Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
most students inevitably felt the experiment was
a course task for which they will be evaluated by
their professor. All these circumstances made the
context different from a fully open online com-
munity and represent a significant limitation of this
study. On the other hand, going large scale in these
early steps within an uncontrolled experimental
setting might not have attracted a critical mass of
users and would have prevented us from having a
direct contact with them, which has proven to be
very useful for debugging, improving and upgrad-
ing the software from users' feedback.
The test developed in four phases, starting
from early November 2007:
experiment were to evaluate i) how easy it is for
new users to approach a collaborative platform
based on argumentation, and ii) how much the
platform helps users improve their knowledge
and understanding of the topic.
As a discussion topic we chose “the future of
biofuels”. The criteria we used to select the topic
were: 1) it had to be a relevant topic in the cur-
rent debate about a systemic complex challenge,
like for instance how to reduce global warming;
2) it had to be focused enough to help students
not get lost into a too wide a debate, considering
they had limited time, attention and expertise; 3)
it had to be controversial and multifaceted so that
the community could explore possible different
solutions and perspectives.
Instead of giving students an empty argument
map, we set up two framing, first level questions
and options: 1) what percentage of transportation
energy needs in Italy will come from biofuel
consumption twenty years from now? (options:
limited (less than 20%), moderate (between 20
and 30%), substantial (more than 30%)); 2) how
can Italy get the biofuels it needs? (no options).
The first was a kind of prediction market question
while the second was an open design question.
We did not prevent users from adding further first
level questions.
Before starting phase 2 we prepared two tests
to be given to the students before and after the
experiment. The first test was aimed at evaluat-
ing their knowledge of the topic, and the second
was a critical thinking test. Our aim was to see
if and to which extent the deliberatorium helps
the students improve their knowledge of the topic
and their critical thinking skills.
1.
Phase 1: preparatory work
2.
Phase 2: a three weeks period, in which
students were requested to populate the
deliberatorium with contents
3.
Phase 3: one week for consolidating the
knowledge map produced by the commu-
nity
4.
Phase 4: data analysis
In the preparatory phase, the students had four
2 hours seminars from external experts about:
1.
collective intelligence and its current internet
applications
2.
argumentation, with focus on the IBIS ap-
proach
3.
major issues in energy governance with a
country focus on Italy and UE policies
4.
an instructional demo of the deliberatorium
beta version
The students were also given a few reading
materials: two newspaper and magazine articles
about the topic and the IBIS manual available
at
http://touchstone.com/wp/IBIS.html
(Conklin,
2003).
We decided to keep at a minimum both the
knowledge of the topic and of the platform the
students were required to have before starting
the experiment since two main objectives of the
designing the Argumentation
Community: roles, rules &
incentives
In the design of the deliberatorium virtual com-
munity we adopted the framework described in
figure 2. In particular, in the deliberatorium case
Search WWH ::
Custom Search