Information Sharing for Collective Sensemaking

Group decision tasks that require pooling of information to reach the best decision have been studied across a variety of disciplines over the past thirty years. The crucial question of what makes these tasks so difficult, however remains unanswered. Various hypotheses include inefficiency in sharing information leading to decisions based on incomplete information or cognitive inefficiencies in processing and storing information arriving in a piecemeal fashion. The present study attacks this problem from two directions. Human experiments are used to compare decisions between groups manipulated to receive and share information in raw and aggregated forms and mixed groups comprised of humans and software agents. To shed light on cognitive limitations that may affect performance, an ACT-R cognitive model of group members was constructed and its results compared to human data

Space for Two to Think: Large, High-Resolution Displays for Co-located Collaborative Sensemaking

Large, high-resolution displays carry the potential to enhance single display groupware collaborative sensemaking for intelligence analysis tasks by providing space for common ground to develop, but it is up to the visual analytics tools to utilize this space effectively. In an exploratory study, we compared two tools (Jigsaw and a document viewer), which were adapted to support multiple input devices, to observe how the large display space was used in establishing and maintaining common ground during an intelligence analysis scenario using 50 textual documents. We discuss the spatial strategies employed by the pairs of participants, which were largely dependent on tool type (data-centric or function-centric), as well as how different visual analytics tools used collaboratively on large, high-resolution displays impact common ground in both process and solution. Using these findings, we suggest design considerations to enable future co-located collaborative sensemaking tools to take advantage of the benefits of collaborating on large, high-resolution displays

Collective intelligence for OER sustainability

To thrive, the Open Educational Resource (OER) movement, or a given initiative, must make sense of a complex, changing environment. Since “sustainability” is a desirable systemic capacity that our community should display, we consider a number of principles that sharpen the concept: resilience, sensemaking and complexity. We outline how these motivate the concept of collective intelligence (CI), we give examples of what OER-CI might look like, and we describe the emerging Cohere CI platform we are developing in response to these requirements

What is Strategic Competence and Does it Matter? Exposition of the Concept and a Research Agenda

Drawing on a range of theoretical and empirical insights from strategic management and the cognitive and organizational sciences, we argue that strategic competence constitutes the ability of organizations and the individuals who operate within them to work within their cognitive limitations in such a way that they are able to maintain an appropriate level of responsiveness to the contingencies confronting them. Using the language of the resource based view of the firm, we argue that this meta-level competence represents a confluence of individual and organizational characteristics, suitably configured to enable the detection of those weak signals indicative of the need for change and to act accordingly, thereby minimising the dangers of cognitive bias and cognitive inertia. In an era of unprecedented informational burdens and instability, we argue that this competence is central to the longer-term survival and well being of the organization. We conclude with a consideration of the major scientific challenges that lie ahead, if the ideas contained within this paper are to be validated

Fostering Open Sensemaking Communities by Combining Knowledge Maps and Videoconferencing

In this paper, our aim is to investigate the role of Compendium maps for both learners and educators to share and debate interpretations in FlashMeetingTM (FM) videoconferences in the context of OpenLearn, an online environment for open learning. This work is based on a qualitative study of knowledge maps and web videoconferencing interactions, and quantitative data presented in diagnostic reports about both tools. Our theoretical approach is based on the sensemaking concept and an existing framework for three learning scenarios. Our findings describe four applications of knowledge maps in videoconferencing: (i) Mind Maps for a FM virtual lecture (transmission scenario); (ii) Learning Path Map which integrates a FM conference (studio scenario); (iii) Concept Maps during a peer-to-peer event (negotiation scenario) and (iv) Web Maps for a FM replay (assessment scenario)

Sensemaking on the Pragmatic Web: A Hypermedia Discourse Perspective

The complexity of the dilemmas we face on an organizational, societal and global scale forces us into sensemaking activity. We need tools for expressing and contesting perspectives flexible enough for real time use in meetings, structured enough to help manage longer term memory, and powerful enough to filter the complexity of extended deliberation and debate on an organizational or global scale. This has been the motivation for a programme of basic and applied action research into Hypermedia Discourse, which draws on research in hypertext, information visualization, argumentation, modelling, and meeting facilitation. This paper proposes that this strand of work shares a key principle behind the Pragmatic Web concept, namely, the need to take seriously diverse perspectives and the processes of meaning negotiation. Moreover, it is argued that the hypermedia discourse tools described instantiate this principle in practical tools which permit end-user control over modelling approaches in the absence of consensus

Power, control and organisational learning

A review of managerial literature highlights the crucial importance of shared culture and common schemes of interpretation in organisational learning. The interpretative and sensemaking approaches of organisational learning insert themselves deeply in the process of the construction of social uniformity and cognitive homogeneity. Individual learning, culture, beliefs and rationality - the shared mental models - are the targets of confirmation processes. Thus, this specific kind of organisational learning cannot be considered as normatively neutral, but as a political process. A case study of a bank illustrates that organisational learning can be based on a structured social construction of cognitive homogeneity which generates an increase of control and enhances power of the management by reinforcing the legitimacy of decisions. However, this case study also shows that learning and non-learning are the two faces of the same process or, in other words, that organisational learning can produce unawareness and unintentional nonlearning by too much cultural uniformity. -- Eine Durchsicht der Managementliteratur verdeutlicht die zentrale Bedeutung gemeinsamer Kultur und geteilter Deutungsmuster für das Organisationslernen. Die interpretativen und deutungsbezogenen Ansätze des Organisationslernens basieren auf tiefgreifenden Prozessen zur Konstruktion sozialer Einheitlichkeit und kognitiver Homogenität. Die Absicherungsprozesse beziehen sich auf das individuelle Lernen, Kultur, Werthaltungen und Rationalität - die gemeinsamen mentalen Modelle. Insofern kann diese Form des Organisationslernens nicht als wertneutral angesehen werden; es handelt sich vielmehr um einen politischen Prozeß. An einer Fallstudie in einer Bank wird illustriert, daß Organisationslernen auf einer sozial konstruierten kognitiven Homogenität aufgebaut werden kann. Dabei wird Management-Kontrolle erweitert und ihre Macht verstärkt, indem die Legitimität ihrer Entscheidungen abgesichert wird. Allerdings dokumentiert die Fallstudie auch, daß Lernen und Nicht-Lernen zwei Seiten des gleichen Prozesses sind, anders gewendet: Organisationslernen kann zur Ausblendung von Wahrnehmung beitragen und - unbeabsichtigt - Nicht-Lernen generieren, wenn zuvor ein zu hohes Maß an kultureller Homogenität etabliert worden ist.

OpenLearn and knowledge maps for language learning

This chapter presents new methodologies designed to facilitate language acquisition in open learning communities via open educational resources and knowledge mapping. It specifically focuses on the OpenLearn project developed by the Open University. This offers a virtual learning environment based on Moodle platform with free educational materials and knowledge media tools such as the instant messaging MSG, the video webconference FlashMeeting and the knowledge mapping software tool Compendium. In this work, these technologies and mapping techniques are introduced in order to promote open language learning. Ways in which teachers and students can make use of these OpenLearn tools and resources are discussed and some benefits fully described