Narratives of coherence: sensemaking and wayfinding in complex information ecologies

George SiemensSeptember 6, 2011

Pretoria, South Africa

Fragmentation of information

Coherence formation challenged by: 1. limits of human cognition2. growth of information quantity

Existing coherence forming systems

BooksNewspapersTV news programsMagazines

(anything that is structured and that the end user can’t speak into and alter)

Information grounds “focuses on people’s information behavior in informal social settings”

Counts and Fisher, 2010

Fragmentation of information requires that we weave together elements into some type of coherent framework

YoutubeBlogsTwitterFacebookTEDtalksKahn AcademyOnline news/information sitesTraditional coherence frameworks

“the rise of millions of fragmented discussions across the world tend instead to lead to fragmentation of audiences into isolated publics”

Habermas 2006

Coherence is an orientation about the meaning and value of information elements based on how they are connected, structured, and related

Antonovsky 1993

Coherence expression(sensegiving)

ArtifactsNarratives

Artifacts of sensemaking

Organizing course content

Dolors Capdet

http://x28newblog.blog.uni-heidelberg.de/2008/09/06/cck08-first-impressions/

Image of course structure created by course participant

Language games

Storytelling

Debate, dialogue

Descriptions

Clarification

Metaphors

Analogies

Examples

Resonance

Narratives of sensemaking

Language/externalization reduces the “occult character” of mental images.

Wittgenstein

Language gives birth to thoughtVygotsky

What is sensemaking?

An effort “to create order and make retrospective sense of what occurs”

Weick 1993

“a motivated, continuous effort to understand connections . . . in order to anticipate their trajectories and act effectively”

Klein et al. 2006

“Sensemaking is about labelling and categorizing to stabilize the streaming of experience”

Weick et al. 2005

Cynefin FrameworkDave Snowden

Domains of Sensemaking

Participatory sensemaking:“the coordination of intentional activity in interaction, whereby individual sense-making processes are affected and new domains of social sense-making can be generated that were not available to each individual on her own”

De Jaegher and Di Paolo 2007

What is wayfinding?

“the process that takes place when people orient themselves and navigate through space”

Raubal and Winter 2002

“is the cognitive element of navigation … it does not involve movement of any kind but only the tactical and strategic parts that guide movement.”

Darken and Peterson 2002

Adapted from:Darken and Peterson (2001).

Sensemaking Wayfinding Information Model

change.mooc.ca (Starts September 12, 2011)

Twitter: gsiemens

www.elearnspace.org/blog

Learning Analytics & Knowledge 2012: Vancouver

http://lak12.sites.olt.ubc.ca/