[This is a republication of a Radio Weblog Entry. Five years ago I explained a group knowledge making model. This is a slightly amended and commented republication of that model:
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Knowledge Making Group and Their Wikis
Note the use of wiki’s and the intense within group communication about what are initially specialized sub assignments of the overall task. Each person has her/his own assignment and kibitzing/feedback work to do with two others. Coordinator has job of “catching the drift” and redefining/correcting if apparently off course or encouraging if s/he senses a successful approach to not only the individual’s self assigned task but the eventual successful dovetailing each developer’s piece with all of the others.
[Original piece, "Weblogging in the Context of Research (Knowledge-Making", was published on my radio.userland website: :http://radio.weblogs.com/0106698/2003/12/05.html#a202]. The entry is reprinted below.
Weblogging in the Context of Research (Knowledge-Making)
Summary: I illustrate and explain a small group knowledge-making model. I do this in order to distinguish communicative contexts for weblogging. The general weblogging case –well described by Dave Pollard in a recent entry (See also my response and links here)– is different from the situation in which weblogging is part of an individual or group research (knowledge-making) activity. My sense is that, since new knowledge development requires extensive introspective note taking, research journaling and, often, the testing of successive hypotheses, a wiki is better suited to the process. I’ve left the external communication role (of more finished pieces of research work) to the weblog. Details below and in notes linked to below.
In my above-referenced entry I noted:
…if the issue really is expanding individual and collective knowledge, then the inter-blogger steps are a “surface” process which is an overlay on another, less accessible phenomenon, namely, a group’s acquisition of new (at least to its members) and goal-related knowledge. IMHO the explanation of the blogging process in this context would be better served if some explanation of essential knowledge-making actions were folded into, or at least linked to from within, the discussion of sequential blogging behavior.
I followed this expressed concern with notetaking concerning the differences between general case blogging and blogging in the context of research/knowledge-making. For my set of notes using Dave Pollard’s blogging steps but expressed from the point of view of an individual writing an in-house blog for a working research/knowledge-making group look here.Those notes led to my construction of this entry’s diagram which I offer for your consideration and evaluation. It, too, is drawn from the within-research-group perspective.Explanation of the research and publication process follows beneath the diagram.
Most research group endeavors have a life cycle–preceding from formation and ending with either a mature knowledge product or a partial version of the planned-for knowledge product, (or, in the extreme worst case, nothing that was intended nor even any unintended side product that has value). The within-group processes I describe below are aimed somewhere in the middle of the life of the research group.
At the base of the diagram you will see 5 R-S pairs. Those represent 5 researcher pairings with a research(knowledge-making) “situation”. Each has researcher’s assignment has two aspects: first is to “getting a good answer” to a research question and second is to make it accessible, via explanation, to other members of the research team.
Each researcher’s notes, problems, results and explanations are detailed in her/his respective wiki. As part of participating in the research team each researcher comments upon, offer suggestions for, evaluate, etc. , the work of two other team members–via the evaluated member’s wiki. Those processes are signified signified by the dashed arrows from each researcher to two other team members’ wiki documents (those documents are W1, W2, W3, etc.). Such cross-communication can help to assure that the researcher will be developing her/his findings and explanations in ways that are compatible with the larger knowledge question which all are addressing with their particular research projects.
There is one other (the sixth) team member: the Reporter/Coordinator(RC). S/he will also be reading/evaluating the wiki’s from the perspective of the larger knowledge-making situation of which the separate researcher situations are each distinct parts. S/he will also be reading from the perspective of an explication of the total product to a public.
In the early project stages the research coodinator/reporter documents impresssions of progress in the in-house summary document which is the group wiki (GW).
For non-group members summary snippets are issued via the group weblog (GWL); its purpose is to document progress and/or to justify solicitations of material support from a suprasystem or from a granting agency. Informational support might come via weblog comments from collaborating groups in a larger enterprise (e.g., a containing suprasystem) or from the broader public made up of knowledge consumers and competing research enterprises. Any responses from those outside sources will be fed back into the group wiki as a means of challenging/updating within-group work.
A last observation: the dashed line surrounding the group is meant to indicate that the boundary is voluntary. All members voluntarily limit their communications to fit within the bounds of the research mission. This self-limitation will occur for some portion of their time as dictated by their interests and the commitment made to the group. In the best of research groups this self-limitation is in fact empowerment. (See my entry about knowledge-making in bounded groups)
[Note 1: I have expanded the number of tools used to two: wiki and weblog. When a publication is to show it's edit history and to allow text intrusions ranging from paragraph level editing by multiple editors to page-level comments, I've chosen a wiki. When the document itself is to remain intact but is be accessible to attached commentary and for linking, I've chosen a weblog. It is possible to follow the design using weblogs alone (replace all wikis with weblogs).The wiki, however, affords a far more nuanced set of possibilities.]
[Note 2: Larger knowledge-making enterprises could be approached by using the illustrated group design as a module and by adding necessary organizationalinfrastructure and process]
[Note 3: If we replace the researcher and group wiki's with in house circulation of a weekly progress update--- on paper, and if we replace the group weblog with newsletter publications and/or journal articles -- again, on paper , then we still have a "plan". How much better off are we , at this level of analysis, because we HAVE inserted Wiki and Weblog?]
Most recent edit: 12/8/03
