Hochschuldidaktisches Zentrum

For the successful development of sociotechnical systems it is essential that various stakeholders are able to integrate their different knowledge and perspectives. The communicationoriented method "sociotechnical Walkthrough (STWT)" supports not only the design of sociotechnical systems but also the integration of knowledge. The STWT is a method which is flexible and has the ability to integrate different viewpoints, to document the results of this integration, and to promote the development of a sociotechnical system which follows common design principles. Using the presentation of two empirical case studies as a base, we derived a list of categories which characterize the knowledge which should be integrated when a sociotechnical system develops. Furthermore, those elements of the STWT method which have a positive effect on knowledge integration are highlighted. known -they then found a basis for communication during this project, and that the external representation was used to guide the discussions. (Loser 2005) The STWT provided a basis for their communication and enabled them to share their different perspectives.

Der Beitrag befasst sich aus soziologischer Sicht mit dem Rollenkonzept am Beispiel von Communities, um daraus systematisch Unterstützungen für Rollenentwicklung im Wissensmanagement und bei CSCL-Systemen abzuleiten. Die "Rolle" ist ein geeignetes Konzept, um zu verstehen, wie Akteure interagieren, gemeinsam handeln und Wissen austauschen. Nach dem soziologischen Rollenmodell interagieren Akteure auf Basis von sozialen Rollen und nehmen für einen bestimmten Zeitraum eine Rolle ein, um mit anderen interagieren zu können. Jedes Handeln ist von Rollen geprägt und prägt die Rollen seinerseits. Aus diesem Ansatz wird die Unterstützung der Rollenentwicklung für Wissensmanagement-und CSCL-Systeme abgeleitet. Dabei ist zu beachten, dass die Informatik einen von der Soziologie abweichenden Rollenbegriff verwendet. Zur Veranschaulichung werden zunächst einige Beispiele aus einem CSCL-Evaluationsexperiment dargestellt. Anschließend wird der soziologische Rollenbegriff detaillierter beschrieben, um Gestaltungsmöglichkeiten für technische Systeme abzuleiten. Sie werden zum Abschluss am Beispiel von Rollenmechanismen erläutert, wie etwa die Rollenübernahme, die Billigung derselben, die Rollenzuweisung und den Rollenwechsel.

This paper describes the concept of roles in communities from a sociological point of view. The goal is the systematic analysis of role-design and role-development to enhance community-systems. Roles explain how actors interact, collaborate and how they work together to cultivate knowledge exchange. The role theory in social science assumes that people interact in the context of their social roles and take certain roles as a basis for their communication. Human activities and social action is shaped by roles and vice versa. By contrast, the role concept of computer science focuses on the management of access rights, access control models, and should be clearly differentiated from the sociological understanding.

Patterns, which are based on in-depth practical experience, can be instructing for the design of groupware applications as sociotechnical systems. On the basis of a summary of the concept of patterns -as it was elaborated by the architect Christopher Alexander -its adoptions within computer science are retraced and relationships to the area of groupware are described. General principles for patterns within this domain are formulated and supported by examples from a rich basis of experience with knowledge management systems. The analysis reveals that every pattern of a groupware application has to combine the description of social as well as technical structures, that a single pattern can only be understood in the context of a pattern language, that such a language has to integrate patterns of socio-technical solutions with measures and procedures for introducing them, and that such a language has to express not only one type of directed relationships between the patterns but a variety of different types of relations which have to be deliberately assigned to the patterns.