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Ruhr-Universität Bochum
IMTM
Mass-Collaboration as a basis of procedures for e-
participationThomas Herrmann
Information - and Technology ManagementUniversity of Bochum, Germany
www.imtm-iaw.rub.de
2
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Overview
• Background• Example: citizen dialogue• Research questions• Socio-technical measures / requirements
3
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Underlying question
How can several people be supported to contribute to the solving of problems in the societal context?
How is creativity encouraged? How can democratic principles be taken into
account? How can a large number of people be
effectively involved?
4
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Involved Research areas
Mass collaborationSocial /
collaborative creativity
Collaborative creativity
E-participation
7.950
Social creativity
Hits per key phrase form google scholar - 16.3.2014
906.210
0*94
10.400 26
5.860
2.310
202
* This needs more research
5
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Degrees of particiaption
Inform people
Observe people
ask people about their
ideas, knowledge etc.
Discussion with and amongst people
Allow for co-deter-mination by people
Deg
ree
of
par
tici
pat
ion
low
high
According to the German„Betriebsverfassungs-gesetz“ that determines the degree of„Mitbestimmung“of the employees‘ representatives, the so called „Betriebsrat“
6
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Degrees of particiaption
Inform people
Observe people
ask people about their
ideas, knowledge etc.
Discussion with and amongst people
Allow for co-deter-mination by people
Examples for web-based support
Linear Moocs
Big Data
Citi-zen science*
InternetBrainstorming
Discussion forums
wikipedia discus-sion +
E-voting
Deg
ree
of
par
tici
pat
ion
low
high
openin-no-va-tion
Open source
7
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
The case of the German Citizen Dialogue on demographic trends
• Location: 6 cities with 80 citizens each• Informed with a basic paper: 10 statements covering 3 fields:
• Living together• Life Long Learning • Work Environments
• The same people were sitting at one table discussing one of the 10 statements
• Two phases: 1) comments on the current situation
2) proposals for societal improvement
• Afterwards, representatives of every city were invited for discussing the merged results
• 500 hours of discussion were converged in one report of 68 pages
8
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Is this a case of mass collaboration?
What will happen if we transfer it to online collaboration?
9
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Facilitation and making of results
• One facilitator and a minute taker per table• Participants didn’t see the notes of the minute taker, from time
to time a summary was read to the participants• Results were not visualized, the goals were not visible• Phase of analysis: all participants tried to make any kind of
contribution• Phase of proposals: Those who had a more substantial
information bases or a preconceived opinion were dominating the discussion on proposals, trying to push their ideas through
• Facilitators tried – with limited success – to encourage the less active participants
• Goal: in the afternoon a report on the whole discussion was instantaneously compiled
10
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Role of experts
• Experts were invited to give an orientation• Experts’ presentations at the beginning of the discussion as a
kind of input were not welcomed • Experts were required to wait until they are asked.• They were only asked if there was a lack of knowledge.• Some of them started proactively to join the tables and to
contribute their opinion.• They were not asked
• to support the finding of proposals for social /political innovations,• to clarify whether an idea was new or already implemented somewhere
else.
11
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Degree of novelty
• Participants made proposals which they thought were new but which were not. They were not aware of that most of their proposals have already undergone a practical test. The results of these test could not been taken into account.
• Strong focus on practical knowledge concerning the problems of the nearer region – very concrete examples were collected
• Some statements / hypothesis of the “basic paper” did not comply with the regional focus
• The discussion of how to bring the proposals into reality was neglected.
• A lot of singular experiences and interests were articulated without addressing the options of supporting societal innovation on a more systematical level.
• There were no contributions which are not already discussed in the context of political activities
12
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Overall networking
• Low level of interaction between the tables• Sometimes highlights were presented – by the opinion leaders• Experts had a marginal role of boundary spanners by attending
several tables.• There was no written reporting in between which could have
been used to build upon• The participants were excluded from the process of merging
the reports
13
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Lack of Transparency
• The process of taking the minutes was not transparent and there was no visualization
• No transparency of the process of filtering out the contributions for the instantaneous report
• No transparency of the merging of the reports• The experts made additional contributions which were included
without any critical discussion.• The meeting, in which the merging of all 6 reports was
discussed worked similarly: 12 tables, 12 areas of societal innovation leading to a quick report at the end.
