Several years ago I was fortunate enough to be at the groundbreaking for the new headquarters of the LIVESTRONG Foundation in east Austin. When the architects took their turn at the mic, they described an impressive array of affordances that would define the building – one of these was their vision of a workplace optimized for collaboration and creative problem-solving, utilizing openness and on-the-fly gathering spaces to break down barriers to communication and promote cooperation and innovation. From modest examples like this one to Google’s near-surreal office spaces, the changing demands of 21^st century “knowledge work” find organizations spending a great deal of time and effort attempting to understand how physical spaces can effectively promote and support creativity and collaboration in their occupants.

This article confronts this question in virtual space. In an effort to understand the conditions that facilitate fruitful online collaboration, the authors studied two productive but otherwise very different online communities – one was the Nearby Supernova Factory (NSN), an international collective of supernova-focused astrophysicts; the other was the Green Bear Group (GBG), a game development “company” at the Scratch @ MIT site, its members ranging in age from 8 to 17.

Primary data sources were two months of chat logs from the NSN and three months of comments from the GBG gallery at the Scratch site.  Participants in both groups were interviewed via email and several members of the GBG were observed at their computers while participating on the site.  Using a grounded theory, approach, the authors developed a taxonomy with which to code interactions, to describe the focus of the interaction: Context (work-related but not explicitly task-related), Task (related directly to the technical matter at hand), Socio-Emotional (socializing and personal chat or sharing).  Worth noting is that while the Task category and its specific codes all remain task-oriented, the others contain a large amount of overlap – for instance, a code to describe work-related Socio-Emotional interactions as well as one that addresses social Context interactions.

Comparing the two groups overall, it may be unsurprisingly to see a markedly greater proportion of GBG discussion devoted to the Socio-Emotional, with the NSN focusing on Task areas.  However, both groups were successful and productive within the larger communities of which they were a part – given that GBG participants were hobbyists rather than professionals, this distribution may be entirely expected.  Furthermore, the authors also compared their results to those of a comparable study of an online collaboration between UC Santa Cruz  and NASA from the 1990s.  While coding differences made a direct comparison impossible, the earlier study appeared to focus more strongly on work and less on socializing than either of the contemporary cases.  (All three groups were relatively comparable in the Context category.)

In a sense, this change over a decade could be simply explained by the cost of collaborating online.  Not explicit economic cost exactly, but the cost of time as determined by efficiency of communication.  Though this might lead one to conclude that the contemporary collaborations, with chatter and socializing coming cheap, would be less successful than the earlier study, which is not the case.  What these results may point towards is the value of creating what the authors call a “social common ground” in collaborative online spaces.  Specifically, the authors point towards low barriers to social entry as a key component in maintaining an atmosphere of social creativity, and also call upon designers to pay close attention to the ways in which users repurpose and augment existing technological features of online collaborative spaces.

The CSCW wisdom in this article certainly resonates with my more positive experiences in the CSCL domain – with the advent of “produsage” and with many educators working towards greater and greater authenticity, the line between school and creative, engaging work becomes blurred.  Hopefully the future will witness some productive fusion between these two domains, with richer experiences for all.

The authors, from the Interaction, Media, and Communication Group at Queen Mary, College of London, describe an experiment focused on conditions for meaningful creative engagement in remotely collaborative projects (helpfully described at one point as “group flow”).  Pairs of participants were tasked with creating a 6-second ringtone using Daisyphone (which I’ll clumsily and apologetically describe as a looping player-piano roll application that allows networked users to add or subtract notes in real time).  Participants had no contact other than the shared Daisyphone GUI – the experimental condition and result that I found especially interesting involved the identification by color (or not) of each user’s contributions.  The authors describe the this outcome:

“Overall, the results of the experiment show that participants were more willing to contribute when there were no explicit cues to the identity of contributions’ authors.  This does not support our hypothesis H1. They produced almost three times as many notes when there were no cues than when there were cues to identity.  This is interesting in the context of our previous findings that participants devote considerable effort to establishing their identities in collaboration.”

