TO: KDI KN LIS NCC

A study of the creation, evolution, and life cycles

of interdisciplinary problem-oriented research collaboratories

An investigation into the technological literacy of American Scientists

Proposal from

The TWU Collaboratory proposes to use existing technology and to apply its collective mind in protracted study to address the fundamental questions raised in the Knowledge Networking (KN) component of KDI: how are new levels of interactivity, and flows of information and knowledge among people, organizations and communities formed? TWU's Collaboratory will also address questions raised in the Learning and Intelligent Systems (LIS) component of KDI: specifically, how to promote the development and use of learning technologies across a broad range of fields, particularly the formal and informal learning situations and the social system of human collaboration via technology. The TWU Collaboratory will also explore questions raised by the New Computational Challenges (NCC) initiative. Specifically we seek to understand how the focus and knowledge gained while studying the questions raised in the first two KDI components can be applied within the KDI program itself in order to discover and interpret models of complex systems supporting scholarly research.

The TWU Collaboratory seeks to understand how new knowledge is attained, and how it is integrated and passed within and between multidimensional levels of scholars across time and space. We seek to know how people make meaning together online. The "Creating Human Collaboratories" portion of this research starts as a self-study which expands into institutional and cross-institutional research on the human, behavioral, social, ethical and informational dimensions of knowledge networking. It will focus on human tools and methods to leverage and maximize existing technological resources in order to understand how to enhance and progress collaborative activity. Our intent is to discover and impact the level of technological literacy among scientists generally, and to compel and impact the development of next generation collaboratory tools. The "Creating Human Collaboratories" study will develop a life-cycle model of the human environment in which these tools will be applied.

The "Creating Human Collaboratories" multiphase study will address the principal question, "Why do scholars collaborate online?" The interdisciplinary question collaborating scientists will explore is the definition and development of measurement instruments for levels of technological literacy. This is the "Third Level Literacy" Component

The object of the TWU Collaboratory's "Third Level Literacy" Component is to develop and disseminate an online literacy assessment tool, and to create an associative training model designed to facilitate exponential literacy within the researcher community. This study will inform the overarching "Creating Human Collaboratories" study which, through exploration of the conception, evolution and life cycles of the problem-centered interdisciplinary collaboratory, will determine whether a viable inter-researcher collaboratory intermediation tool might be developed.

Together, "Creating Human Collaboratories" and the "Third Level Literacy" component provide the structure to address the two primary goals of KN: to understand the fundamental processes though which knowledge is created, communicated, validated and valued in natural and engineered information systems; and to gain understanding which will lead to improved technical, social, educational and economic performance of knowledge generation and use, collaborative computation, and remote interaction.

We seek to discover why minds make an intellectual connection online and how science may benefit by a deeper understanding of the process. We seek to know how individual and collaborative scholars, researchers, institutions, and programs might facilitate a harmonious concert of such links, and how shared meaning is achieved.

A comprehensive search of the many online collaboratory projects, and of the scientific literature, indicates this aspect of the collaboratory puzzle is not being rigorously addressed despite being squarely raised as a significant concern in the early documents which launched national interest in the collaboratory concept:

We intend to address the KN objectives broadly and multidimensionally. Our study is emergent. Specifically, the "Creating Human Collaboratories" study and its "Third Level Literacy" Component are designed to study, model and map, and simultaneously enhance communication across disciplines while improving the processing and integration of knowledge from a variety of sources. We will do this by learning to leverage and maximize existing technologies in a collaboratory environment specifically conceived in this proposal to uncover the factors that will lead to exponential technology literacy in the broader research realm, and serve the NSF's underlying need.

We intend to provide an opportunity for a variety of willing scholars from a variety of disciplines and environments to apply their minds to the identification of methods that increase the effectiveness of teams, organizations, classrooms and communities that work together across distance and over time. We intend to deepen understanding of the ethical, legal and social implications of new developments in connectivity. We will do this by modeling the life cycle of the TWU Collaboratory as it develops, expands, explores and comes to discover new ways of thinking, teaching and sharing its knowledge. We will do this by using the tools of KDI: thinking and communicating.

