8
Negotiation processes are important to group knowledge
building, but are rarely supported in online systems. The negotiation of wh=
at
is to count as mutually acceptable collaborative knowledge is difficult to
conduct when participants cannot interact face-to-face. In this chapter, I =
go
into more detail on negotiation support in BSCL. I review related w=
ork on
negotiation support, primarily by my German colleagues, and develop a conce=
pt
of “knowledge negotiation” that is appropriate for collaborative
learning in school courses. This concept is situated within the framework of
collaborative knowledge building viewed at the small-group unit of analysis=
; it
contrasts with negotiation as the reconciliation of multiple personal opini=
ons
through voting. I then describe the implementation of support for knowledge
negotiation in BSCL.
After this essay was published, I tried using the BSCL negotiation system =
in my
own classes back in the
Negotiation is a central phenomenon in cooperativ= e work and collaborative learning—specifically the negotiation of what is to count as new shared knowledge. While there has been considerable research on computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) lately, this has not been accompanied by discussion of computer software mechanisms to support negotiation within learning contexts.
CSCL systems are designed to support the building of s= hared knowledge, but rarely provide adequate support for establishing and identif= ying agreement on achieved knowledge artifacts. Such negotiation is conceptually different from the forms of negotiation supported in CSCW, GDSS and other business-oriented systems because in classroom collaborative learning it is= a matter of groups constructing new knowledge interactively, rather than maki= ng decisions based upon pre-defined options and existing opinions of individua= ls.
Consideration of computer support for negotiation has = arisen in the past primarily in relation to group decision-support systems (GDSS) = for use in industry (Connolly, 1997; K= raemer & Pinsonneault, 1990; Vogel et al., 1987). GDSS is a sub-area of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). Although = CSCW is a sister field to CSCL, its decision support, knowle= dge management and social awareness mechanisms have not yet been adapted for CS= CL applications. This chapter continues the preceding discussion in chapter 7 = of how one can adapt a CSCW approach to a CSCL context by re-thinking the natu= re of the interactions within these differing contexts. Specifically, it focus= es on adapting the role of negotiation and arguing for a concept of “knowle= dge negotiation.”
The approach to knowledge negotiation support in the r= evised version of BSCL (or Synergeia) is integrated within a s= et of software components designed for collaborative learning, including virtu= al learning spaces, perspectives, community roles, knowledge building, thinking types and concept maps. Knowledge negotiation is implemented to control the publication and transfer of ideas, documents, drawings and other artifacts = or sets of items from a small project group perspective into the perspective o= f a larger community of learners in a course.
Knowledge negotiation involves evolving a group knowle= dge artifact to a mutually acceptable status for publication, rather than reach= ing consensus on a pre-existing choice of personal opinions. Asynchronous suppo= rt for such negotiation must allow for:
· the proposal of a set of items for considera= tion as a shared knowledge artifact,
· the discussion of desired modifications to t= his artifact,
· carrying out the actual changes to the items= ,
· discussion of remaining misgivings,
· signaling readine= ss to accept and publish the artifact for access by a larger community.
The question I faced as designer of BSCL (the
asynchronous component of Synergeia) was
how to support negotiation among students. Collaborative learning in classr=
ooms
has different requirements for sharing knowledge than what is supported by =
BSCW<=
/span>
for professional teams. For instance, BSCW is used
primarily for knowledge management—the sharing and manipulation of
knowledge that already exists somewhere within the workgroup—while
This chapter follows the historical sequence of my app= roach. I began by considering relevant explorations of negotiation in CSCW (see section 2), particularly those of Herr= mann and Wulf that had been used in systems related = to BSCW<= /span>. Then I reflected on the role of negotiation in collaborative learning (section 3), based on the major theoretical frameworks for CSCL. From this, I identified various concepts of negotiation associated= with alternative possible support mechanisms (section 4). I developed a concept = of “knowledge negotiation” that seemed most suited for BSCL as an adaptation of BSCW to lear= ning scenarios (section 5). This notion may be relevant for many CSCW contexts as well. I implemented support for kno= wledge negotiation among students in small workgroups (section 6), and then studied negotiation in classrooms = using BSCL<= /span> (section 7).