One of the plausible explanations offered is that a “reduced sensitivity to ownership” may have loosened the reins in a sense, though this remains at-odds with the authors’ previous findings regarding an impulse towards identity establishment in these situations.

Now we take a leap – I’ve long been meaning to link to this wonderful interview with Marc Ribot, hired-gun guitarist to the stars (Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, John Zorn, Alison Krauss & Robert Plant, etc^10) and one of my favorite musicians in the world.  Near the beginning he’s discussing the contrast between leading his own bands and playing guitar for all of these other people and says something I really love:

“There is an art to being a side musician, but it’s an art that involves subsuming your ego into another person’s vision.  I have to say, for reasons that may or may not be psychologically good….I’m kinda good at that.”

When I first heard this, it resonated powerfully with my own musical experience, but I wonder if this ego sublimation would also explain what’s at work in the Daisyphone experiment (it does seem to go hand-in-hand with the “reduced sensitivity to ownership” idea).  And as far as how this clashes with previous Daisyphone studies that find users powerfully motivated to identify themselves….while Ribot’s wisdom is relatively simple, it’s also extremely challenging.  In a sense it’s a classical battle of instant gratification versus long time benefit.  (Many far more virtuosic players have surely seen the phone quit ringing after yet another technically dazzling but woefully-inappropriate-to-the-situation display of alpha-guitar, whereas Ribot has made a decades-long career of being the guy playing tastefully around the edges…and lopping off some heads as necessary).

So this is hard, basically.  And perhaps the Daisyphone experiment took participants to a place that is typically very difficult for status-seeking primates to get to.  I didn’t start this thinking about the intersection of communicative technology with Zen Buddhism, but gosh – saving that for another day, in any case.

“The Visitors and Residents Principle is a guide towards assessing peoples’ motivation towards the web.”

It’s the word motivation, which appears frequently throughout this discussion, that confounds me.  Is it a matter of motivation or simply a way of being?  I think back to when I first got an email account and what a novel, fun thing this was.  Ah, those halcyon days.  Whereas now it’s completely routine and often kind of a pain, but its aggregate effect on my life is overall positive (if only because I’ve come to depend upon it) and thus it’s a (big) part of my life.  But the point being that email has long since lost any intrinsic motivational quality it had.  Likewise for social networking, I’d say.

So is this about “motivation towards the web” or something deeper and hidden?  Perhaps about how you evaluate utility in managing aspects of your life?

I’ve been on hiatus from TED fandom for a while, but what Gupta seemed to discover about music in a tense moment with Ayers rings with as much truth as just about anything I’ve heard recently:

On that note, this is one of the craziest things you’ve ever seen:

And continuing in my tradition of lazy SXSW cinematography: Sweetmeat at Popaganda 2010, Friday at the Carousel Lounge. Cameo by Aaryn Russell:

(I finally found this posted by someone to a message board – it was riddled with typos and misspellings, which would imply someone actually typed it in, since the original appeared in a magazine with an actual editorial staff.  The point being that while it is as I remember it, I cannot speak to its precise authenticity.  Egregious errors fixed by me.)

Why I Practice and Actors Rehearse

by Mike Watt

When I’m either alone or together with my people going through the tunes I call it practice and not rehearsal.  Actors rehearse.  I practice the songs.  I do not play the role of bass player – I am the bass player!  I do not have to rehearse my role as bass player but rather I have to practice the tunes for the upcoming gig.  I actually have to pluck the bridge cables the bass uses for string and not perform mime.  Practice is not rehearsal.  The semantics here are important.  The wages of this lazy thinking lead me to the defense of my craft.

By lazy thinking I’m talking about riding with the cliche, cooking up the angle, tying in the bullshit, anteing up the bonus-hype – trying to sell something for what it ain’t, in simple words.  They got jerks saying “got to go rehearse” so they can somehow see themselves as players in the great rock dream and not as operators of god’s engines, learning the way they work.

