Ruhr-Universität Bochum IMTM Mass-Collaboration as a basis of procedures for e- participation Thomas Herrmann Information - and Technology Management University.

Ruhr-Universität Bochum

IMTM

Mass-Collaboration as a basis of procedures for e-

participationThomas Herrmann

Information - and Technology ManagementUniversity of Bochum, Germany

www.imtm-iaw.rub.de

2

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Overview

• Background• Example: citizen dialogue• Research questions• Socio-technical measures / requirements

3

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Underlying question

How can several people be supported to contribute to the solving of problems in the societal context?

How is creativity encouraged? How can democratic principles be taken into

account? How can a large number of people be

effectively involved?

4

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Involved Research areas

Mass collaborationSocial /

collaborative creativity

Collaborative creativity

E-participation

7.950

Social creativity

Hits per key phrase form google scholar - 16.3.2014

906.210

0*94

10.400 26

5.860

2.310

202

* This needs more research

5

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Degrees of particiaption

Inform people

Observe people

ask people about their

ideas, knowledge etc.

Discussion with and amongst people

Allow for co-deter-mination by people

Deg

ree

of

par

tici

pat

ion

low

high

According to the German„Betriebsverfassungs-gesetz“ that determines the degree of„Mitbestimmung“of the employees‘ representatives, the so called „Betriebsrat“

6

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Degrees of particiaption

Inform people

Observe people

ask people about their

ideas, knowledge etc.

Discussion with and amongst people

Allow for co-deter-mination by people

Examples for web-based support

Linear Moocs

Big Data

Citi-zen science*

InternetBrainstorming

Discussion forums

wikipedia discus-sion +

E-voting

Deg

ree

of

par

tici

pat

ion

low

high

openin-no-va-tion

Open source

7

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

The case of the German Citizen Dialogue on demographic trends

• Location: 6 cities with 80 citizens each• Informed with a basic paper: 10 statements covering 3 fields:

• Living together• Life Long Learning • Work Environments

• The same people were sitting at one table discussing one of the 10 statements

• Two phases: 1) comments on the current situation

2) proposals for societal improvement

• Afterwards, representatives of every city were invited for discussing the merged results

• 500 hours of discussion were converged in one report of 68 pages

8

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Is this a case of mass collaboration?

What will happen if we transfer it to online collaboration?

9

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Facilitation and making of results

• One facilitator and a minute taker per table• Participants didn’t see the notes of the minute taker, from time

to time a summary was read to the participants• Results were not visualized, the goals were not visible• Phase of analysis: all participants tried to make any kind of

contribution• Phase of proposals: Those who had a more substantial

information bases or a preconceived opinion were dominating the discussion on proposals, trying to push their ideas through

• Facilitators tried – with limited success – to encourage the less active participants

• Goal: in the afternoon a report on the whole discussion was instantaneously compiled

10

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Role of experts

• Experts were invited to give an orientation• Experts’ presentations at the beginning of the discussion as a

kind of input were not welcomed • Experts were required to wait until they are asked.• They were only asked if there was a lack of knowledge.• Some of them started proactively to join the tables and to

contribute their opinion.• They were not asked

• to support the finding of proposals for social /political innovations,• to clarify whether an idea was new or already implemented somewhere

else.

11

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Degree of novelty

• Participants made proposals which they thought were new but which were not. They were not aware of that most of their proposals have already undergone a practical test. The results of these test could not been taken into account.

• Strong focus on practical knowledge concerning the problems of the nearer region – very concrete examples were collected

• Some statements / hypothesis of the “basic paper” did not comply with the regional focus

• The discussion of how to bring the proposals into reality was neglected.

• A lot of singular experiences and interests were articulated without addressing the options of supporting societal innovation on a more systematical level.

• There were no contributions which are not already discussed in the context of political activities

12

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Overall networking

• Low level of interaction between the tables• Sometimes highlights were presented – by the opinion leaders• Experts had a marginal role of boundary spanners by attending

several tables.• There was no written reporting in between which could have

been used to build upon• The participants were excluded from the process of merging

the reports

13

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Lack of Transparency

• The process of taking the minutes was not transparent and there was no visualization

• No transparency of the process of filtering out the contributions for the instantaneous report

• No transparency of the merging of the reports• The experts made additional contributions which were included

without any critical discussion.• The meeting, in which the merging of all 6 reports was

discussed worked similarly: 12 tables, 12 areas of societal innovation leading to a quick report at the end.