Negotiation is a process by which a group of peop= le who are working together arrive at a group decision. The usual approach to conceptualizing and supporting this process within CSCW was not quite what I wanted for my concept of collaborative knowledge building. I will here revi= ew some of the approaches that I critiqued and extended.
Within traditions of computer science (or informa= tics), it is common to model negotiation as a voting process. This is not only a result of the implicit acceptance of rationalist philosophy and of modeling human communication as information processing, but arises also for pragmatic implementation reasons:
· Rationalism assumes that people have ideas already existing in their heads (Winograd & Flores, 1986)—in the form of expressible propositions, mental representations or brain state= s—that they can then express verbally as opinions on the basis of which they may v= ote on various issues posed to them.
· Communication theory derived from the information processing tradition (Shannon & Wea= ver, 1949) implicitly builds on the rationalist model and construes communication as t= he transfer of such pre-existing opinions (as data) through (error-prone) medi= a.
· Implementation of computer support tends to accept these models because computers necessarily represent explicit information, such as propositional representations of explicit opinions (see chapters 4, 14 and 20). They can easily respond to small numbers of clearly pre-defined options, such as yes/no votes.
Thus, when we look for examples of support for negotia= tion in CSCW, we find that they often reduce negotiation processes to voting processes, assuming that the goal is to collect and respond appropriately t= o a set of opinions that already exist in the minds of the individual system us= ers. In particular, this is true of GDSS systems that frequently include a compo= nent for conducting straw votes (Connolly, 1997; K= raemer & Pinsonneault, 1990). Straw votes, by defini= tion, are a means of measuring pre-existing personal opinions, with little attemp= t to influence them or to build group consensus. The goal here is typically to provide support for collecting the opinions of participants about some fixed issue, with the assumption that differences of opinion are based in personal structures of preferences, in differing interests or in limitations of information about the opinions of other participants (Lim & Benbasat, 1993; McGrath, 1993; N= unamaker Jr. et al., 1991). Thus, GDSS support usu= ally focuses on expressing, collecting and possibly influencing participant opinions, rather than on altering the subject matter under consideration.
Herrmann (Stahl & Herrm= ann, 1998) proposed a notion of negotiation that goes significantly beyond the simple voting model. He and his students developed an approach to computer-support= ed negotiation over the years, and have designed and/or prototyped it in a num= ber of software systems (Herrmann, 1995; Herrmann et al., 1996; Herrmann= & Kienle, 2002), including a simulation= of negotiation (Lepperhoff, 2001). He has reviewed related CSCW and GDSS research, and has developed a socio-t= echnical model for his approach to negotiation. His examples involve group decisions= for knowledge management, such as what categories should be used to organize a shared bibliography.
In Herrmann’s approach, someone makes a proposal= and the other group members can vote on the proposal. They always have an opportunity to comment on their vote. In addition, they can make a counter-proposal or call for discussion outside of the computer support sys= tem. Although this approach goes beyond a simple yes/no voting system with optio= ns for counter-proposals and for switching communication media, it is still ba= sed on a model of negotiation as voting. This approach serves well to conduct a quick poll to see where agreement does or does not already exist, but canno= t well support re-framing or co-construction of knowledge. It recognizes the frequ= ent need for people to engage in more complex processes of interaction to settl= e a negotiation issue and allows for people to leave the computer support syste= m to do this, but provides little automated support for their consequent decisio= ns to affect the knowledge in the system.
Wulf (Stiemerling & Wulf, 2000; Wulf, 2001; Wulf et al., 2001) proposed further extensions of the voting model, now applied to function activation rather than decisions. His examples include the right of an individual to access a specific document created by another member of the group. The empirical cases he cites from governmental bureaucracies might b= est be considered examples of moderated, rather than negotiated, activation. The primary actors do not engage in negotiation with one another, but agree to = have their interactions mediated by trusted third parties or public procedures, including automated procedures in a computer support system.
Applied to CSCW systems, the issue is whether a partic= ular user should have access to a specific system function, such as editing a document. Wulf has developed a formal Petri net= model of negotiation approaches, but oriented to the question of activation. This paradigm may work for situations with fixed options, such as access to a defined system function, but not in the general situation in which a group = is collaborating to produce group knowledge through exploration and inquiry.