14
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Lessons learnt
• People who are highly interested and willing to be engaged, are not necessarily well prepared to contribute novel ideas
• The procedure of converging a huge number of contributions and to exploit potentials for synergy appears to be most difficult.
• The influence people could have on real political decisions was unclear.
15
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Degrees of participation
Inform people
Observe people
ask people about their
ideas, knowledge etc.
Discussion with and amongst people
Allow for co-deter-mination by people
Deg
ree
of
par
tici
pat
ion
low
high
Meta-questions: Is it really about Mass Collaboration or more about
Mass Contributions?Or is it in this case Mass Contributions of small
collaborating units?
16
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Research questions – A
1. How can people be encouraged to relate their ideas to each other to escape the hidden profile trap … People take out of the whole set of mass contributions those parts which sound familiar to them
2. How can the participants be motivated to take existing knowledge or expertise into account to relate their own contributions to them?
3. How can the dominator-follower relation be transformed into a symmetrical relation?
4. How can research on small group creativity support be transformed to the level of large numbers of participants?
17
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Research questions – B
5. How can the transition from mass contributing to mass collaboration be defined?
6. Which facilitation strategies are efficient (visualization, prompting etc.) to support the shift from just adding a mass of contributions to converge them into a unique result?
7. Why do people take part in mass collaboration? ( in the described case it was a lot of just sharing the experience of taking part)
18
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Need for Scaffolding and prompting
To support …• directly referencing to others experiences or
other information sources [not only writing but also reading]
• Alternating between contributing and comparison of contributions
• Detecting the most interesting similarities and contrasts – incongruity which “irritates”
• Creating something “new”• The activation of more passive people
19
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Socio-Technical Approaches for …
• Maintaining the awareness for existing information• Synergy building: Compose those contributions which
address the same topic but are diverging (incongruity)• Several facilitators as representatives of various
“political” positions should be able to work together for filtering and merging the contributions
• How can different interests and perspectives be balanced in the course of converging a huge amount of contributions?
• How can the work of facilitators and minute takers bringing the huge number of contributions together be • Supported• made more visible for the participants • potentially more controllable?
20
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Socio-Technical support in general
Supposed we have tasks / activities of Type A1: not appropriate to be carried out in small groups Type A2: not appropriate to be carried out via mass collaboration
Type B1: more efficient when carried out in small groups Type B2: more efficient when carried out via mass collaboration
How can socio-technical solutions support a shift from A to B?
Example: Production blocking and fear of evaluation in small group brainstorming sessions can be avoided by organizational and technical measures.
21
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Claim: Facilitation is needed!?
Question: Can facilitation develop spontaneously?
The whole facilitation business has developed on the basis of the potential ineffectiveness and inefficiency of small groups – why shouldn‘t this phenomenon be repeated in the context of mass collaboration?
22
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Procedure
23
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Facilitators‘ Tasks: shift to mass collaboration - A
Facilitation of small, co-located groups
Facilitation of online mass collaboration
The collaboration is controlled / structured by one
Several facilitators have to collaborate, a meta-facilitator might be needed
Qualitative comparison and summarizing of different viewpoints
Quantitative evaluation of the contributions is necessary
One facilitator recognizes every opinion and tries to give them equal weight
The main perspectives / interest groups / positions should be represented by an own facilitator each – including minorities
24
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Facilitators‘ Tasks: shift to mass collaboration - B
Facilitation of small, co-located groups
Facilitation of online mass collaboration
The work of the facilitator is visible and can be controlled on the fly
Extra support is needed to make the facilitators’ work visible and to control it
Interventions / prompts are addressed to all participants
Interventions / prompts have to be submitted selectively
Categories to sort contributions are mutually developed
Categories have to be proposed by the facilitator, building links seems to be more important
Simple mechanisms to identify majorities or consensus
Complex voting mechanisms
25
University of Bochum, Germany
Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM
Conclusion
• The transition from mass-contributing to mass collaboration is not clear needs to be further investigated
• The challenge is to relate the contributions at least potentially to each other – mechanisms are needed to build the most promising subsets (7+/-2 items).
• Collaborative Facilitation is needed for:• Prompts• Representing diverging positions
• A seed with relevant information needs to be created