0.26 Underpinnings of the social edition  (Page 27/32)

Our research on interfaces, annotation, social interaction, and document-centered reading environments has also been incorporated into more focused research partnerships with groups like the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) and Synergies. Our collaboration with PKP has seen work toward the integration of professional reading tools into the PKP Open Journal Systems (OJS). As outlined briefly above, our partnership began with conducting user experience surveys to identify and assess elements of users' engagement with texts and the OJS interface. The results of this process have been published in Siemens et al. (2006) and “It May Change My Understanding of the Field,” forthcoming, and presented at a number of conferences and symposia. Work was then undertaken towards the identification of basic principles for an OJS interface redesign to respond to needs identified by the study; the carrying out of more precise user analysis and profiling; the design of wireframes (sketch prototypes) to emulate workflows; and consultation about technological facilitation for interaction that was imagined (including the integration of social networking technologies). These processes led to iterative computational modeling and testing, aimed at the creation of a proof-of-concept prototype. This prototype was presented to PKP in early 2008, in order that they might consider integrating it into their current development cycle—and also in more traditional research dissemination. See the list of presentations delivered in 2008 in Appendix 1, in particular those presented in June 2008. The next step of this conjoint research program is to build on earlier work carried out toward provision of a knowledgebase approach to speed professional readers’ workflow through better access to pertinent critical textual resources. In turn, this new work draws on earlier and ongoing work with Iter, another of our research partners, to further develop the concept of enriched domain-specific knowledgebases, as well as ongoing research as part of a collaboration with the Transliteracies and BlueSky working groups at the University of California, Santa Barbara, towards the prototyping of an interface with document-centered professional reading tools and advanced social networking capabilities.

To return to the words of James Joyce with which this article began, our experience in developing REKn and PReE thus far has shown that the errors we encountered on the way truly were “portals of discovery” (1986: 9.229). As we embark on new directions and build new partnerships and collaborations, we expect many more portals in the immediate future, and beyond.

Works and resources cited

Alexander, Bryan. “Web 2.0: A New Wave of Innovation for Teaching and Learning?” Educause Review 41.2 (2006): 32-44. Print.

Austin, David. “How Google Finds Your Needle in the Web’s Haystack.” Feature Column. American Mathematical Society. Dec. 2006. Web. 24 Apr. 2009. http://www.ams.org/featurecolumn/archive/pagerank.html.

Bolton, Whitney. “The Bard in Bits: Electronic Editions of Shakespeare and Programs to Analyze Them.” Computers and the Humanities 24.4 (1990): 275-87. Print.