The TWU Collaboratory seeks to specifically address the KDI/KN imperative to study the physical, behavioral and organizational design of knowledge networks and electronic collaborative environments by establishing an arena for decision making, data gathering, analysis, and problem solving, and to study it. The "Third Level Literacy" normative problem framed by the "Creating Human Collaboratories" empirical study will be used by scholars individually within their disciplines, and collectively as an interdisciplinary effort, as a platform to conduct basic research into the social, political, ethical and economic characteristics of information flow and interaction by defining and measuring levels of technological literacy.

For the purpose of the proposal, first level literacy, or channel or computer literacy, is defined as those skills that allow the scholar to establish a comfortable and self-sufficient relationship with the personal computer. Second level literacy, or content or information literacy, is defined as those skills that allow the scholar to establish a comfortable and self-sufficient relationship with remote or networked computers, including the ability to interact with, extract from, and contribute relevant and pertinent data objects to the global information base. Third level literacy, or contextual or communication literacy, is defined as those skills that allow the scholar to establish mind-to-mind, or interpersonal relationships with other scholars via the computer. It is on this third level of literacy that the KDI vision of collaborating researchers rests.

 It is a premise of this study that third level literacy is not common among scientists. We believe that a keener understanding of factors leading to and facilitating third level literacy is important to the exponential uptake of the new generation of collaboratory tools the KDI initiative seeks to develop. The TWU Collaboratory, and the larger TWU scholarly community, present themselves as a "living laboratory" for the development of the literacy measures herein described, and as guinea pigs for the development of the mediation and training tools that will facilitate higher levels of technological literacy among scholars and researchers nationwide.  The TWU Collaboratory further presents itself as a living laboratory to explore the human, behavioral, social and ethical dimensions of knowledge networking that exist, or will exist, in the environment in which third level literacy tools will be applied.

 "Creating Human Collaboratories" is a multidimensional, intertwined study that on one level seeks to solve a problem common to all research disciplines and all research institutions: the under-utilization of existing technologies, and on another level, to study the creation, evolution and lifecycles of an interdisciplinary collaboratory formed to address the problem. It is our belief that the two go hand-in-hand, and one without the other cannot provide the level of understanding necessary to inform the KDI vision. It is also our belief that knowledge gained and tools developed at both levels of this study will be widely generalizable and will provide a realistic framework on which the design and development of future collaboratory tools may rest. Further, it is our belief that the knowledge gained in this study will serve to generate an informed need that will contribute to the maximization of existing resources and prompt the rapid development and uptake of next generation tools. Fundamental premises of this study are that an informed user base is the most desirable, and that knowledge and skills should be as widely disseminated as possible. We believe that tools should be used and developed to the maximum benefit of humans. We also believe that the development of tools for the sake of the tools is fundamentally anti-human and that true progress in the development of collaboratory tools should be based on a clear understanding of the underlying human users' needs.

 The intellectual merit of this proposal rests firmly on the intellectual model that defines understanding as the human process between information and knowledge in the data<->information<->knowledge (dik) transfer process (Nitecki 1993). We believe that a keener understanding of how we come to understand is appropriately approached with the question "Why do researchers collaborate online?" We believe our study and its inclusive problem will facilitate future researchers as they reach beyond understanding to knowledge creation.

 KDI Intra-Project Collaboration

As an added dimension to the "Creating Human Collaboratories" study, and as a direct return to the KDI initiative, the TWU Collaboratory proposes to study simultaneously our fellow KDI-funded initiatives. We hope to promote intra-project collaboration and communication among KDI programs and look for clues to inform the emergent nature of TWU's decidedly human-driven study.

 Once the critical first levels of computer literacy and information literacy are attained, many scholars are satisfied and not inclined to move beyond the one-to-one relationship with their computers this literacy represents. To progress to the third dimension of technological literacy: computer mediated communication literacy (and beyond) is to be able to effectively use computers to create and maintain productive, interactive, mind-to-mind, collaboratory relationships among distanced minds: to use the machine to bring minds together.

 In order to understand why and how computer mediated communication literacy, or collaboratory online relationships, develop and evolve offers an opportunity to leverage existing investments in time and equipment. The understanding gained by the "Creating Human Collaboratories" study will increase the value of working knowledge, facilitate the timely spread of information beyond traditional boundaries and traditional behaviors, and inform the development of future tools.

One objective of the NSF's KDI initiative is to explore technologically facilitated collaboratory relationships among scholars and researchers. The "Third Level Literacy" Component that drives this study proposal seeks to gain understanding of why and how third level literacy develops and what that knowledge can lend to the development of subsequent literacies.