Individual learning, as a process of constructing personal knowledge, takes place within a learner’s personal perspecti= ve (Boland & Tenkasi, 1995; Nygaard &a= mp; Sørgaard, 1987) (see chapter 4). Collaborative learning involves an interaction among personal perspectives contributed by the participants and a merging of these into a group perspec= tive definitive of the group discourse. There have been scattered attempts to formulate a conceptualization of perspectives that would lend itself to computer support. The Phidias system was an early attempt to display a database of design rationale notes according to different “contexts” (McCall et al., 1990); this was subsequently re-implemented in Hermes (see chapter 4), where shared contents were displayed within different professional or personal perspectives.
Stahl & Herrmann (1998; Stahl & Herrmann, 1999) proposed an approach to integrating Herrmann’s negotiation and Stahl&= #8217;s perspective mechanisms within a single software system, WebGuide, th= at they designed specifically to explore these mechanisms. The motivation for = this was the following: On the one hand, negotiation takes time, and group membe= rs may want to continue working on a topic while it is under negotiation—= ;perspectives allows them to continue to work in their own perspective while contents of a group perspective are being negotiated. On the other hand, within individual perspectives there is a strong tendency for ideas to diverge (Hewitt & Teplovs, 1999)—negotiation is re= quired to bring ideas back into consensus and to promote individual ideas to the status of group knowledge. So it seemed that integrating perspective and negotiation mechanisms—and conceptualizing negotiation as the intertwining of multiple personal perspectives to arrive at a shared perspective—would mutually solve the central problems of these two mechanisms.
While the perspectives mechanism has by now been exten= sively implemented in WebGuide (see chapter 6), the corresponding negotiation mechanism is still missing in that system. The lack of an appropriate negotiation mechanism was already reported as a serious limitation of WebGuide at the 1999 CSCL, Group and WebNet conferences (e.g., Stahl & Herrmann, 1999). The delay in implementing negotiation support in WebGuide was largely a result of the feeling that the voting model of negotiation did not seem appropriate for CSCL uses of groupware. Recent reflections on the rela= tion of perspectives to knowledge building suggest that a different, more dialogical, concept of negotiation is called for (see chapter 11).
To appreciate the role of negotiation in CSCL, co= nsider the centrality of negotiation within each of the different theoretical frameworks that have historically dominated this field:
Small-group process. This approach to cooperative (sic, not collaborative) learning maintains a view of learning as transfer of information from teacher to students, and conducts experiments = to demonstrate the increase in individual learning outcomes through group work= in classrooms (Johnson & Joh= nson, 1989). A typical approach would be to divide up topics within a course and assign = the topics to small groups; the small groups would negotiate agreed upon solutions to their topic; the different groups would then share their solutions with the larger group, for instance using procedures like “jig-sawing” (Brown & Campione, 1994).
Social constructivism. Knowledge is socially co-constructed (Vygotsky, 1930/1978) before it may be internalized by children based on what they are capable of understanding. This social co-construction is a negotiation process by which shared understanding is reached ab= out a “knowledge object” or knowledge “artifact” (Bereiter, 2002) (see chapter 15).
Distance educa= tion. Even when peer interaction is possible in distance education, for instance = with threaded discussion software, it is hard to encourage sustained, in-depth knowledge building; discussions tend to diverge without some form of negotiation to bring different people’s ideas back together (Hewitt & Teplovs, 1999).
Distributed problem-based learning. Originally developed for medical educati= on, PBL is built around problem cases, like patients presenting illness symptom= s that a group of about five students and a tutor attempt to diagnose. The group negotiates lists of problem statem= ents, key evidence, working hypotheses and learning issues. Then the individual students research relevant medical theories and come back to the group to renegotiate the group understandin= g. The tutor plays a key role in guiding the negotiation (Barrows, 1994).
Distributed cognition. Knowledge is not simply a matter of an individualR= 17;s mental representations, but is frequently distributed among the abilities of group members and the artifacts that they use (Hutchins, 1996). Accordingly, knowledge= is co-constructed by interactions among people and their shared artifacts, including prominently by means of n= egotiation practices that result in establishing a common ground for understanding.
Situated learning. This approach views learning in terms of changing relations within the community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Like situated action theory (Suchman, 1987) and ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967)<= !--[if supportFields]>, the situated learning = approach looks at how people skillfully interact socially to co-construct and interactively negotiate knowled= ge, rather than at individuals as possessors of explicit propositional knowledg= e.
