Author's Dedication - This paper is dedicated to our networks of fellow learners across the globe, who everyday are evolving the practices which inform this paper and demonstrating borderless learning through social software.
The recent, and undeniably massive, growth in adoption of various social software applications represents both opportunity and threat to institutions and educators. Opportunity because many of the qualities which help these applications thrive align well with socio-constructivist and other theories of learning and have resonated strongly with online educators and learners. Threat, in part because they are often developed and adopted by learners outside the bounds of their formal relationships with institutions, and in part because they in part depend on Network characteristics that can be in tension with the more 'closed' environments and online approaches that are often found within institutions and organizations. In many ways, social software represents the manifestation of borderless education in that it has typically been developed out on the general Internet, not from within academic enclaves nor for specifically educational purposes, and often thrives best when the full dynamics of the entire network (e.g. linkability, searchability, the 'Network Effect') are in play.
Initially, this paper will compare some of the qualities which cause social software to flourish with contemporary ideas about what enables successful learning in a networked world. Then, after an examination of some uses of specific social software applications to support learning, this paper will discuss how these key characteristics both create challenges for adopting institutions, and considerations for adopters and implementers of social software that can help them harness them to best advantage in creating more authentic engagement of lifelong learners.
Social software. 5 years ago the term, when used at all, was as unfamiliar as many of the software applications it was describing. These days, though, it seems to be everywhere one looks. Not only has there been an undeniable upsurge in use of specific social software applications, it has also emerged as a prevalent design pattern amongst new web-based applications.
The current popularity of social software applications is apparent. Visits to Social Networking sites, but one of many applications that fall under the rubric of 'social software,' comprise 5% of all web site visits in the U.S. [http://www.searchrank.com/blog/2006/11/growth-of-social-networking.html]. And the phenomenon is growing - a June 2007 study [https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pGKddWq3qzxlMCQrBPRQbNw] on the adoption of the social networking service Facebook across Canadian cities showed certain cities with over 30% of their entire population holding accounts, a truly staggering number. If anything, this growth is even greater amongst the current school-aged population; the National School Boards Association reported that "an astonishing 96 percent of students with online access report that they have ever used any social networking technologies, such as chatting, text messaging, blogging and visiting online communities, such as Facebook" [p2-3 http://www.nsba.org/site/docs/41400/41340.pdf]. A similar growth in other social software like blogs [http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000493.html], on social media sites like flickr [http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynetter/157183061/] and Youtube [http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1023] is equally evident.
And the interest in social software's relevance to learning has increased as quickly as its usage. The past 5 years has seen a growing number of papers on how learning and learners can benefit from both social software [e.g. http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/publications_reports_articles/opening_education_reports/Opening_Education_Report199 andhttp://www.eurodl.org/materials/contrib/2006/Christian_Dalsgaard.htm] and the related, if broader, notion of 'Web 2.0'. [e.g http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/techwatch/tsw0701b.pdf or http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm06/erm0621.asp]
In this paper, we will first consider what social software is and the attributes which make it especially well suited to facilitating online learning. While some of the current explorations of the uses of social software for learning might be dismissed as simply experiments with new technology for its own sake, to do so is to misunderstand what many of its adopters have experienced for themselves - that social software is extremely well suited to enabling learning, that in emphasizing users' identities, connecting them with each other and helping network level benefits emerge out of individual actions, the model being developed in social software actually addresses many critical stumbling blocks which have plagued earlier elearning efforts.
The use of social software for learning is no longer speculative. It is being used regularly by learners across the globe in increasingly novel ways. After examining a number of specific examples of social software and how they are already being used in learning, we'll turn to some of the issues hindering its successful deployment. propose some considerations for adopters xxxxxxxxxx
There seem to be as many or more definitions of 'social software' as there are applications thus called, and a lengthy effort spent defining the term is likely to bear less fruit than an examination of specific examples. Still, it is useful to spend some time unpacking the term, as many current definitions do little to convey the disruptive innovation that is occurring in networked applications and why this type of software has held such an appeal to educators and learners alike.
