The task-centric revolution. Weaving information into workflows

1. The task-centric revolution. Weaving information into workflows Dagobert Soergel College of Information Studies LACASIST 2009-02-05

2. Disclaimer This talk pulls together many ideas many old, some new many other people’s, some mine some implemented here and there, some still awaiting implementation The point is the total vision

3. Computer work must be organized not around applications but around tasks Functional or vertical integration

4. Tasks are accomplished collaboratively Collaboration Cross-user or horizontal integration

5. FunctionalIntegration Collaborator User in focus Collaborator Search Search Search Sense making Task oriented processing Sense-making Sense-making Creating Creating Creating work product Collaboration History-aware personal information store.  Planning History / PIM History / PIM Ontology Support Ontology S. Ontology S.

6. Outline • The digital library of the future ─ DELOS • CLASS. A Collaborative Lesson-planning And Search System ─ Katy Lawley • Sense-making ─ Pengyi Zhang • History-aware personal information store ─ Anita Komlodi • Relevance relationships ─ Xiaoli Huang

7. The digital library of the future: A look at the DELOS vision DELOS Network of Excellence in Digital Libraries Now the DELOS association Funded by the EU, >50 DL research groups as members

8. The digital library of the future A broad system of interlinked information & services that • Is person- and task-centric • Provides rich seamlessly integrated functionalityDL = information + tools to process information • Supports process execution and workflowin business, government, and daily work • Supports user-to user communication & collaboration • Supports users as consumers and as contributorsSupports massive collaboration leveraging many small contributions to construct very large resources (e.g., Wikipedia, social tagging) • Thus, supports new ways of intellectual work

9. Issues in research and teaching • User studies to • develop a truly user-centric view of computer-supported functionality • learn how users could and would collaborate if properly supported • Methods for deriving rich user profiles with minimal active user involvement, including discovery of users’ conceptual structures • Interfaces that use a well-structured ontology(a faceted classification, an entity-relationship model) to • help users analyze a problem they face or a search topic • help users over time to assimilate the ontology structure • Usability, effectiveness, and impact of such interfaces

10. Issues in research and teaching • The core issue of ontologies / classifications / tagging schemes • Capturing individual and shared understandings of the concepts in a domain • Expressing these understandings in a structured way to communicate a common understanding within a community • Supporting individual users in developing their own ontology • Collaborative development of ontologies • Automatic integration or harmonization of ontologies • Integrated storage and search of documents and data in many formats and degrees of structure • Annotation, communication, and collaboration functionality • Seamless integration of multiple systems and tools

11. CLASS A Collaborative Lesson-planning And Search System Katy Lawley

12. CLASS functionality The design of a lesson planning system

13. A knowledge organization infrastructure that fosters development of shared understandings and supports organization of materials. • Mediated access to digital libraries containing many types of materials with powerful, ontology-enhanced search 3 Intellectual property rights and access management 4 A collaborative template-based authoring system with annotation facility 5 Communication functionality 6 Integration with the teachers total work environment, including lesson plan evaluation 7 Interaction history. Customization and personalization, adaptive 8 An interface that provides easy access to all this functionality 9 Extensibility

14. CLASS walk-through

15. Figure 1. Opening screen for creating a lesson plan

16. Figure 2. Lesson plan outline

17. Figure 2. Lesson plan outline

18. Figure 3. Selection of applicable standards

19. Figure 4. Selection of applicable vocabulary words

20. Figure 5. Query formulation for a theme in the lesson planning module

21. Figure 6a. Browse the thesaurus

22. Figure 6b. Descriptor found in detailed information for soldiers

23. Figure 7. Display of results

24. Figure 8a. Segment Display. Detailed information about the segment

25. Figure 8a. Segment Display. Detailed information about the segment

26. Figure 8b. Segment Assessment. The full form

27. Figure 8b. Segment Assessment. The full form

28. Figure 8c. Segment Display and Segment Assessment sharing the screen

29. Figure 9. Interview segment added to lesson plan module

30. 1 Knowledge organization infrastructure Foster development of shared understandings among users and support organization of materials. This includes 1.1 A lesson plan template that lays out the components of a lesson plan. 1.2 A query template to assist in formulating queries for learning objects and other materials. 1.3 A material appraisal form using the same structure as the query template, same structure as 1.2. 1.5 A hierarchy of educational standards from several jurisdictions. 1.4 A thesaurus / classification of topics in each accessed database domain that is useful for searching and for giving teachers content ideas.

