My contribution to the CoPDA workshop tries to enumerate different facets which can serve as starting points to create a meaningful shared understanding of the concept of “computational fluency”. I hope that the contributions from other participants and the discussions at the workshop will result in the clarification of the relevance of computational fluency in the digital age.
Table 1 characterizes the different media ages since reading and writing transformed oral to literal
societies almost 3000 years ago.
engage and have control in personally meaningful activities
independence of high-tech scribes:
fundamental changes for thinking, working, learning, and collaborating
technological changes are so fast that cultural transformations cannot keep up
2. Differentiating Computational Literacy and Computational Fluency
Literacy. Literacy with digital media [
Fluency. Fluency with IT [
Fostering Social Ties and Civic Engagement: a key ingredient of a healthy democracy is a vibrant civil society. Achieving this requires an active citizenry with the values, skills, and knowledge to better their communities. Computational fluency allows individuals to participate more fully in democratic societies [6].
Workplace Skills: In today's economy, many jobs require the use of computers and digital tools. Having computational fluency is a crucial skill for the job market, and it can improve employability and job performance. The ability to use technology efficiently will improve personal productivity, organization, and communication.
Digital Citizenship: In the digital age, being a responsible citizen means being able to navigate and understand the digital world. Computational fluency allows individuals to participate more fully in society, whether through online communication, accessing information, or engaging in online communities. 4. Barriers for Becoming and Remaining Computational Fluid Information, Participation, and Choice Overload: The space of computational artifacts available today is overwhelming (e.g.: there are approximately 9 million apps available worldwide, with 2 million available in the Apple App Store). Even the most sophisticated and dedicated individuals can only know a tiny fraction of them, Search tools and AI tools (e.g.: supporting user and task modeling and learning on demand) are a necessity to assist users in selecting the tools that may be relevant for the problems and tasks they are facing.
Lifelong Learning Requirements for Coping with Rapidly Evolving Technologies: Digital tools and technologies are constantly evolving, and it is an ongoing challenge to keep up with new developments and changes making it a demanding and time-consuming task to maintain computational fluency over time.
Having Control of deciding not to participate in specific parts of digital life. People should be able without suffering too many disadvantages to choose and exercise digital abstinence and information celibacy (at least for parts of their daily activities and their lives). 5. Support environments for Reducing the Efforts and Learning Demands to Acquire Computational Fluency Human Problem Domain Interaction: Domain-orientated environments [7] will bring tasks to the forefront and support domain designers with human problem-domain communication with a layered architecture as indicated in the figure.
Problem Domains
Design Environments
Programming
Languages
Assembly Languages User Computer Domain Designer
Environment Developer
Compiler Developer
Supporting Rich Ecologies for Computational Fluency: Computational Fluency is not a binary concept being either absent or mastered. There are many different levels for participation in systems such as Scratch [8], Wikipedia or Open Source Environments. Our empirical research [9] has identified the different roles of participation in Open Source Environments as indicated in the figure below.
Finding the Right Mixture between Skills and Challenges: the challenge level of the task is an important factor in both computational fluency and flow. In order to enter a state of flow [10], the task must be challenging enough to require the individual's attention and skills, but not so challenging that it becomes overwhelming or frustrating. Similarly, in order to develop computational fluency, individuals must be challenged with tasks that are appropriate for their skill level, and gradually increase in difficulty over time. Systems that meet this demand will need a “Low Threshold and High Ceiling”.
Transcending the Power of Printed Media. Innovative uses of digital media should transcend and exploit the unique properties of computational media that are absent in principle in printed media. Printed media do not have interpretive power — they can convey information, but they can- not analyze the work products created. For example, simulation is a process that can show us the implications of our assumptions and allow us to engage in “what-if” problem-solving, and critiquing is a process that analyzes our work products and increases the “back-talk” of an artifact [11] by presenting a reasoned opinion about it [12].
