahl

INFO 782 — Spring 2009 — Gerry Stahl

You Tube: “Information R/evolution”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4CV05HyAbM

Outline of this week’s class YouTube: “A vision of students today” Course overview (and Blackboard

demo) Form small groups Introductions of students & instructor Theories of information & human

thinking Information & education YouTube: “Information R/evolution” Information science Information and users YouTube: “The machine is us/ing us”

“Social theories of information

systems relevant to

computer support for collaborative

information behavior”

information systems for group use

as computational artifacts as informational resources

how they are: designed, enacted, diffused, adopted, evolved within social settings

post-cognitivist theories social constructivism,

activity theory, situated cognition, distributed cognition, actor-network theory, ethnomethodology, group cognition

texts & con-texts [RCA] Ackerman, M., Halverson, C., Erickson, T., &

Kellogg, W. (2008). Resources, co-evolution and artifacts: Theory in CSCW. London, UK: Springer. [purchase]

[GC] Stahl, G. (2006). Group cognition: Computer support for building collaborative knowledge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Series on Acting with Technology. Available from http://GerryStahl.net/mit/. [purchase or download]

[SVMT] Stahl, G. (Ed.). (in press). Studying virtual math teams. New York, NY: Springer. Computer-supported collaborative learning book series, vol. 11. Available from http://GerryStahl.net/vmt/book. [download]

Other readings [download in Blackboard]

Weekly readings

Before noon Saturday, post reviews (200-400 words each) of 2 readings in Blackboard discussion

Before midnight Monday, post evaluations (75-150 words each) of 3 reviews in Blackboard discussion

Before class, read other people’s reviews & evaluations

Bring questions to class: mysterious words, incomprehensible sentences, confusing arguments

Individua

l assignmen

ts

4. Midterm reflection paper

9. Final reflection paper

Group

assignmen

ts

Each week, meet with your group online in your group’s Blackboard

virtual classroom With chat With whiteboard for outlining

ideas

Prepare to present one of the readings

Group assignments

Group A: Group B: Group C: Group D: Group E:

Some info about the users of this course’s info

Take 5 minutes to interview your neighbor in the classroom

Then stand up with your neighbor and briefly introduce her/him to the class

Name; something about their interest in informatics; something about their career; what they hope to get out or this course

The Blackboard information systemhttp://drexel.blackboard.com/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp

A brief history of thought: info, knowledge, truth & human cognition

Plato’s philosophy

Starting point for Western thought, science & technology

Truth, knowledge, learning, wisdom Education takes the student out of the

common-sense world through stages and the student must struggle to make sense

A world of ideas, concepts, theory that sheds light on empirical sense perception

Western philosophy (500 bc–2009 ad), then social theory Greek: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle Latinized Aristotelian Christian theology Descartes (cogito ergo sum) Empiricism vs rationalism Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx Behaviorism, cognitivism, post-

cognitivism

Plato distinguished the common-sense world of shadows from the realm of true knowledge, consisting of the general forms or concepts of things

The medieval Christian realms of heaven/earth

Descartes separation of mind and body Empiricism (sense perception &

induction) vs rationalism (logic, predictive science & deduction)

Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx (people constitute the world socially)

Introspective psychology: What do we experience about how we think?

Bias, rationalization, no implicit processes Behaviorism in the 1930’s-1950’s:

Pavlov dogs, Skinner rats & pidgeons learn by conditioned reflexes; drill & practice in education

Cognitivism in the 1960’s-1980’s: The human mind interprets and constructs

understanding of the world Post-cognitivism in the 1990’s-2010’s:

Not a purely rational, individual process of mental representations & models; tacit knowledge, interpersonal interaction, cultural practices

The readingsIntro to domains of groups & information

Social informatics CSCW CSCLCurrent (post-cognitivist) theories of

information artifacts & systems Activity theory (Vygotsky, Engestrom) Ethnomethodology (Garfinkel) Situated & distributed cognition

(Hutchins) Actor-network theory (Latour) Group cognition (Stahl)

Philosophies and scientific paradigms led to:

Multi-disciplinary approaches, like cognitive sciences, learning sciences, information sciences, social informatics, CSCW, CSCL, …

Different theories of learning, education, scientific method, software designs

There were also larger social changes: war, prosperity, ideologies, technologies, etc.

Can you follow the connections, overlaps, differences, application areas, holes?

Questions?

You should have lots of questions now. Many of them will be addressed in the

readings … Then you will have even deeper

questions … (I hope)