Cultural-historical activity theory. Learning is viewed as it takes place over exten= ded periods of time and within its broad cultural and historical contexts. It is even possible to track “expansive learning” in which multiple groups negotiate changes to the existing social arrangements (Engeström, 1999). Here, ag= ain, socially shared artifacts play a significant role in providing a focus to negotiations.
It is possible to conceptualize collaborative learning= in different ways, focusing on various units of analysis as seen above. Howeve= r, in each approach some form of negotiation plays a central role in the learn= ing process. In order to design computer support for negotiation in collaborati= ve learning, it is necessary to specify an appropriate concept of such negotiation.
The concept of negotiation as voting seems inadeq= uate for CSCL. In particular, the negotiation of what is to count as new shared knowledge for a group engaged in collaborative knowledge building has diffe= rent characteristics from other forms of group decision making. Such negotiation might be called “knowledge negotiation” because it is not just a matter of selecting among alternative existing states (propositions, propos= als, activation functions), but of constructing new knowledge through collaborat= ive interaction and discourse. The new knowledge is typically represented by or embodied in a shared “knowledge artifact,” such as a concept, theory, text or folder of structured information.
There is an important theoretical difference concernin= g the unit of analysis. We conceptualize knowledge negotiation as a group knowledge-building process, = rather than as a process involving individ= uals and their personal opinions. In CSCW negotiation, such as Herrmann’s model, commenting on one’s voting serves the purpose of expressing on= e’s supposedly pre-existing opinion. In BSCL, engaging in neg= otiational knowledge building is participating in a group reflection on shared knowled= ge. This difference can be seen in the thinking types of the notes contributed.= In CSCW systems like BSCW, the note format stresses who the author is and may characterize the note as= a “pro” or “con” opinion; in BSCL the note must first of all be determi= ned to be a particular aspect of the group’s knowledge-building process, = such as a problem statement, a working theory or a summary statement before a student can begin to construct a note. Knowledge negotiation is thereby explicitly structured as part of a collaborative group effort.
Knowledge negotiation is at heart quite different= from voting. It is, in its paradigmatic forms, a nuanced give-and-take, whose ai= m is to reach a solution that did not already exist in any participant’s opinion, but that is ultimately made acceptable to all. It often involves compromises, whereby one participant gives way in part to another’s w= ish in order to get the other to give in partially to one’s own position. Negotiation is a way people respond to non-routinized<= /span>, “wicked” or ill-defined problems—where reaching agreement often involves re-framing the issues (Rittel & Webber, 1984).
The negotiation process as bargaining is not well mode= led as a series of pre-existing positions, among which the group must vote. Nor is= it well modeled as a series of positions and counter-positions among which the group must choose. In a negotiation process, typically multiple starting positions interact and evolve through a series of changing alternatives unt= il a single consensus position is reached through discourse. The discussion is a subtle political interaction that brings many aspects of power, motivation = and persuasion into play; it is a sophisticated linguistic process that cannot = be algorithmically interpreted. In the end, when a consensus is reached (or no= t), there is often little need for a vote because agreement (or agreement to disagree) has already been established. The purpose of a vote would be to signal within a support system that everyone agreed that a consensus had be= en reached.
Negotiation may be conceptualized as a much broad= er phenomenon than the process of making a joint decision about pre-specified actions (or explicit access permissions). Collaborative knowledge building, itself, can be viewed as fundamentally a knowledge negotiation process. Proposed statements of knowledge by individuals are subjected to collaborat= ive interactions, whereby meanings of terms are clarified, alternative related statements are compared, linguistic expressions are refined, warrants are scrutinized, etc. (see chapter 9).
Through these activities, the original suggestion is transformed; through broadening consensus, the resultant expression increasingly takes on the status of socially established knowledge. Simulta= neously, this process establishes a “common ground” of understanding concerning the meaning of the accepted expression and its constituent terms= (Baker et al., 1999). This does not necessar= ily mean that every individual involved fully understands and accepts this comm= on ground in his or her own mind, but rather that a group understanding has be= en established in the discourse of the community in which this knowledge is thereby accepted. The co-constructed knowledge is often embodied in some fo= rm of cultural artifact, such as a text or slogan; the common ground provides a basis for the meaning that the artifact encapsulates to be understood in a shared way by the collaborative community.
