The representation of knowledge: a qualitative approach

1. The representation of knowledge:a qualitative approach Silvia Panzavolta, s.panzavolta@indire.it Antonella Turchi, a.turchi@indire.it exINDIRE, www.indire.it Department for Educational Documentation

2. The communication of educational research and best practices INDIRE has been researching new ways of communication of educational research results and school best practices, also taking into account the trends of the information society today. The aim is to spread significant ideas and effective results to other contexts.

3. The objectives of INDIRE initiatives • INDIRE manages many web portals and environments aiming at fostering: • the use of ICTs in schools; • the improvement of teaching/learning practices; • the penetration of benchmarking as an evaluation/planning practice.

4. The limits of traditional communication • INDIRE noticed that the traditional communication (mainly textual or hyper textual) is lacking the emotional part of the message. It is not interactive. It is boring and needs a lot of time to be consulted. • Text does not carry (or does in a limited way): • emotions; • suggestions; • evocative inputs; • behavioural drives.

5. A research project on knowledge representation In 2006, INDIRE set up a project concerning innovative ways of representing educational knowledge on the Internet. The project lasted 8 months. INDIRE involved also Regional Educational Research Institutions (15 research institutions + INDIRE). The project is called PRIMULE (Multimedia Innovative Educational Processes).

6. Possible ways of representing knowledge • Each research partners came out with some useful suggestions, such as: • Use of images (both documentary and evocative ones); • Use of videos; • Use of multiple viewpoints (not only of teachers - telling their stories - but also of students, school personnel, head-teachers, parents, external experts); • Use of interactive areas; • Use of different documenting times (in-progress, ex-post).

7. The INDIRE model • The model INDIRE proposes is mainly based on three different areas, having different purposes and using different communication codes. • The content of the practice is irrelevant, since the objective was the representation of anything one wishes to communicate.

8. One example: Learning French with E-twinning The cover of the best practice. Its function is to give the users a sort of trailer of the content (video, music, short spot)

9. The components of the environment Three areas: live the experience, transfer the experience and think over it. http://www.indire.it/galleria/docu/index2.html

10. Three different codes: Live the experience • Video (images + music + sound) representing various moment: • classroom activity; • key players’ interviews (students, teacher, lab assistant, head teachers); • process analysis (7 key points): motivation, methods, tools, setting, obstacles and solutions, results, evaluation process. • Focus on emotions

11. Three different codes: Transfer the experience • Text and tutorials in order to allow teachers to repeat the experience in their contexts: • methodology used; • tools; • facilities; • context conditions; • competences involved. • Focus on learning to transfer (cognition)

12. Three different codes: Think over the experience • Interactiveenvironments in order to think over the educational process (all key players): • forum; • wikis (collaborative environments) for internal and external use; • references to theory; • links to other similar experiences; • dialogue with us (external experts) • Focus on metacognition

13. Other experimentations: The Tecno-inclusion project Tecno-inclusion is a project about educational practices of special needs teachers with disabled pupils. Teachers posted their materials, often of a low quality, especially at a narrative level. INDIRE is transforming this materials by adopting a multimedia policy of representation.

14. The transformation of some practices Example no. 1: My images School address, level, experience span time, authors, problem(s) The school posted the “bibliographic” data, the abstract, the textual description + some ppt material (very poor)

15. The effect on final users The teacher just posted these 4 ppt slides. We though that the effect would be very poor on final users. Our objective is to spread significant practices and we doubt that this material would reach this aim.

16. The multimedialization: a different representation My images, http://breeze.indire.it/immaginiprova

17. Example no. 2: Fear of speaking The school posted the “bibliographic” data, the abstract, the textual description + some images of the tools employed (traditional documentation), http://breeze.indire.it/pauradiparlare

18. Who’s to “document”? • The final representation of the practice, in our model, is made by an external group of researchers, based on the written material by the teacher and by on-place interviews and shooting. • This has some advantages: • more objectiveness; • double control on what is being illustrated; • added references (links to other practices, specialized bibliographies); • development of a dedicated environment (more complex/interactive); • less implicitness.

19. Designing the user experience As stated in the book Designing web navigation by James Kalbach (2007), we think that navigating on the Web also means experiencing something. Desirability is an important part of experiencing information. Thus, the subjective, emotional response to the site – that is the users’ spontaneous feelings about the site and the site’s owner – is all but peripheral.

20. The role of emotions Emotions play a significant role in the interface design. […] Research in psychology and neuroscience reveals a tight connection between affect and cognition: emotions are essential in human though. Emotions guides social interactions, influence decisions and judgments, affect basic understanding and can even control physical actions. […] People can no longer be modeled as purely goal-driven, task-solving agents when designing websites. They also have affective motivations for their choices and behaviour, which, more often than not, drive rational decision making. This implies an extended mandate for web design to include affective considerations.

21. Conclusion Documentation or film making? Our research group has now reached a challenging point: The meaning of educational documentation. We did not change the content and narrated the story starting by the written text/material. What we dramatically changed is the representation of the story. At the moment, we would like to test the teachers’ reactions. Anyway, the process of multimedialization is the same as a film making (script writing, use of the images, use of the music, use of the dialogues/audio speeches).

22. Bibliography • Kalbach James, Designing Web Navigation, O’Reilly, Sebastopol, 2007 • Fogg B.J., Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do, Morgan Kauffman, San Francisco 2002 • Card Stuart – Mackinlay Jock – Shneiderman Ben, Readings in Information Visualization, Morgan Kauffman, 1999 • Rosenfeld L., Morville P., Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, O'Reilly, Sebastopol,1998 • Norman A. Donald, The Design of Everyday Things, Doubleday, New York, 1990