Defining social software simply as "software that supports group communications"*clay Shirky, from "Social Software and the Power of Groups" http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_politics.html* may be broad enough to encompass a huge host of applications, including older ones such as email and chat, which share a key characteristic of connecting 2 or more people in communications. But it does little to help explain how these contemporary applications facilitate the emergence of new connections and meaning, nor why this term describes something different than older ones such as "computer supported cooperative work" or "computer mediated communications." Similarly, while efforts to trace the evolution of social software (*cf. http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/10/tracing_the_evo.html*) are useful in reminding us that, indeed, the urge to use computers and networks to communicate, collaborate and interact is as old as the technologies themselves, they do not necessarily capture how the insights and practices of early 'distributed' communities (for instance, the 'blogosphere' *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogosphere*) and self-directed organizational practices like 'tagging' have come to radically alter the design philosophy of a new generation of web-based systems and services around issues like the locus of control, user-centeredness, motivation, autonomy and identity, all of which, as we shall discuss below, have had a long (and growing) recognition by educators as key factors influencing learning.
Turning to some recent efforts from educators themselves, we find the basic definition above usefully extended by Mejias to encompass some of these differences - social software is "software that allows people to interact and collaborate online or that
aggregates the actions of networked users"*http://knowledgetree.flexiblelearning.net.au/edition07/download/la_mejias.pdf* [emphasis added]. Similarly, Anderson offers "[...] networked tools that support and encourage individuals to learn together while retaining individual control over their time, space, presence, activity, identity and relationship" *Anderson, T. (2005a). Distance learning - social software's killer ap? ODLAA 2005 Conference. [http://www.unisa.edu.au/odlaaconference/PPDF2s/13%20odlaa%20-%20Anderson.pdf]* which, in the context of using these tools for learning, begins to outline how this shift towards the user as the locus of control has been key to both their success and their applicability as learning tools.
Luckily, considering the diversity of opinion on how to define social software, there are a large number of applications which are regularly and without contention thus named (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_software). For the purposes of this paper, we will focus on primarily on the web-based applications of blogging, social bookmarking, social networking, wikis and shared concept maps and their applicability to learning.
Looking at this set of applications, we can identify a number of characteristics they share which help to further refine the concept of social software. Many of these characteristics are also to be found in contemporary theories and approaches to learning (especially learning in a networked world). A brief investigation of these common characteristics will deepen both our understanding of social software and of its growing appeal to educators.
In an ideal world, all software would be designed with a user's motivations in mind, designed from the perspective of what the user wanted to do. In the case of social software, this seems, perhaps slightly paradoxically, to be doubly the case. Time and time again we can find social software applications that in part succeed by addressing an individual's needs, allowing them to achieve something of personal value, but, by doing so specifically in a consciously networked environment, help these individually motivated actions (tagging a bookmark, publishing a video, writing a blog post) to benefit the larger network as a whole, and in turn, that bring that network value back to to the original user.
In the new realm of social software applications like blogs, social bookmarking services, social networking sites or social media sites, a users contribution first and foremost is associated with their personal space and immmediately provides benefits, whether it be as a space for personal writing, capturing personal bookmarks, or hosting personal videos.
The desire of people to form groups, and the power of groups to support learning, is in no way a new phenomenom. But prior to the advent of increasingly ubiquitous online communication networks, groups
In older software models like discussion forums, chat rooms, or mailing lists, the 'space' of the user's contribution was pre-defined, and a user's contribution was contained and associated with that predefined 'space.' move to "affinity" section? -Edtechpost 9/3/07 12:04 PM
Affinity - especially in relation to informal learning, borderless learning; the ability to find either like-minded users, or users who have tackled similar problems, or who are trying to learn similar things, ON ONE'S OWN, is one of the true innovations in social software. tie into networks vs groups and how for this to work, it often needs to transcend pro forma boundaries of groups.
Authenticity of engagement / Identity
Learning as conversation encourages reflection and better transfer to new situations
User Generated Content / peer production - deeper level processing produces greater retention of material
wisdom of crowds - zeitgeist, peer review
socially-situated content / object-centered sociality: it is not that content is no longer important, far from it. But content, when situated within a network in which it can be related to its producers and consumers, gains additional context that allows it to act as a connective bridge or scaffold, sometimes forming the basis for new connections, othertimes resulting out of existing ones.
