VOSS: Empirical Analysis of Large-Scale Argumentation

建议：0943139标题：VOSS：大规模投资的实证分析PI：Mark Klein机构：MIT该奖项由《2009年美国复苏和再投资法案》(公法111-5)资助。本研究将论证理论应用于大规模(数百至数千个用户)、异步且地理位置分散的虚拟组织。解决高度复杂的科学和工程问题往往需要参与者之间进行有效的集体讨论，这些参与者可能在地理上和时间上都分布着。通过使用网络基础设施，虚拟组织将致力于解决同一问题的人们联系起来，并使他们能够共享信息。然而，当有大量的人参与时，对互联网调解的讨论的贡献通常是分散的和不系统的，质量差异很大，并且是高度冗余的。目前的基于网络的系统不能为集体讨论真正复杂的问题以及就得到充分支持的将要采取的决定和行动提供充分的支持。论证理论已经在小规模、面对面的环境中解决了这些限制，并将在这里扩展，通过在现实世界(商业、科学、政府和教育)虚拟组织中的一系列“行动研究”干预，为大规模、分布式环境提供支持。使虚拟组织能够有效地讨论复杂的有争议的主题的技术，可以在从教育到政府政策制定、商业决策到科学合作的各个领域产生巨大的积极影响。可以更快、更便宜地利用问题的专家和利益相关者社区，以产生更广泛的潜在有用的想法。还可以从更广泛和更具代表性的角度对这些想法进行评估，以提高关于气候变化、流行病和国际安全等影响重大的多学科问题的集体决定的质量和及时性。

Proposal: 0943139Title: VOSS: Empirical Analysis of Large-Scale ArgumentationPI: Mark KleinInstitution: MITThis award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). This research applies argumentation theory to large-scale (hundreds to thousands of users), asynchronous, and geographically dispersed virtual organizations. Solving highly complex scientific and engineering problems often requires effective collective deliberation among participants who may be geographically and temporally distributed. Using cyberinfrastructure, virtual organizations connect people working on the same problem and enable them to share information. However, when a large number of people are involved, contributions to internet-mediated discussions are typically scattered and unsystematic, vary widely in quality, and are highly redundant. Current web-based systems do not provide adequate support for collective deliberations on truly complex issues and convergence on well supported decisions and actions to be taken. Argumentation theory has addressed these limitations in small-scale, face-to-face settings and will be extended here to provide support for large-scale, distributed settings through a series of 'action research' interventions in real-world (business, scientific, government, and educational) virtual organizations.Techniques that enable virtual organizations to deliberate effectively about complex controversial topics can have an enormous positive impact in domains that range from education to government policy-making to business decision-making to scientific collaborations. The community of experts and stakeholders for a problem can be tapped more quickly and inexpensively to generate a much broader range of potentially useful ideas. Evaluations of these ideas can also be provided from a much broader and more representative range of perspectives improving the quality and timeliness of collective decisions about high-impact, multi-disciplinary problems such as climate change, epidemics, and international security.