An Example for Putting Owners of Problems in Charge: An interview that we conducted some time ago with a geoscientist at CU Boulder highlighted the importance of supporting end-user development as an important characteristic of computation fluency. The geoscientist used a couple of domain-specific software systems to analyze his research data but none of the existing systems could provide complete solutions to his problems as his research unfolded and his understanding of the problem, data, and results proceeded. During the interview, he says:
Comments by the Geoscientist Underlying Rational and Justification “I spend in average an hour every day developing there is an infinite number of different problems software for myself to analyze the data I in the world à there is a need for an infinite collected because there is not any available number of software systems software” “Even if there is a software developer sitting next ill-defined problems cannot be delegated; they to me, it would not be of much help because my require “unselfconscious cultures of design” needs vary as my research progresses and I cannot clearly explain what I want to do at any moment.” “Even if the software developer can manage to back-talk of the artifact under construction has to write a program for me, I will not know if he or go back to the owner of the problem she has done it right without looking at the code.” “So I spent three months to gain enough “to get by” is an important objective programming knowledge to get by”. “Software development has now become an The rationale for engaging in end-user essential task of my research, but I do not development in domains that are personally consider myself a software developer and I don’t relevant know many other things about software development.”
Clearly, this geoscientist is not a professional software engineer, and he does not intend to become one. He is not a mere end-user either because he engages regularly in intensive software development that goes beyond what most end-user programming environments have tried to support. The activity of software development is not anymore an exclusive activity of professional software engineers. Many domain experts (such as the geoscientist) are engaging in software development as intensive and technically challenging as many professional software engineers, but for the problems of their own rather than the problems of others, and as an instrument for a larger context rather than an end artifact to be delivered. 6. Design Trade-Offs associated with Computational Fluency
Another opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of Computational Fluency is to identify relevant design trade-offs for the concept such as: § Enriching and empowering (with Intelligence Augmentation (IA) approaches) versus automating human activities (with Artificial Intelligence (AI) approaches leading to Overreliance and deskilling; § Democratizing decision-making processes versus overburdening citizens with personally irrelevant information and activities; § Being in control (autonomy) versus being controlled (prescriptive guidance); § Finding a balance between flexibility and stability in working life; § Increasing versus decreasing the digital divide [13].
A core objective of the workshop should be creating a (shared) understanding of computational fluency as a fundamental objective for the digital age. Topics for discussion at the workshop could be: § Will AI hinder or promote Computational Fluency? § Will ChatGPT have a substantial impact to rethink Computational Fluency? § Will Meta-Design and End-User development hinder or promote Computational Fluency? § How can the learning demands associated with Computational Fluency be reduced? § Will Computational Fluency be an essential capability to contribute positively to quality-oflife issues (e.g.: actively engaging in personally meaningful activities, having control, assisting in sense-making, and supporting a desirable work/life balance in the digital age)? 8. The Past, the Present, and the Future of the CoPDA Workshops I would like to repeat an argument that I have made previously:
The IS-EUD’2023 workshop is the 7th CoPDA workshop (see Figure below). An important challenge for the researchers getting together in the workshop this year will be to explore the foundational idea(s) that these workshops have pursued and how they are related to each other. A particular objective of all previous CoPDA workshops has been to collectively identify important and interesting themes for future workshops and my hope is that this will happen again this year.
IS-EUD’2015: Coping with Information, Participation, and Collaboration Overload
NordiCHI’2016: From “Have to” to “Want to” Participate AVI’2014: Social Computing for Working, Learning, and Living IS-EUD’2013: Empowering End Users to Improve their Quality of Life
CoPDA: Cultures of Participation in the Digital Age
AVI’2018: Design Trade-offs for an Inclusive Society AVI’2022: AI for Humans or Humans for AI Identification of Fundamental Challenges
for the Digital Age [4] Fischer, G., Understanding, Fostering, and Supporting Cultures of Participation. ACM Interactions 2011. XVIII.3: p. 42-53. [5] Fischer, G., Computational Literacy and Fluency: Being Independent of High-Tech Scribes, in Strukturieren - Modellieren - Kommunizieren. Leitbild mathematischer und informatischer Aktivitäten, J. Engel, R. Vogel, and S. Wessolowski, Editors. 2005: Hildesheim. p. 217-230. [6] Jenkins, H., Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Cultures: Media Education for the 21st
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