31. 6 Integration with the teacher’s total work environment 6.1 Associate lesson plans with time slots for a given class. 6.2 Prepare requests for permission to use materials as needed. 6.3 Have material, such as quizzes, prepared in sufficient number or arrange for electronic administration. 6.4 Order equipment needed as specified in the lesson plan. 6.5 Notify the school library media specialist of assignments that require the use of the school library media center. 6.6 Have a function for recording grades and importing detailed standardized test scores (broken down by educational standard).

32. Experience with CLASS • Teachers were able to search the archive. • Teachers used the materials appraisal form for their own purposes (not enough critical mass for collaboration). • Teachers were able to develop well-structured lesson plans in a short time. • Teachers indicated that they do not collaborate much at present but would be inclined to collaborate more if they had a tool like CLASS.

33. Sense-making Pengyi Zhang

34. Beyond Search Beyond search: Users need support for the next step: making sense of and applying large quantities of information found.

35. Outline • What is sense-making? • Examples • Theoretical framework and comprehensive sense-making model • Findings from a pilot study • Conclusions on the design of sense-making systems

36. Sense-making Sense-making is the process of creating an understanding of a problem or task so that further actions may be taken in an informed manner (Stefik et al., 1999).

37. Sense-making • Sense-making is a pre-requisite for many other tasks such as decision making and problem solving; • Sense-making involves making clear the interrelated concepts and their relationships in a problem or task space.

38. Sense-making examples

39. Sample Sense-making Scenario 1 Task T1: al-Bashir(Abridged Version) The US wants to take action to towards a resolution of the Darfur conflict . Al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, is one of the key players in the area who is believed to have significant responsibility for continuous conflicts in the region. The administration needs to know as much as possible about al-Bashir in order to better negotiate with the involved parties and strategize its efforts. Your task is to produce a report that identifies information to assess the influence of al-Bashir and makes recommendations for policy decisions and diplomatic actions. Requested information includes: • key figures, organizations, and countries who have been associated with al-Bashir; • his rise to power; and • groups who have resisted him and the level of success in their resistance.

41. Sample Sense-making Scenario 2 Task T2: Energy Security (Abridged Version) At present, U.S. energy security depends on a range of countries across the globe, many of which could be characterized as politically unstable and afflicted with war, piracy and terrorism. Your task is to produce a report of the geopolitics of oil in the major suppliers of U.S., including Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Algeria, etc. Requested information includes: • the political, economic, and military status of major oil suppliers; • threats to U.S. oil supplies; • transit chokepoints of world oil.

42. Sample Think-aloud Protocol with Coding

43. Example Concepts and Relationships

44. Sample Sense-making Scenario 3 Task Write a newspaper article on the role of energy policy in the presidential campaign.

45. Candidates positions on energy. Take 1

46. Candidates positions on energy. Take 2

47. Theoretical Framework Sense-making models • Generic sense-making models • Sense-making models of intelligence analysis • Conducting research as sense-making • Organizational sense-making • Individual vs. collaborative sensemaking • Cognition • Types of conceptual changes • Cognitive mechanisms • Cognitive structures of knowledge • Learning • Schema theory • Assimilation theory • Generative Learning Theory • Structural knowledge acquisition

48. Sense-making Elements Activities Mechanisms Outcomes Processes Sensing • Inductive, data-driven • Key item extraction • Comparison • Schema induction • Generalization Accretion Identification of gaps Tuning Search Making sense Exploratory search Focused search Restructuring • Deductive, structure-driven • Definition • Specification • Elimination • Explanation • Inference For data For structure Building structure • Other • Metaphor • Classification • Semantic fit • Socratic dialogues Instantiating structure Consuming instantiated structure

49. An Iterative Sense-making Model The iterations proceed from exploratory to focused search and sense-making. Task / Problem Identification of Gaps Data loop Outcomes Updated knowledge Search:exploratory / focused Existing Knowledge Structures and their instantiations with data Accretion: Instantiated structure Searchingfor data Instantiating structure Data gap Tuning:Adapted structure Searching for structure Building structure Structure gap Decision / Solution / Task completion Re-structuring: New structure Structure loop

50. Findings – Search and Sense-making Loops • The overall search and sense-making loops followed four stages: • Task analysis • Exploratory stage • Focused stage • Updates of knowledge representation. • Reasons for starting a new loop of search and sense-making: • Success of previous sense-making • Failure of previous sense-making • New lead • Failure of search