Presentation by Alfonso Sintjago and Tryggvi Thayer.

1. Booksprint
Collaborative Knowledge Construction
CIES - New Orleans 3/11/2013 (Thayer & Sintjago, 2013)
http://z.umn.edu/booksprintcies2013

2. What is a Booksprint?
● Used to produce open source manuals
● Publishable product in 2-5 days
○ No pre-production
○ "Hackathon" approach
○ Intensive creative collaboration
○ Interdisciplinary
● We set out to produce infographic posters
● "Designsprint" instead of a "Booksprint"

3. Booksprint at U of MN
● Held at the University of Minnesota
○ Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy and
Development (OLPD)
● Two Day Event (Weekend Project)
○ March 2nd and 3rd
● 18 Participants (all students) from various
departments
○ Design, Public Policy, Education Technology,
○ ICT4D, Social Media Experts, and other Interested
Graduate and Professional Students

4. Our Booksprint: Goals
● Increase awareness among educators, administrators,
policymakers and other stakeholders about how
technological developments affect education.
● Promote openness and new forms of knowledge
construction and become a model for future
collaborative and creative endeavours.
● Encourage exploration of possible futures for
education and to promote future-oriented thinking
about educational issues.
● Bring together an interdisciplinary group of
participants

5. Booksprint: Objectives
● Alternative Futures for Education
○ Produce a series of infographic posters
○ Dynamic website for ongoing discussion
● Implications of 3 emerging technologies
○ Augmented reality (AR)
○ 3D Printing
○ Robotics
● Develop an Open Educational Resource
○ Share with others both the process and its product
Visualize what education will look like with these
technologies fully integrated

6. Booksprint: Process
Process differs from traditional booksprint because of the
importance of the design component:
1.Concept Mapping: development of themes, concepts,
ideas, visions developing ownership, etc.
2.Design: development of the overall look & feel of the
product.
3.Structuring: creating headings and dividing the work.
4.Messaging: distributing sections, writing and discussion,
but mostly identifying key message components.
5.Composition: iterative process of re-structure and re-
design, checking, discussing, copy editing, and proofing.
6. Publication

7. Booksprint: Workflow organization
Participants were loosely organized into teams:
Visioning teams: Articulate a vivid story about what future will look/be like
Content teams: Translate story into information to be conveyed on infographics
Design and production team: Decide the look and feel of the infographics
Web development team: Construct web-based platform for further info/interaction
Editing team: Check all content for grammar, spelling and style
Communication team: Update live blog about the booksprint process
Participants were encouraged to go from team to team to
learn about different aspects of the project and provide
constructive input.

8. Theoretical Framework
Collaborative creative processes and new modes of
knowledge construction:
● Communities of Practice
(Lave & Wenger, 1991)
○ Self-organizing groups
○ Mutual interests
○ Learning community
● New Modes of Knowledge Production
(Gibbons et al., 1994)
○ Harkins & Kubik (2006) Mode IV knowledge:
"Production of knowledge for context innovations, affecting the
definitions, descriptions, and utilizations of cultural, intellectual, and
physical frameworks and settings." (p. 100)

9. Prior Booksprints
- Finland - Math and Agile Textbook
- Scotland, Ireland, and the USA
- Booksprints.net - Sharing the Process
- Openstacks | Wikibooks and other Possibilities
- Siyavula and South African Textbooks

10. Open Education Movement
- Open Content - David Wiley
- Creative Commons - Lawrence Lessig
- Open Textbooks - Richard Baraniuk
- Influence of Technology in Education
- MOOCs - Stephen Downes
- Open Access Journals - Peter Suber
- Rapid Improvements and Changes
- Mobile Technology and Flexible Formatting

11. EVENT Highlights
● Participants utilized a future's wheel methodology
to think of the future impact of different
technologies.
● Participants brainstormed the potential of various
technologies in transforming learning
experiences.
● Working in group, participants collected ideas,
sources, images, phrases, and discussed which
resources would be most helpful.
● Most participant participated in the event for the
whole day. Other wanted to but had competing
commitments.

12. IMAGES FROM THE EVENT

15. Early drafts

16. Preliminary Findings
Booksprint Feedback Form Avg
( 1 to 10)
To what extent did the process meet your 7.25
expectations?
To what extent was the production a 8.13
collaborative process?
To what extent was the process conducive to 7.88
creative outcomes?
To what extent did you feel comfortable with 7.63
the process?

17. Greatest Strength of
the Booksprint
Participant 1 - "Bringing people who are
knowledgeable / interested in a subject together
to work on something. Everyone has a lot in
common but a lot of differences as well, making it
a very enjoyable social experience"
Participant 2 - "When treated as a collaborative
process with clearly defined outcomes, a
booksprint seems to be to be quite beneficial. I
think it's most successful when the tasks and
goals at every stage are clearly outlined."

18. DESIGN Challenge
Participant 1 - "There is also much care that must be given to
managing time over the two days to ensure those who contribute
their skills later in the project (the graphic designers, for example)
don't end up having to do a ton of work after the weekend, once
everyone else has sprinted and gone home. That has the potential
to take away from the thrill of creative/intellectual urgency and
the ʺwe're all in this togetherʺ feeling that the 2 days has."
Participant 2 - "In my case, it was the time commitment. The
design portion is still going to require a significant amount of
work, and I'm not sure the booksprint format is very conducive for
infographic or poster creation. I also think of it in terms of form
and content; while our talks focused a lot on the concept of
remote learning, the format of the booksprint seemed to
reinforce the idea that a location-based group setting was the way
to get things done."

19. VIDEO RESPONSES
http://flipgrid.com/#e7541b2b

20. Preliminary Findings
● Shared appreciation of working together in a
team with highly motivated participants.
● Co-construction of knowledge and formation
of communities of practice.
● Shared interest in creating new knowledge.
● Potential for the creation of open educational
resources.
● Difficulties in coordinating design needs with
content needs.
● Shared interest in participating in future
booksprints

23. references
Bonk, C. J. (2009). The world is open: How Web technology is revolutionizing education. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Dougiamas, M. & Taylor, P. (2003). Moodle: Using Learning Communities to Create an Open Source Course Management System.
In D. Lassner & C. McNaught (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and
Telecommunications 2003 (pp. 171-178). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P. and Trow, M. (1994), The new production of knowledge.
London: Sage.
Harkins, A. M. & Kubik, G. H. (2006). Leapfrogging toward the “singularity”: Innovative knowledge production on market‐driven
campuses. On the Horizon, 14(3), 99-108.
Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.
Scharff, E. D. (2002). Open source: A conceptual framework for collaborative artifact and knowledge construction. (Unpublished
doctoral dissertation). University of Colorado, Boulder, CO.
Wiley, D. & Hilton, J. (2010). Openness, dynamic specialization, and the disaggregated future of higher education. The International
Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 10(5).
Wiley, D. (2010). Openness as catalyst for an educational reformation." EDUCAUSE Review, 45(4), 14-20.
Wilson, D. (2003). The future of comparative and international education in a globalised world. International Review of Education,
49(1), 15-33.

24. Thank You