vol III chap 10 sect 3
Previous: 10.2. Gravitational astronomy.
10.3. Organization and evaluation of learning communities.¶
In this section we describe what a learning community is about and explains that the organization of LIGO project can be interpreted in terms of a learning community.
Learning communities (LC) are cases of communities of practice, where individuals learn by interacting with each other in practical contexts in which knowing and doing are strongly related. The LC are groups of human beings who have the support of technological devices and are organized to accomplish certain goals with the following purposes: to be informed and establish communications; to obtain, apply and generate knowledge, as well as to participate in the realization of transformation activities.
According to Linn and His (2000), four pedagogical-pragmatic principles characterize a Learning Community (LC): P1: accessible knowledge (AK), P2: visible thought (VT), P3: mutual learning (ML) and P4: continuous learning (CL). The degree of accomplishment of each principle can be determined by providing evidence that certain operational criteria are satisfied.
Next we present a sample of operational criteria (OC) useful for evaluating to what extend each one of the four pedagogical-pragmatic principles is satisfactorily accomplished.
P1: Accessible Knowledge (AK).
OC-01. Encourage LC members to build knowledge from their ideas and develop more powerful and practical viewpoints.
OC-02. Assist LC members to personally be involved in relevant issues and regularly review their knowledge.
OC-03. Support the members of the LC to participate in processes of inquiry and research to enrich their knowledge.
OC-04. Encourage communication between working teams to share with others the specialized knowledge of each team.
P2: Visible Thought (VT).
OC-05. Model the process of knowledge building in connection with the treatment of alternative explanations and the diagnosis of errors.
OC-06. Support LC members to explain their own ideas.
OC-07. Provide multiple visual representations using various media.
OC-08. Promote the systematic recording of the knowledge acquired by different teams.
P3: Mutual Learning (ML).
OC-09. Encourage LC members to listen to and learn from each other.
OC-10. Design social activities that promote productive and respectful interactions.
OC-11. Encourage the members of the LC to design and prudently apply the criteria and standards characteristic of the project in which they are involved.
OC-12. Organize multiple structured social activities.
P4: Continuous Learning (CL).
OC-13. Engage the members of the LC to reflect on their own ideas and their progress in the development of the project.
OC-14. Engage LC members to be critical of the information they handle.
CO-15. Promote the participation of the members of the LC in activities looking for the establishment of a culture of permanent development.
OC-16. Establish generalizable inquiry processes for describing the accomplishment of expectations.
One possible instrument for evaluating how previous operational criteria (OC) have been accomplished consists in the application of rubrics. Analyzing and classifying responses to rubrics serve to create sorts of maps of regions or patterns of understanding levels characterized by qualitative categories and sometimes by quantitative values. Such characterization may refer to individual results or to percentages and group trends. Therefore, in the evolution of working teams towards the creation of learning communities, the following levels of participation can be observed:
Level L1: the participants simply request, obtain and distribute the required information and use the knowledge they already have.
Level L2: the participants transform their work from cooperative to collaborative and effectively use existing knowledge.
Level L3: in addition to what is done at level L2, new knowledge is generated and applied to solve problems as well as to anticipate and avoid them.
The LIGO project as a learning community.¶
It is nonsense to analyze if all the previous 16 operational criteria (OC) for the application of the pragmatic pedagogic principles have been satisfied while the LIGO project was planned, developed and evaluated. However, it makes sense to consider if the activities reported in the Nobel Lectures by Weiss and Barish satisfy in general any of those four principles. It is an exercise for thinking what implied the LIGO project and consider if an international learning community has been formed.
The reported activities in those two Nobel Lectures constitute a LIGO chronology describing a timeline for publications of papers, reports, or proposals as well as for actions undertaken by individuals or institutions participating in the project. In what follows, for each Nobel Lecture, those activities are grouped together according to the four pedagogical principles characterizing a learning community: accessible knowledge, visible thought, mutual learning, and continuous learning. These selections are not unique, and it is possible that some activities could be grouped in more than one principle. When required, texts quoted from the Lectures are indicated in between quotes.
ACTIVITIES DESCRIBED IN WEISS´ LECTURE.¶
RELATED TO ACCESSIBLE KNOWLEDGE.
1915: Einstein publishes the General Theory of Relativity and presents the idea that mass distorts the geometry of space and the flow of time.
1970: Kip Thorne starts a research group in theoretical gravitation at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Plans are made for a new complementary program in experimental gravitation.
1974: Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor discover a binary pulsar system and showed evidence for energy loss due to the radiation of gravitational waves. (They were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1993).
1983: The Gravity Research Group in Glasgow, Scotland published a paper on Interferometric detectors for gravitational radiation.
RELATED TO VISIBLE THOUGHT.
1916, 1918: Einstein proposes the existence of gravitational waves.
1957: John Wheeler and Joseph Weber consider gravitational wave as a tidal force transverse to the propagation direction and treat the detection of weak gravitational waves as a Newtonian interaction of these forces exciting a mechanical resonator.
1972: Rainer Weiss, publish a paper on Electromagnetically coupled broadband gravitational antenna.
1975: Kip Thorne and Rainer Weiss work on a committee to study the possible role of the space program in research on gravitation and cosmology.
1983: MIT and Caltch present a report to an NSF committee: A study of a long baseline gravitational wave antenna system. The committee was remarkably encouraging in their evaluation.
1988: The Max Planck Institute of Astrophysics Group in Germany publishes a paper on Noise behavior of the Garching 30-meterpprototype gravitational-wave detector.
RELATED TO MUTUAL LEARNING.
