BEANS

Zachary Hynes

May 10, 2012

CoffeehouseOnline environments for civic discourse

Civically Alienated, Internet Connected

“The largest group of young people in 2010 were those who were Civically Alienated…”

“On the other hand, over half of them communicated with family and friends via the Internet.”

Source: “Understanding a Diverse Generation: Youth Civic Engagement in the United States”

Where do we talk politics?

Facebook

Where do we talk politics?

Online Discussion Forums

Where do we talk politics?

School

Steps Create norms and criteria for good discussions Develop and implement new discussion

structures and… Mechanisms for grouping users into discussion

groups Implement content and discussion suggestions Field testing and design iteration in the

classroom

Current Project Status Primitive web application created in February

2012 Browse/request to join discussions Post links to articles on discussion page Visualize geographic distribution of users and

content on maps Proposed time period for completion: 12

months

Current Project Status Sample Discussion onEducation Reform

Users post articles and other content

Users can contribute to the discussion

Evaluating Good Discourse

What makes a discussion “good”?

Source: Dahlberg (2001)

Reflexivity

Sincerity

Discursive Equality

Who should evaluate discourse?

MetricModerator / Expert System Users

Accuracy + + +

Impartiality + + +

Scalability - + +

Projects in Deliberative Discourse

Simulated Students (Vizcaíno, 2005) DREW & CHAT (Baker et. al., 2003) Digalo (ARGUNAUT, 2008) Argunaut (McLaren et. al., 2007)

Deliberative Discourse as a Game Games can be used to make civic awareness

and civic engagement not only fun but habitual Collaboration scripts are a general tool used to

encourage users to interact with each other and with the material in particular ways (Kollar et. al., 2006)

Games can be seen as a special type of collaboration script

Need competition and disagreement… but the right kind!

Deliberative Discourse as a Game Promote thoughtful discussion by rewarding

groups with good discussions Established, open-source tools (TagHelper)

exist for supervised, automated discourse analysis (Rosé, et. al., 2008)Groupwise Head-To-Head DS

Group 1 Group 2

Groups 1 and 2 are discussing the war in Afghanistan; individuals get points for making strong arguments, groups do well when everyone is encouraged to excel

Content Discovery & Recommendations Current Tools: Users post links within

Coffeehouse Lighten the workload for users by

automatically suggesting content posted within other discussions

(Possibly) gain access to article full-texts through news websites API’s for deeper integration

Research Questions Bringing deliberative discourse out of the

classroom opens up possibilities Automatically assign users to discussion

groups according to different criteria – what features of the individual discussion change and the user’s engagement with the application can vary? political affiliation – similar or dissimilar geographic location – close or far age – peers or otherwise

Timeline Proposed time period for completion: 12

months

Implement & Test

candidate DS

August 2012 June 2013Jan 2013

H.S.Field Study

User Testing

Discussion Structures

Research Questions

Content

Arrange for local and “partner” H.S. classes to participate in

field study

Integrate supervised

NLP feedback

tools

Iterate on

feedback

Analyze data from H.S. study

Explore news API’s

August 2012 June 2013Jan 2013

Add “suggested

content” functionality

“Non-Academic” Field Study

Data Collection

Analyze data from “non-academic”

study

Challenges Changing ingrained behavior patterns Developing an inclusive, safe atmosphere for

discussion Navigating issues of online identity

Contributions Support a new “era” of civics education; civics

should not stop after we leave school Discover what discussion structures and user

groupings facilitate the best discussions

Image Credits Coffeehouse Logo- Brian McCarthy ‘12 “Americans Against the Liberal Agenda”

(Screenshot). http://www.facebook.com/pages/Americans-Against-the-Liberal-Agenda/132525081792

“The Shooting of Trayvon Martin, self-defense or murder?” (Screenshot). http://www.americasdebate.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=21594&pid=100006326&st=800&#entry100006326

John Keating in Dead Poets’ Society – http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/DeadPoets.htm

Bibliography ARGUNAUT – An Intelligent Guide to Support Productive Online Dialogue, December 1, 2005 to

August 31, 2008. Project Reference: FP6-IST 027728 Kawashima-Ginsberg, Kei. Understanding a Diverse Generation: Youth Civic Engagement in the

United States. Rep. Center for Information Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, Nov. 20. Web. 24 Apr. 2012. <http://www.civicyouth.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/CIRCLE_cluster_report2010.pdf>.

M.J. Baker, M. Quignard, K. Lund, A. S´ejourn´e, et al. Computer-supported collaborative learning in the space of debate. In Designing for change in net- worked learning environments: Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Support for Col laborative Learning, pages 11–20, 2003.

L. Dahlberg. Computer-mediated communication and the public sphere: A critical analysis. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 7(1):0–0, 2001. [

I. Kollar, F. Fischer, and F.W. Hesse. Collaboration scripts–a conceptual analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 18(2):159–185, 2006.

Bruce M. McLaren, Oliver Scheuer, Maarten De Laat, Rakheli Hever, Reuma De Groot, and Carolyn P. Rosé. Using machine learning techniques to an- alyze and support mediation of student e-discussions. In Proceedings of the 2007 conference on Artificial Intel ligence in Education: Building Technol- ogy Rich Learning Contexts That Work, pages 331–338, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, The Netherlands, 2007. IOS Press.

Carolyn Rosé, Yi-Chia Wang, Yue Cui, Jaime Arguello, Karsten Stegmann, Armin Weinberger, Frank Fischer. Analyzing collaborative learning processes automatically: Exploiting the advances of computational linguistics in computer-supported collaborative learning. Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 3:237-271, 2008.

S. Michaels, C. OConnor, and L.B. Resnick. Deliberative discourse idealized and realized: Accountable talk in the classroom and in civic life. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 27(4):283–297, 2008.

A. Vizcaíno. A simulated student can improve collaborative learning. Inter- national Journal of Artificial Intel ligence in Education, 15(1):3–40, 2005.