"open" web - linkability, hyperlinks, google
social constructivism - http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Social_Constructivism
situated cognition and the culture of learning - http://www2.parc.com/ops/members/brown/papers/situatedlearning.html
connectivism
connected knowledge - http://www.downes.ca/post/33034
lifebased learning
elearning 2.0
activity based/experiental
authentic learning
re: freedom, autonomy and interaction - cf. "Social Software and the Emergence of Control" paper by Jon Dron as well as Saba reference
F. Saba and R. L. Shearer, "Verifying key theoretical concepts in a dynamic model of distance education," The American Journal of Distance Education, vol. 8, pp. 36-59, 1994. on the idea that "The greater the structure, the lesser the dialogue, and vice versa"
The Hexagon Of Cooperative Freedom
Cooperative learning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
learning by example
learning by modifiying someone else's work
the 'crit'
peer learning
As we've seen already, social software is not simply a single type of application but instead a style of network-based computing that counts the user, their identity, relations and actions as key to whatever specific tasks they are facing. Nevertheless, one can also understand 'social software' as an (ever-growing) set of applications that are being adopted by educators and learners. In this section, we will examine some of these specific examples, their potentials both as educational tools and as disruptive forces.
Social bookmarking, the practice in which users store and share their personal collection of URLs on a web-based server, seems at first remarkably straightforward, and easily recognizable as an extension of the common practice of users storing their 'favourites' or 'bookmarks' locally on their browser. Yet for all its simplicity, social bookmarking has generated a great deal of interest by educators, and, as an early example of social software, introduced features and design philosophies that have influenced many subsequent applications. (*cf. http://bokardo.com/archives/the-delicious-lesson/*)
As it builds on an existing phenomena (users saving their favourite bookmarks), social bookmarking is a good illustration of how, by serving a personally motivated need in a networked environment that is open and aggregatable, social software creates additional value both for the individual user and the network as a whole without requiring additional (altruistically-motivated) efforts.
But what interest does social bookmarking hold for learning? At its most basic level, it offers a simple way to do something that users of the web have done since it's advent - share sets of 'interesting links' with each other, in this case without the need for the additional step of creating a webpage and pasting the links gathered in one's local browser. Instructors and students can easily create collections of links for a specific course or specific topic and share these with others with little or no extra effort. Many services also extend this with RSS feeds to syndicate the resources, and mechanisms for users to rate or comment on links. This ability to re-use and re-purpose existing collections of links should not be discounted too lightly; while it is not specific to social software, this ability to "write once, use/read anywhere" joins with it as another of the contributing elements in the perfect storm of innovations termed 'web 2.0' [http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm06/erm0621.asp]. So in addition to the basic act of displaying links elsewhere, syndicated social bookmark collections can serve as the basis for a simple slideshow application (cf. delishow http://blogs.open.ac.uk/Maths/ajh59/006041.html and http://slides.diigo.com/), a way to create a custom search engine (http://idlivada.vpsland.com:8000/login.html) or even as a lightweight personal database (http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/08/22.html).
Through the practice of 'tagging' (certainly not restricted to social bookmarking, and indeed itself a candidate for general social software characteristic) users describe their stored resources with unregulated self-supplied keywords. Using 'custom tags' (pre-agreed upon terms) instructors and students can easily create a pool of such resources that were collectively created (e.g. http://del.icio.us/tag/E07SEM06P or http://del.icio.us/tag/hz08). But if they are useful in facilitating sharing amongst pre-existing bounded groups like classes their power lies in the discovery of previously unknown resources, conceptual relationships and people. While tagging assists in learner's own organization of the resources, being able to see all resources which have been similarly tagged by other users in the system enables the discovery of new resources, and through them, relationships to new concepts (related tags) and people (others who have tagged similarly). Thus quickly learners can find their own contributions augmented by those of others, their categorization terms both complimented and contrasted by the terms other users have used, leading to additional discoveries.
Why build systems specific to education?
- ability to output specific citation formats - connotea: bookmarks
- 'educational' focused versions (especially those built at the right scale) allow us to start to generate metrics relevant to academics, cf. http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/07/06/a-conversation-with-timo-hannay-about-the-scientific-web/
- tie it into institutional systems (authentication, registration) which also allows for more context-based information; bookmark into library and other on campus systems cf PennTags
- community of 'more alike' peers - Edtags.org: Bookmarks for the field of education
H2O - http://h2obeta.law.harvard.edu/, e.g. this list on 'social software' - http://h2obeta.law.harvard.edu/66196
Problems with building systems specific to education - Issues / Silos?