Engines make sound, be it bass, throat, stomp, jug… whatever!  Can you picture this at the practice pad: “Ok, let’s play this song, and Thurston, when I wink – you do a ‘Townshend’ and jump in the air.”  Sounds are created and dealt with, not that “lights, camera, action!” shit.  I mean, that’s fine for pictures and theatre but we’re talking about wailing out fucking music!  Gigs are spontaneous when genuine, everyone can agree to this, can’t they?  Practice for the gig but don’t give in and try to rehearse it – let the gods roll the fucking dice!

But the lazy thinkers have another agenda.  They embody the pure spirit of the crap artist.  They will try to talk you into salt after selling you canker sores.  They won’t let you practice medicine and maybe heal them sores.  No, they’d rather have you rehearse your role as christ and after buying their salt (cuz salt is hip this week), cake it up and rub it into your sores.  Forget about if it feels right or natural because what you’re here for is to rehearse the great drama!  You’re no longer free to practice for your gig.

Once they divorce you from your reality you have nothing left but the role they have for you, born of their lazy thinking, fresh from the cookie-cutter.  People, defend yourself first with language.  Don’t let them pigeon-hole you – reserve the right to define yourself!  Practice playing music and don’t give in and try to rehearse it.  Save that for the putzes who work for lazy thinkers!  At least wonder about the implications.

In categorizing how classrooms integrate the GoNorth! curriculum, the authors arrive at four classifications: Curriculum-, Activities-, Standards-, and Media-based.  Curriculum and Media seem to clearly define the role of the AL program at two extremes: overarching curriculum or “fun” diversion/reward.  Based on this theme I would have assumed that Activities-based integration would imply something along the lines of “cherry-picking GoNorth! activities and themes to fit an existing curriculum,” and that this would be the only other classification (clearly I like parallelism).  But in actuality that phrase describes a combination of AL activities and new activities based on AL themes. (Oddly like one of those ‘Music From and Inspired by the Film” soundtracks – the new songs will rock and don’t worry that orchestral score business will be nowhere in sight.)

As I write this I’m becoming alternately more and less confused and maybe it’s all about the Standards-based case’s dog sleds.  Presumably there are no state standards about building dog sleds, or else they would be having a polar adventure of their own.  Standards-based Activity-based AL integration?

At one point the Curriculum-based teacher announces “I literally can teach just about whatever I want as long as I meet some of our basic goals, which we definitely did.”  Does this imply that the provided pedagogy is relatively neutral in terms of student-centeredness, which is largely the focus of the other classifications?

I need to check out GoNorth! more closely and revisit this, I think.

Doering, A. (2007). Adventure Learning: Situating Learning in an Authentic Context. Innovate, 3(6).

Reading a Doering article last semester I came upon a definition of Adventure Learning something like this one (which comes from the Distance Education article above):

Adventure learning (AL) encapsulates this second approach to K-12 hybrid learning, providing students with opportunities to explore real-world issues through authentic learning experiences within collaborative learning environments.

My pithy and, in retrospect, vaguely snotty reaction to this was to cut away the verbiage and declare that Adventure Learning was, as far as I could tell, “real stuff.”

This got me thinking about what I’ve been calling the “artifice of the classroom.”  Which is to say, more or less, “the classroom.”  Obviously many teachers work very hard to create engaging and genuinely authentic learning experiences for their students, but when you step back there’s something mind-bending and sad about the fact that the baseline with which we compare everything is not far from “because I told you so” or “it’s for a grade.”

These low expectations turn up again and again in these AL readings, as students and teachers repeatedly praise GoNorth! for its authenticity and fun and realness.  I think Adventure Learning is great and I’m glad they do too, but I kind of wish some of that enthusiasm would surface as righteous indignation at the alternatives.

Even in less value-laden ways, the awkwardness of usual language in discussing AL kind of hints at how radical a genuinely Deweyian education would be, compared with what it is we’ve got – for instance, Doering’s interaction model places teachers learning about content and content experts learning about education under the heading of AL, not professional development.  I’m sure most good teachers would attest to constantly learning in the classroom, but don’t we typically think of this as a happy bonus rather than an integral theoretical element in a learning environment?  Teacher-centered classrooms, student-centered classrooms…are just-plain centered classrooms something worth thinking about?