The shift to understanding group interactions in more dialogical terms as co-construction within a discourse community has implications for the design of groupware: away from automated selection amo= ng alternatives, toward greater emphasis on supporting communication among sys= tem users. Accordingly, it is necessary to design an appropriate mechanism for = the support of knowledge negotiation in situations of collaborative learning al= ong these lines.
BSCL is an adaptation and extension of the= BSCW<= /span> system for collaborative learning applications in schools. It assigns roles= of teacher and student, that define the available functionality and access rights of the users. Courses are usually split into smaller workgroups (typically comprising about 3 to 7 students) that pursue specific learning goals and produce group products or portfolios.
Each student, workgroup and course has an associated &= #8220;virtual learning place,” i.e., a folder in which information and ideas are collected, typically in the form of documents, notes, links to Web pages and discussion threads. Learning places may be hierarchically structured in sub-folders. The default structure of learning places supports the concept = of perspectives: There are personal, workgroup and course perspectives for students collaborating in workgroups within larger academic courses. Teache= rs and students can use BSCW operations to create other kinds of folder structures, but the structure to support typical workgroup collaborative activities is generated automatical= ly by BSCL as the default.
For the knowledge-building process, students typi= cally collect information and ideas for a learning project in their personal or g= roup learning places. They share and discuss these in the group learning place. = The essential task of a workgroup is to produce a group report or “knowle= dge-building portfolio” from collected materials and the associated discussions, a= nd place the report and related materials in the course learning place for students from other groups to view and discuss.
Within an academic setting, such a contribution to the course learning place may count as the group’s final product or work portfolio, displayed as the group’s knowledge, shared with the other course members so they can learn from it and comment on it. It may also be evaluated by the teacher or others once it has reached this stage.
In BSCW, any user would be able to copy objec= ts from a group to a course learning place. Because of the requirements of the school setting, it is important that a workgroup has reached a consensus on= what may count as (and be evaluated as) their group product. This requires a negotiation function.
In a CSCW system, access rights and access functions m=
ay be
specified to an arbitrary degree of precision. This determines whether a gi=
ven
user can execute a given operation under various conditions—or in
In designing BSCL, I was primarily concerned with transitions of knowledge from the group perspective to the course perspecti= ve. Here I wanted to bring to light any conflict within the group about promoti= ng a knowledge artifact to the class perspective as a product of the group.
The discussion process within a workgroup may alr= eady be considered as an implicit knowledge negotiation process. However, in the= BSCL<= /span> system we make this process fully explicit to the users by commencing a for= mal negotiation when a member of a workgroup proposes to promote a group knowle= dge artifact to the corresponding course perspective.
Operationally, the difference between the CSCL knowled= ge negotiation that is proposed here and a voting approach is that the real negotiation action is in the evolution of the knowledge artifact proposed for agreement, and not in the voting process itself. What is needed is to allow a proposed knowledge artifact to be successively changed by the negotiating parties until all (o= r a substantial majority) of them agree that the object is now an acceptable representation of the group knowledge. This knowledge negotiation process m= ay proceed as follows:
· A member of the group proposes that a specif= ic knowledge artifact (a set of folders, documents, ideas, or threaded discuss= ion) be promoted to the course perspective. Criteria for the acceptance of the proposal (e.g., agreement by 74% of the group within two weeks) has already been set by the teacher for the whole class.
· The knowledge artifact is made available for= all group members to modify—i.e., the object proposed for negotiation has group access rights—within a negotiation interface at the group perspective level.
· A threaded discussion area is made available= for the group members to negotiate changes to the artifact, including the state= ment of reasons and suggestions for acceptable modifications.
· At any point, a member can vote to accept or reject the artifact in its current state. These votes can be withdrawn at a= ny time, e.g., when a group member has made a counter-proposal which is consid= ered more appropriate or as the knowledge artifact is modified.
· When the preset criteria for acceptance are = met, the artifact is automatically published in the class learning place. There = is a time limit for group approval; however, this is often moot since the group = is usually strongly motivated to agree on final knowledge products in order to produce their portfolio and complete their work assignment.
