Cooperative Inquiry: Developing New Technologies for Children with Children
I think one of larger questions motivating Druin's research is about what level of control users should have over their experiences with software. In "Close to the Machine," Ellen Ullman talked about the appeal of a completely configurable system. She saw it as not only acceptable, but desirable (at least in terms of her own use), that the structure of Unix would not prevent her from deleting the entire operating system. Obviously, this level of control would be highly undesirable to some users. My mother is one such user. As her liaison to computer science at large, my mother frequently tells me about frustrations with our computer at home. Her complaints usually fall into one of two categories. Either the computer won't do "what she wants it to do" or it "isn't straightforward enough for a regular person to operate." I see these two notions as intrinsically linked. In many cases, control is inversely proportional to ease of use -- think about the difference between a four-buttoned, customizable mouse as opposed to the single-button mouse provided with a Mac. Or how on one end of the spectrum you have users altering and recompiling their operating system, and on the other you have Microsoft Word surreptitiously making sure you don't type "thier" when you mean to type "their." All of this ties back to a quotation from the Scheffler reading: "We naturally tend to shrink our vision of the world to our mode of access to it." Druin seems to be suggesting that the mode of access that is educational software needs to be more reflective, from the outset, of students' visions of the world. This perspective is manifested in Druin's description of KidPad:
The act of zooming from one story object to the next, makes visually explicit where children are going and where they have been. In traditional applications that don't use zooming to navigate, different objects that are semantically related are linked visually by jumping from one object to the next (e.g., links on the web). Children have explained this as "closing your eyes and when you open them you're in a new place. Zooming lets you keep your eyes open."
If you could change one thing about the software you use on a regular basis, what would you change?
How are software designers to confer control to users? Does it make more sense to make software configurable by the user, or to involve the user in the design process? I touched on the control vs. ease of use problem for the former strategy... what other problems/challenges accompany either of the two strategies?
Focusing back on the paper at hand, how should control be conferred to children in educational software? How do contextual inquiry, participatory design, and technology immersion fit into this plan? Do you see the structural divisions Druin has set up to practice contextual inquiry (Time, Quotes, Activities...) as effective?
From the ideas laid out in the introduction, I assumed that Druin's study would allow kids to not only design in the abstract, but to go in and program using software tools (like the MicroWorlds software). As, I read on, I got the sense that the kids in the study did not have so direct a role. Regarding participatory design, is there a limit to the degree in which kids should be involved in the design of educational software? (How) do you think educational software companies should make students a part of the design process? (How) do you think we should do so in our projects?
Continuing along those lines, Ryan talked on Tuesday about the absence of a discussion of "why" one would study the particular civilizations of the Egyptians, the Vikings, and the Aztecs in the "How would you survive?" program. Who makes the "why" decisions and the particular nature of those decisions undoubtedly impacts the final experience that the user has. Should the control extended to students include control over the subject matter at hand, a la Schank and Cleary ("What kid would choose learning mathematics over learning about animals, trucks, sports, or whatever? Is there one? Good. Then teach him mathematics. Leave the others alone.")? How does one reconcile conferring this sort of control with competing concerns -- specifically, with regards to our projects?
Throughout her report, Druin uses language (*some examples) that suggests that she sees the children in her study as representative of Children, as a whole. In the questions I just wrote, fall into the similar trap of lumping all kids together in a single group. Is this appropriate? How would a study like this one or like the ACOT project differ if more focus were placed on the individual users involved rather than on their status as representatives of separate categories?
If one is forced to categorize when talking about user populations, what categories are valuable and what categories aren't? Is it valuable to talk about children vs. adults, children from rural areas vs. children from urban areas, pre-school age children vs. middle schoolers etc.?
At what point does software design become truly representative of its user population? Should the entire population have input, or is it acceptable to generalize based on examinations of a given group?
* "We found that when children saw a video camera in the room, they tended to 'perform' or 'freeze'."
"Interestingly enough, we found that child researchers had a difficult time being interactors. Children would tend to get involved in what was going on and forget that they were there to do research and should let the other child lead the action."
"We have found that children's activities are often more exploratory than task-directed, especially when children are not told what to do by an adult parent or teacher."
"In general, I have found that children ages 7-10 years old make the most effective prototyping partners. These children are verbal and self-reflective enough to discuss what they are thinking. They can understand the abstract idea of designing with low-tech prototyping tools that will be turned into future technologies. Children at this age, however, don't seem to be too heavily burdened with pre-conceived notions of the way things 'are supposed to be', something we typically see in children older than 10 years old."
Spaces for Change: Gender and Technology Access in Collaborative Software Design
Cynthia Carter Ching, Yasmin B. Kafai, and Sue K. Marshall
In papers that lay out the conclusions of academic studies or projects, there is a pattern that sometimes emerges regarding justification. As I see it, scholars often end up saying "This is the usual way of looking at things. It is insufficient because it lacks X. Here is my way of looking at things. My work is valuable because it includes X, whereas other work does not." Some who use this pattern suggest that their work should replace previous work, while others simply want it to be added to the existing literature. I think that, to some extent, Ching, Kafai, and Marshall's paper is an example of the latter form of this pattern. This is not problematic, as such but it does introduce some questions. Here, in particular, I think the question of correlation vs. causation is relevant. Ching, Kafai, and Marshall's "Implications" section notes that:
In talking about the implications our findings have for gender and technology research, we want to return to two of the driving forces behind our investigation: 1) the shortage of women's participation in computer science and related fields and 2) the issue of girls' access to technology in classroom communities. Currently when the majority of women choosing majors upon entering college have had prior experience with computers since elementary school, it seems to us that the two phenomena may be related.
Where should one look for the cause of unequal participation in computer science courses at the University level? What impact, if any, do you think widespread implementation of the types of mixed gender projects that this papers describes will have on the gender breakdown of University-level computer science classes?
Here, as in Engines for Education, the issue of what changes must be made in the classroom and what changes must be made in forums outside of the classroom seems to arise. For instance, it is not exactly clear how (when?) implementing the changes in the classroom suggested here will affect the phenomenon of boys being "more likely to see themselves depicted (as main characters)." However, the latter is given as a reason for gender inequity with computers. Can the classroom be used a catalyst for overall social change? Can it be used as a catalyst for change within a given school or school district? Who is best in a position to cause this (teachers, software designers, text book publishers, Mead)?
I think that this paper was far more effective than the book about the ACOT study in documenting methodology. Obviously part of the reason for this is that the project was only three months long. Ching, Kafai, and Marshall note that they could (and were forced to) employ methods different from those of projects that exist in a different timeframe. Druin also mentions time as a factor governing what level of input students have in the design of software. What timeframe is appropriate for a research project if its aim is to influence the way in which people actually go about teaching, designing software, etc.?
Considering that the metaphor they used was "space," it's ironic that the researchers were surprised that students were less inclined to write in notebooks (which everyone received) than to use the computers (which had to be shared). Obviously it's possible for researchers to influence the group that they are researching here they do it explicitly. Also, this study notes using videotape, which Druin suggests influences subjects. What level of participation is makes sense for researchers in educational software? How does the intervention here relate to the intervention in the ACOT project?
The authors of Spaces for Change note that their experiment was not objective in the that they intervened in the classroom, changing the physical configuration of the computers and adding the group meetings. If their strategies were to be implemented in schools, the teacher would presumably be the one responsible for that implementation. This would take control away from students in this case, the students were guiding their own learning process, just not in ways that fostered gender equity. For what reasons, and in what ways, should a teacher intervene in students' self-directed learning? How do the ideas in Spaces for Change square with those in Engines for Education, Software Goes to School, etc.?