1960, 1969: Joseph Weber publish two papers Detection and generation of gravitational waves and Evidence for the Discovery of Gravitational Waves.
1970: There are no confirmations of the Weber experiments.
1994: As Director of LIGO Barry Barish makes possible a transition from independent investigator small-scale science to the project organization required for a large-scale coordinated scientific effort. He also conceived and organized the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.
RELATED TO CONTINUOUS LEARNING.
1966: Rainer Weiss prepare a course in General Relativity to be taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Physics Department. He thinks about a simple gedanken experiment to measure a gravitational wave and the possibility to do a real experiment by using a Michelson interferometer.
1978, 1980: Caltech forms a group with significant internal investment and Stan Whitcomb as a new leader.
1987: A report by an independent Panel on Interferometric Observatories for Gravitational Waves encouraged the NSF to build two full scale interferometric detectors at widely separated sites and insisted that the project find a single Director before moving forward.
1989: Caltech and MIT present a joint proposal to the NSF The construction, operation and supporting research and development of a LASER INTERFEROMETER GRAVITATIONAL-WAVE OBSERVATORY.
ACTIVITIES DESCRIBED IN BARISH´S LECTURE.¶
RELATED TO ACCESSIBLE KNOWLEDGE.
1994: Cancellation of the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) in Texas by the U.S. Congress.
1994: "Kip Thorne and Barry Barish present LIGO to the National Science Board describing both the theoretical underpinnings of gravitational waves and their plans for the project, in particular to develop and test Advanced LIGO technologies. They received formal approval at the full requested funding for Initial LIGO, with a commitment to support the crucial R&D program for Advanced LIGO".
2004: A major funding through the NSF Major Research Equipment and Construction (MREFC) program is granted to the Advanced LIGO project. "Additional significant contributions to Advanced LIGO included: a pre-stabilized laser system from the Max Planck Institute (Germany); Test Mass Suspension systems from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (UK); and thermal compensation wavefront sensors and interferometer controls components from the Australian Research Council. Higher laser power, larger test masses and improved mirror coatings have been incorporated".
2016: On February 11 the observation of gravitational waves in LIGO is announced.
2017: The Physics Nobel Prize is awarded to Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.”
2017: “Two weeks after the Nobel announcement in October and almost two months before this lecture, we announced the first observation of a merger of a neutron star binary system. This was also the first gravitational wave event to have electromagnetic counterparts observed in a large variety of astronomical instruments.”
2017: Observation of one more black hole merger event (GW170814); “for the first time this was also observed in the Virgo detector near Pisa in Italy. Virgo is a collaboration of France, Italy, Netherlands, Poland and Hungary.” … “ Virgo, in this detection, not only gives independent confirmation of the LIGO black hole merger detections but improves markedly the ability to triangulate. This is a precursor to also adding KAGRA in Japan and LIGO-India detectors to the network.” RELATED TO VISIBLE THOUGHT.
1994: A new structure for the project is proposed around the LIGO Laboratory by unifying the Caltech and MIT efforts, by developing two distant instruments in Hanford, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana, and by integrating new members to the existing staff.
2003: A proposal to the NSF of the Advanced LIGO plan is submitted where a research and development program is presented and approved, implying that the initial LIGO sensitivity of the gravitational wave detector are improved, and the background noise levels are reduced. Potential sources of gravitational waves are searched in mergers of binary black holes, a black hole and a neutron star, and binary neutron star systems.
2015: Observation of the first Black Hole merger by Advanced LIGO (event GW150914). "As the objects in-spiral together, more and more gravitational waves are emitted and the frequency and amplitude of the signal increases (the characteristic chirp signal). This is following by the final merger, and then, the merged single object rings down". … "The two black holes inspiral and merge together due to the emission of gravitational radiation coming from the accelerations".
RELATED TO MUTUAL LEARNING.
1994-1999: Construction of the initial version of LIGO, "employing technologies that represented a balance between being capable of achieving sensitivity levels where the detections of gravitational waves might be ‘possible,’ and using techniques that we had fully demonstrated in our laboratories".
2015: Observation of the first Black Hole merger by Advanced LIGO (event GW150914). "As the objects in-spiral together, more and more gravitational waves are emitted and the frequency and amplitude of the signal increases (the characteristic chirp signal). This is following by the final merger, and then, the merged single object rings down". … "The two black holes in spiral and merge together due to the emission of gravitational radiation coming from the accelerations".
RELATED TO CONTINUOUS LEARNING.
1997: Barry Barish makes a proposal to the NSF to improve LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC). Nearly 1200 members, from 108 institutions and 18 countries have participated in making the discovery of gravitational waves, analyzing the data, interpreting the results, and in writing up and presenting the results.
2015, 2016, 2017: "The first Advanced LIGO data run (O1) continued for four months, from September 2015 to January 2016. Our second data run (O2) ran from December 2016 to the end of August 2017". … "We are actively searching for other signals, besides binary merges, including bust signals from phenomena like supernova explosions or gamma ray bursts, continuous wave signals from spinning neutron stars (pulsars), stochastic background signals, etc. So far, we have only detected binary merger signals, but hope to detect others as our sensitivity improves".
REFERENCES¶
Linn, M.C. and His, S. (2000). Computers, Teachers, Peers: Science learning partners. Mahwah, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
PHYSICS NOBEL PRIZES MLA style: Albert A. Michelson – Nobel Lecture. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Sun. 14 May 2023. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1907/michelson/lecture/
MLA style: Popular information. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Wed. 17 May 2023. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2017/popular-information/