14

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Lessons learnt

• People who are highly interested and willing to be engaged, are not necessarily well prepared to contribute novel ideas

• The procedure of converging a huge number of contributions and to exploit potentials for synergy appears to be most difficult.

• The influence people could have on real political decisions was unclear.

15

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Degrees of participation

Inform people

Observe people

ask people about their

ideas, knowledge etc.

Discussion with and amongst people

Allow for co-deter-mination by people

Deg

ree

of

par

tici

pat

ion

low

high

Meta-questions: Is it really about Mass Collaboration or more about

Mass Contributions?Or is it in this case Mass Contributions of small

collaborating units?

16

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Research questions – A

1. How can people be encouraged to relate their ideas to each other to escape the hidden profile trap … People take out of the whole set of mass contributions those parts which sound familiar to them

2. How can the participants be motivated to take existing knowledge or expertise into account to relate their own contributions to them?

3. How can the dominator-follower relation be transformed into a symmetrical relation?

4. How can research on small group creativity support be transformed to the level of large numbers of participants?

17

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Research questions – B

5. How can the transition from mass contributing to mass collaboration be defined?

6. Which facilitation strategies are efficient (visualization, prompting etc.) to support the shift from just adding a mass of contributions to converge them into a unique result?

7. Why do people take part in mass collaboration? ( in the described case it was a lot of just sharing the experience of taking part)

18

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Need for Scaffolding and prompting

To support …• directly referencing to others experiences or

other information sources [not only writing but also reading]

• Alternating between contributing and comparison of contributions

• Detecting the most interesting similarities and contrasts – incongruity which “irritates”

• Creating something “new”• The activation of more passive people

19

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Socio-Technical Approaches for …

• Maintaining the awareness for existing information• Synergy building: Compose those contributions which

address the same topic but are diverging (incongruity)• Several facilitators as representatives of various

“political” positions should be able to work together for filtering and merging the contributions

• How can different interests and perspectives be balanced in the course of converging a huge amount of contributions?

• How can the work of facilitators and minute takers bringing the huge number of contributions together be • Supported• made more visible for the participants • potentially more controllable?

20

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Socio-Technical support in general

Supposed we have tasks / activities of Type A1: not appropriate to be carried out in small groups Type A2: not appropriate to be carried out via mass collaboration

Type B1: more efficient when carried out in small groups Type B2: more efficient when carried out via mass collaboration

How can socio-technical solutions support a shift from A to B?

Example: Production blocking and fear of evaluation in small group brainstorming sessions can be avoided by organizational and technical measures.

21

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Claim: Facilitation is needed!?

Question: Can facilitation develop spontaneously?

The whole facilitation business has developed on the basis of the potential ineffectiveness and inefficiency of small groups – why shouldn‘t this phenomenon be repeated in the context of mass collaboration?

22

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Procedure

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University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Facilitators‘ Tasks: shift to mass collaboration - A

Facilitation of small, co-located groups

Facilitation of online mass collaboration

The collaboration is controlled / structured by one

Several facilitators have to collaborate, a meta-facilitator might be needed

Qualitative comparison and summarizing of different viewpoints

Quantitative evaluation of the contributions is necessary

One facilitator recognizes every opinion and tries to give them equal weight

The main perspectives / interest groups / positions should be represented by an own facilitator each – including minorities

24

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Facilitators‘ Tasks: shift to mass collaboration - B

Facilitation of small, co-located groups

Facilitation of online mass collaboration

The work of the facilitator is visible and can be controlled on the fly

Extra support is needed to make the facilitators’ work visible and to control it

Interventions / prompts are addressed to all participants

Interventions / prompts have to be submitted selectively

Categories to sort contributions are mutually developed

Categories have to be proposed by the facilitator, building links seems to be more important

Simple mechanisms to identify majorities or consensus

Complex voting mechanisms

25

University of Bochum, Germany

Mass-Collaboration – Tübingen – 22.5.14Thomas HerrmannIMTM

Conclusion

• The transition from mass-contributing to mass collaboration is not clear needs to be further investigated

• The challenge is to relate the contributions at least potentially to each other – mechanisms are needed to build the most promising subsets (7+/-2 items).

• Collaborative Facilitation is needed for:• Prompts• Representing diverging positions

• A seed with relevant information needs to be created