Spotting learning with DidacticProcessMap and Wikis

Michele Notari and Beat Doebeli Honegger had a very interesting WikiSym 2006 workshop on visualizing the learning process. The pair have attempted to iconify the players and activities involved in a learning plan, the goal being an easy way to communicate learning goals between teachers.

This Didactic Process Map (DPM) is a visual language intended to improve design of formal learning situations. Although I didn’t see the direct connection with wikis, educational wikis were the focus of the workshop. The visualizations did make it easier to identify where learning may take place — indicators show both presumed learning and confirmed learning, as in feedback from tests — and there were clearly more opportunities for these indicators when a wiki was involved. DPM supports the argument for collaborative learning, which appears in the form of conflict resolution, argumentation, negotiation, mutual regulation and explanation.

The map consists of several elements. The phases represent the actions involved in creating the learning scenario. Each phase contains some combination of actors, degree of synchronicity and learning indicators (visible or assumed learning). The icons below are pulled from Beat’s wiki:

In the afternoon workshop, we were asked to explain a learning scenario to a small group and then use these icons to describe it. The exercise was both an early prototyping test of their icons and a learning opportunity for us to try and make use of the same. I offered up the HCI/d I project scenario, this semester being facilitated with the design eXchange studio wikis.

The discussion focused a lot on how the icons were meant to be used. Some viewed them as a UML kind of visual language, while others saw them as just brainstorming tools that could never be incomplete. The icons were also problematic in places, either because they weren’t specific enough or because they held some biases that these teachers were actually facing in their classrooms. Our group suggested some labels attached to the icons to indicate properties like duration of a phase or specific deliverables. We also liked the idea of being vague at the upper levels but having a computer interface to build more detailed maps of smaller stages. So a course could be reduced to a very simple map, and clicking on a black-boxed icon would reveal more detail about that part of the course. Beat was particularly open to new icons, having spent some time thinking about iterations.

In a wiki, there are some indicators that are easy to measure, such as the amount of created content, the number of changes within the text, and the network of created links. Other indicators are more difficult to measure, such as situations where conflict was resolved.

The scripting may lead to a critical mass of understanding among teachers planning a course. They can easily move around the icons and discuss where the inputs should be. Critique of DPM included comments that it was very teacher-centric, addressing more the goals of teaching than learning. Maybe this could be reframed as a tool to explain and adjust courses with the students as partners. (One participant noted that the Russian word for learning is the same as the one for teaching, emphasizing the two-way street education travels.)

For more information, see WikiSym abstract or download the paper.