 Our preliminary answers lie in four questions:

 The questions that lie in these answers include:

Other questions raised by this research include:

The one-to-one relationship between scholar and computer(s) achieved through the first two levels of literacy: computer literacy and information literacy, can be described as using the machine for the production, acquisition and manipulation of passive information objects, or documents. First and second level literacies are very good things and have done much to improve, expand, and speed the work of the researcher, but it they are not nearly pervasive enough, nor do they exploit the knowledge-creation potential of direct connection and collaboration between minds via the machine. Increases in third level literacy will satiate the need of intellectually and disciplinarily isolated researchers to "pick brains" in real time, or "bounce around ideas" with other humans. Promoting and achieving third level literacy among America's scientists positions them to come together across time, space and discipline to apply their minds to the pressing and complicated questions we face, to frame those questions in new ways, and to attack them with new vigor and insight.

The first two levels of literacy allow people to interact with hardware and software. The lessons required for achieving these basic literacies have changed substantially in recent years. Less than ten years ago, basic computer literacy required the ability to communicate directly to the computer's operating system, and to memorize (or have access to crib sheets of) cryptic and otherwise meaningless commands. The highly standardized Windows and Macintosh environments have made higher levels of first and second level literacy possible. Literacy in these environments is based on flexibility best described by the Netscape generation's most favored help instruction: "...just click around on the menu until you find what you want." There has been a fundamental change in attitude toward literacy. There has been a shift toward a more adventurous, more exploratory, and less rigid interaction with the machine. This new feeling of freedom opens a window for us to "pass through" the machine to reach the minds of others. We are on fertile ground for widespread advancement into the personally and emotionally risky realm of direct researcher-to-researcher or mind-to-mind contact using the computer. We must understand what we face.

As computerized collaboratory tools are developed, we must be cautious that the tools do not direct the practice of the researcher. We must be cautious that the machine does not stand in the way of the natural, speedy and unfettered emergence of knowledge that grows by collaboratory activity. Despite the "user-friendly" meme almost requisite for all tool design projects, these projects are nevertheless tool-driven, rather than user-driven: the tool is developed, and the humans who use it are studied so the tool can be refined. The "Creating Human Collaboratories" study shifts focus away from the tool, or from the user of the tool, and focuses to the collaborator and the use of the tool. We seek to determine how the unmediated needs, practices and inclinations of scientists might be carried into third level literacy, and expect this understanding will impact how tools are conceived.

The time necessary for achieving computer and information literacy (channel literacy and content literacy), and the need for constant reinvestment to maintain those levels, impacts the inclination to progress to the next logical level of literacy: computer mediated communication (CMC), or third level literacy. Despite an inclination to early adoption of technology for its human-to-human communication potential, (i.e. to do email), a cursory investigation of scholars and researchers at Texas Woman's University and other institutions reveals that use of computers quickly stagnates at the mind-to-machine levels. The reasons for this will be determined by the study, but seems to result from using computers as a replacement for existing exchanges: for paper or telephone. The stagnation occurs for having simply shifted unchanged functions to a different medium, rather than using new media in new ways.

Further boundaries preventing uptake of third level literacy may be described as disciplinary or institutional. In the case of distributed email services (listserv), it appears that distributed email, rather than being the highly interactive medium for human-to-human exchange of ideas often envisioned, has become a passive medium much like the document delivery function of email earlier described (i.e., scholars subscribe to lists to "keep up" with issues but infrequently participate in an intellectual exchange.) A great many lists become avenues for delivery of conference announcements, institutional memos or association news, in effect shifting the value of the list from a highly interactive intellectual exchange to document delivery. Thus, distributed email also stagnates as a second level literacy tool. While listserv and email functions are additive to the information arsenal of scholars, their volume of messages may also contribute to a disinclination to use the computer for active collaboratory exchange as envisioned by the KDI initiative.

MUDS (multi-user domains) and MOOS (multi-user Object Oriented domains), are both "virtual places" where scholars may go to interact with others in a real time environment; as is CHAT, a real-time, online, interactive exchange medium, and various NetMeeting software tools. While participation in MUDS, MOOS, CHAT and virtual meetings have become popular with students, the investment to reach proficiency is considerable and may not be viewed as a wise use of time for many researchers and scholars. For some technologically inclined researchers, use of these functions may represent recreational use. For others, the promise of intellectual exchange inherent in the concept of CMC, particularly for those involved in distance education, is as a pedagogical tool which may be used to replace or enhance the delivery of instruction or facilitate student-to-student exchange.