- as a user, why use an institution specific one if it is distinct from one's day to day activities and won't persist after one leaves. need for portability/export-ability
- scale - certain phenomena, like tagging, seem to work better the larger the network grows [FIND REFERENCE]
- somewhat interesting example of Blackboard's social bookmarking system Scholar http://www.scholar.com/ - in tries to offer the best of both worlds by having users not just from a single institution but instead across all institutions using Blackboard products, and yet does allow instructors and students to limit sharing to the from the formally bounded groups of their classes and institutions
Blogs were likely one of the earliest of the 'social softwares' that generated interest and attention from educators towards their potential use as a learning tool. While blogs as a phenomenon are simply described as personal, chronologically-ordered, web-based journals *http://www.blog-connection.com/blog-definition.htm*, such definitions fail to capture the essence of blogging as a social activity, a form of network writing in which the author is not only conscious of the other activities and writers around the network, but indeed actively engaged with them as both a reader, commenter and respondent, participating in network-wide conversations that emerge through the interconnection of separate blogs but are not confined to any one of them. It is very much these "emergent social practices of blogrolling, extensive hyperlinking, and discussion threads attached not to pages but to content chunks within them" [http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm06/erm0621.asp]
which help to distinguish blogs and blogging from earlier phenomena like personal homepages offered through services like Tripod or Geocities.
And what of their interest to learning?
blogs and learning
- syndication
- engagement with the 'outside' world
- reflective practice
- outboard brain
- blogs as eportfolio
- "matrix of uses of blogs in education"
- feedback on early drafts by peers, by outside world
examples
Why build systems specific to education?
- safety; allow learners to make mistakes, publish 'rough ideas' in private, don't want their learning to go on their permanent 'internet record'
-
Problems with building systems specific to education
- silo'd
- not portable; too often constrained by artificial constructs like 'classes' and 'terms'
- don't get the benefit of serendipitous discovery and interaction that is a hallmark of the distributed conversation of the 'blogosphere'
- takes away from the possibility of interacting with 'outside' experts
- not part of your permanent 'internet record'
Social Networking, as we've remarked earlier, is a type of social software that is often conflated with the field as a whole. It is not difficult to understand why; in addition to the similarity of the name, the lines between social networking site, blogging community and social media publishing sites can seem blurry at best. For instance, both the Drupal and ELGG packages above, while often and easily employed to host blogs, both contain a host of additional features that allow users to interconnect in ways more similar to well-known social networks like Facebook.com. Still, the distinction seems worth making because for a large number of young learners they represent their primary engagement with social software, more so than blogs or social media sites proper.
Wikipedia's definition can start us off as well any: "A social network service focuses on the building and verifying of online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others, and which necessitates the use of software."
links to learning:
examples
Wiki software provides for simple collaborative creation and editing of web content. While many people simply equate wikis with perhaps their most famous example, Wikipedia, there now exist hundreds of wiki software programs and hosting services that power wikis both great and small.
Wikis fit somewhat uneasily into the above definitions of social software. The extent to which they are an example of a tool which creates additional value to individually motivated actions by placing them into a socially networked environment is perhaps circumspect. Yet they properly deserve consideration here not only because they are commonly considered in lists of 'social software' used in education but because, in their most open state, depend on
links to learning
Why a wiki?
Expand critical thinking, self-reflection, faculty mentorship, and service learning beyond the boundaries of a specific course, a particular discipline, and a single semester.
Team-based learning
Social potential of online social networks
Greater opportunities for collaboration
What's noteworthy?
Supports a wide range of pedagogical uses The entire process of selecting collaborative technology was itself a collaborative process between faculty, students, and research groups It's created some replicable practices on campus"
examples
examples
Proceedings of the 2005 international symposium on Wikis
San Diego, California
Year of Publication: 2005
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1104973.1104976
"Clearly, the New Media Technologies wiki as it has been utilised
so far does not constitute a wiki system in the fullest sense of the
term, providing a collaborative content development space which
is open to all contributors; for educational purposes at least in the
context of this subject such a space would be counterproductive.