In this approach, the voting interface can be extremely simple—for instance a button for the current user to signify agreement with the current version of the proposed artifact. See the check (agree) an= d X (disagree) buttons of the voting interface in figure 7-4 of the previous chapter.
The important point for the knowledge negotiation proc= ess is the possibility for a participant to state his or her reasons for withholdi= ng agreement in terms of dissatisfaction with the current state of the knowled= ge artifact. Thus, an adequate interface for the negotiation dialog is needed,= in which students can formulate, exchange and react to disagreements so that t= he knowledge artifact can be modified in a direction that is likely to promote consensus. The knowledge negotiation interface therefore includes its own threaded discussion—the “group negotiation perspective” discussion space that is automatically generated for each proposal is a gro= up knowledge-building area like that in figure 7-3 of the previous chapter. Wh= en students vote, they must provide statements explaining their vote; these statements are further discussed. At the conclusion of negotiation, this threaded discussion represents the history of negotiation and implicitly reflects changes that have been made to the knowledge artifact as part of t= he knowledge negotiation, including the rationale. It can also include summary statements or a minority opinion, for instance.
The implementation of negotiation in BSCL<= /span> is intended to allow teachers to define course learning spaces that contain only shared knowledge. The knowledge in this area is contributed by groups = as such, not by individuals. It comes from group learning spaces and represent= s a consensus of the thinking of the members of that group. In the course area there is a threaded discussion area where all course members can reflect up= on the group portfolios and build further shared knowledge on that basis at the level of the course as a whole.
In many cases, such a strict regulation of contributio= ns will prove impractical and cumbersome. Therefore, BSCL gives teachers certain powers to short-cut or over-ride the negotiation procedure= s. Most importantly, a teacher can cause a proposal folder to be published to = the course without waiting for the voting threshold to be reached. For instance, the teacher might conduct a face-to-face negotiation with the group and then publish the folder on that basis. Going in the other direction, a teacher m= ight feel that an already published portfolio has not been carefully enough discussed and refined, and send it back for more work and renegotiation. The teacher can also change the voting threshold for contributions to a course.=
Within BSCL, teachers generally have the right to copy items between folders, including student work from group folders into course folders. However, when they do this using the new negotiation functi= ons, the copied items are clearly marked as having been moved by the teacher from the specific group, incorporating the CSCW principle of visibility recommen= ded by Herrmann and Wulf.
The negotiation of what is to count as shared kno= wledge is an essential aspect of cooperative knowledge work and collaborative learning. When the interaction that creates this knowledge does not take pl= ace face-to-face, computer support for negotiation can play an important role. I have tried to develop an appropriate concept of knowledge negotiation based= on a survey of theoretical frameworks for CSCL and a critical review of related concepts of negotiation in CSCW, particularly the concept of negotiation in= the systems of Herrmann and Wulf.
The shared knowledge typically aimed at by knowledge-b= uilding efforts in CSCL is not taken to be objectively given; it is socially sancti= oned within a community. The support implemented in BSCL is desi= gned to scaffold the social process of constituting shared knowledge in a group.= Requiring all knowledge in a course workspace to originate in a smaller project group forces the shared knowledge building of the course community to be mediated= by the smaller, more tractable working groups. These groups mediate between the individual and the community in a series of manageable steps. The proposal folders that get negotiated by the groups form another layer of organization for ideas and documents, and the proposals themselves function as knowledge artifacts-in-the-making.
In transforming a CSCW infrastructure into a CSCL envi= ronment, we have had to give considerable thought to the definition of appropriate r= oles and activation rights for the different kinds of actors (e.g., students of different ages, teachers, mentors, guests) within educational social settin= gs. The work spaces or learning places had to be designed to correspond with th= ese roles and to appropriately house the knowledge-building and knowledge-negot= iation processes.
In adapting the concept of negotiation to collaborative learning, we have defined “knowledge negotiation” as a phase of collaborative knowledge building, taken as an activity at the group unit of analysis. This form of negotiation does not simply reconcile multiple perso= nal opinions, but helps to construct and confirm new shared group knowledgeR= 12;and makes it public for the larger community.
The mechanisms for negotiating shared knowledge in face-to-face situations are part of what it means to be human; we need to evolve similar mechanisms that will seem natural and effective in CSCL syst= ems.