We believe the KDI vision is for a more andralogical function, or for peer-to-peer exchange. Overall, the potential of these functions does not seem to be widely explored as an inter-scholar medium. This disinclination may be because these interactive environments are time-consumptive and require the scholar to "go" to the virtual space physically, rather than it come to them, as with email and listserv. The disinclination may also be because of discomfort with being intellectually nonphysical with others who cannot be "really" known. It might also be because these functions are not widely incorporated in the computer and information literacy programs to which they have been exposed. Or, the disinclination may simple be a matter of not knowing how to connect online with willing collaborators...how to make the mind-to-mind connection elegantly, which would indicate the need for a resource to allow the comfortable introduction of minds online.

 Maximizing existing resources: Why Texas Woman's University?

This study seeks no additional funding for technology. It is our belief that American scientists have more tools than we know how to use and that we do not use the tools we have to their greatest potential. We believe that a wiser investment at this point will be in the human beings who will use, and who will prepare current and future scholars to maximize new tools as they become available. Rather than bigger and faster computers, or smarter and friendlier software, our request is for the privilege of time in minds.

The TWU Collaboratory's intent is to discover from itself and other human communities how to maximize existing technology resources. Our study is expected to drive the development of new tools by creating a widespread understanding of potential and and proactive user-driven need for them. Globally speaking, the scholars at Texas Woman's University have at their disposal equipment and services that place them among the technologically elite. Few, if any, TWU scholars have maximized their existing system, however, and we suspect this is the norm in research institutions nationwide. While new and better tools may address this situation by speeding the uptake of collaboratory functions by making them more comfortable or intuitive, or by extending our access to information and knowledge, the uptake itself will be based on an understanding revealed by our question: "Why do researchers collaborate online?"

It is suspected that a better understanding of the actual use of existing systems, and the motivations that drive increasingly sophisticated levels of use, will provide important clues for those involved in the development and acquisition of new tools. It is anticipated that a clearer understanding of humans collaborating online will lead to knowledge about how we can facilitate that practice.

Universities and colleges are the breeding ground for future scientists. It seems logical that they will be best prepared to fully utilize developing systems if they are taught by scholars who have maximized existing systems. With fiber optic connection, graphical interfaces, a full palate of the latest software, a fast computer on virtually every scholar's desktop, as well as a well-funded and supportive technology department, TWU is, within the scholarly community, neither on the technological bleeding edge nor among the unfortunately ill-equipped. Technologically speaking, we suspect that TWU is average. So positioned, Texas Woman's University is a perfect environment from which to extract the fundamental clues about the "real world" of scientists' computing use. These are the clues that inform the emerging world.

Because Texas Woman's University is an institution devoted to education primarily for women, it is in the unique position to have no need to mediate gender-determined disadvantages inherent in technological uptake. Further, as a woman's university we are in a unique position to maximized the inclination of women to collaborate openly and supportively. This does not imply, nor suggest, that TWU is EXCLUSIVELY for women, nor that this research, or its participants, have been gender-determined. It means gender need not be an issue. However, the uniqueness of the TWU environment simultaneously offers this research team an opportunity to focus on the implications of technological communication and collaboration processes among women. We suspect these unique, simultaneous positions will allow us to quickly arrive at fundamental human truths that will shed light on the framework for the emergence of widespread online collaboratories, as well as to quickly arrive at gender-specific theories.

 Our greatest opportunity for achieving exponential literacy and contributing to the need for and utilization of future systems lies in discovering simple ways to leverage existing systems into obsolescence. We need to learn to use what we have to its greatest capacity in order to motivate uptake of subsequent levels of technological literacy. Our greatest discoveries are most likely to come from collective, grassroots scientific minds that are separated by time, space and discipline, who have a shared need. This is the fundamental premise of the KDI initiative.

The collective mind must be mediated in order to collaborate freely and widely. We see an opportunity for exponential progress and advancements in science by enabling researchers to simply reach each other. This is the motivation for the "Third Level Literacy" project. Once researchers are literally equipped to collaborate, they will enter the virtual realm that is the subject of our "Creating Human Collaboratories" study. With the "Third Level Literacy" component, we intend to show the way; with the "Creating Human Collaboratories" study we intend to help create this "real virtuality" (Castells 1996).

 When we understand WHY scholars are motivated to take up increasing levels of literacy, we can come to know HOW increases in knowledge can be achieved. With this understanding we will be positioned to feed knowledge back into the system, thus creating a broad-based user-needs motivation for continued progress and development.

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 Evaluative Measures

The Evaluative Done

Thinking creates new knowledge and intelligence is distributed by communication. This, we know. What we don't know is how people make meaning together online. What we don't know is enough about tool design to serve human needs particular to the collaboratory.

"Creating Human Collaboratories and the Third Level Literacy Component" is a research proposal created specifically for KDI. It proposes a simultaneous empirical study and a normative study, each distinct but intertwined. In the empirical study we hope to shed light on why humans collaborate online and explore the associated questions. We intend for our findings to serve tool design. We intend to do this by thinking about how new knowledge is created online in the collaboratory. We will do this by attempting to create new knowledge online in a collaboratory that has been created specifically for this proposal. The new knowledge we create informs the normative study. The normative study seek to discover existing levels of technology literacy within America's scholarly communities, and how those communities might prepare to obsolesce existing and uptake future collaboratory tools. Again, we will use the tools of knowledge creation and distributed intelligence: the tools of KDI, to do this. We will think, and communicate. We expect to learn some "rules of the road" for humans in the collaboratory, and to share them with others, and to discover and communicate how we might know technological literacy.

Our Proposal Summary outlines and this Proposal provides general details describing the imagined process of our research. Our budget justification asks for entrepreneurial flexibility. We figure it will take at least three and likely five years to "complete" this work, to achieve the evaluative "done." However, since we are also developing a model of exponential technological literacy, we suspect it might also take less time. We don't know. Subsequent work is already being identified and will naturally intertwine itself with our current proposal. Change is a critical component both for the subject and the object of our study. To deny change denies the reality of our virtuality, which is what is to be discovered: how knowledge is subjected.

Human environment studies must be flexible and adaptive. To study the human environment within the collaboratory requires exponential flexibility and adaptability. The work we propose is emergent. There is no way, but generally, to honestly set markers to measure passage through this unknown process. In fact, arbitrary markers might just as easily impede as they are intended to measure progress. Since we do not know how new knowledge is created, (i.e. how people creating meaning together online) we cannot predict when new knowledge will appear, nor how it will be communicated. And we cannot assume the "normal" way on either front. Given the inherent interdisciplinarity of the research group involved in this proposal, and the diversity of interest in the research questions, we can't even predict WHAT new knowledge will be created!

Nevertheless, our Project Summary attempts to provide a flow of activities we imagine most likely to achieve the knowledge and intelligence intended. Those activities have been arbitrarily chunked into time and space equal to five funding years. While these arbitrary chunks cannot be intellectually or creatively binding, they must be definitive simply because NSF needs to bind its money. So, we propose to submit an annual report of "done" as an evaluative measure of our progress, and otherwise submit ourselves to the scrutiny of our others.

Here's what we've STARTED since February 1, when the KDI RFP was published. (These activities are ongoing, distinct and intertwined, simultaneous and interactive):

1. Request for Proposals studied and information needs determined: Literature reviewed, MS Collaboratory conference attended, information and systematic analysis undertaken.
2. Collaboratory of interdisciplinary scholars formed. Distributed email list and archive established. Literacy training provided. Conceptual development of proposal undertaken online.
3. Systems Analysis and Design model adopted, research proposal written.
4. Economies of time in mind determined, concept of scholar month developed, concept of NSF scholarly collaborator systemized.
5. Institutional interface initiated, budget developed, approvals received, proposal submitted.

Here's what we intend to do between submission deadline and funding:

1. Analyze list archive data for information and indicators of knowledge creation. Model collaboratory data for indicators of phase space.
2. Publish findings of collaboratory formation issues and concerns: conception, gestation, birth; trust, time, space, question, meat, etc.
3. Rest, ruminate, and conceive Phase II: time in minds, in which NSF collaboratory scholars will define measures of literacy and the collaboratory will be made inter-institutional.