Direct student collaboration remains limited to their immediate
teams, since a wider collaborative approach where each student
was encouraged to edit any of their peers' encyclopedia entries
would seem to make effective assessment virtually impossible."
Where does blogging/vid blogging/podcasting or social networking end and social media sites begin? The line is blurry at best, but luckily the need to make the hard and fast distinction is at
links to learning
examples
Shared concept maps can be the hub of content focused social networking. According to Novak and Canas (2006) "concept maps are graphic tools for organizing and representing knowledge. They include concepts, usually enclosed in circles or boxes of some type, and relationships between the concepts indicated by a connecting line linking two concepts. Words on the line, referred to as linking words or linking phrases, specify the relationship between the two concepts" (p. 1). Concept maps are usually hierarchical and designed to answer a "focus question". The underlying theory (Ausubel, 1963, as cited in Novak & Canas, 2006) is that assimilation of new concepts and propositions into existing concepts and propositional frameworks is the core of conceptual learning. Concept maps constructed by the student can be used as a sort of window into the student's mind and have been used to build an electronic portfolios of personal academic knowledge (Cambridge, 2006). Concept maps can be used as part of an assessment process according to Nesbit and Adesope (2006).
Concept maps are reported in a meta-analysis by Nesbit and Adesope (2006) as a useful tool for facilitating learning in classroom field studies where the content material was academically relevant. Compared to conventional lecturing and reading methods of learning, concept mapping was associated with medium to large gains in learning achievement of .778 standard deviations on multiple-choice tests (based on a sample of 401 students in seven studies). In laboratory studies the effect size associated with concept mapping was substantial but smaller where the learning gains were 0.363 standard deviations in free recall tests of retention of the concept maps studied for about an hour (based on a sample of 2,496 students in 38 studies). Nesbit and Adesope (2006) noted the wide range of educational applications of concept mapping and also concluded that "Concept maps seem to suit collaborative and cooperative learning" (p. 240).
Cooperative concept mapping has also shown very promising results. The work of Hoffman (1987, 2000, as cited in Crandall, Klein, and Hoffman, 2006) on the speed of knowledge transfer from experts using concept mapping reported rates of 2.0 information propositions per minute compared to 1.0 proposition per minute for structured interviews, and 0.15 propositions per minute for unstructured interviews. A study by van Boxtel, van der Linden, Roelofs, and Erkens (2002 as cited in Nesbit & Adescope 2006) reported that secondary school science students doing concept mapping in pairs uttered about three information propositions per minute that were characterized as both being on-topic and involving similar levels of participation from both participants. More recently, Engelmann (2007) reported that concept-map based collaboration facilitated social learning when using server-based CmapTools. This study at the University of Tuenbingen with 30 teams of three students involved the sharing of the collaborators' concept maps in an Elliot Aronson Jigsaw Classroom style task where each collaborator had some non-shared information that was required for the group's problem solution. This sharing of the conceptual knowledge maps by each collaborator resulted in greater knowledge and information awareness which in turn reduced cognitive load, supported coordination, resulted in clearer group maps, and fostered better problem solving compared to the control situation where viewing other collaborator's personal concept maps was not available.
CmapTools server provides for collaboration in several channels to enhance academic social networking. There can be explicit sharing as directed by the instructor in assignments and there can also be implicit sharing which is discoverable by students. The most obvious collaboration support is for synchronous making of a group concept map by two or more students where each student's contributed concepts are color coded in the group map. This group activity is further supported by an embedded chat tool. Synchronous voice communications outside of the CmapTools application have been used in group mapping to good effect by Engelmann (2007).
The CmapTools application also provides several asynchronous ways to facilitate social networking with concept maps. The asynchronous annotation tool enables instructors to comment on students' maps in targeted ways since the annotation icon is attached to a specific concept box. Annotations provide a way to raise questions as well as a social communication marker of involvement by others in the network. Annotations can identify the author of the comment and an email link for a more private communication channel. There are additional options for anonymous collaboration. Students can use annotations in basic peer review assignments or in asynchronous collaboration. For more back and forth types of exchanges, asynchronous threaded discussions can be attached to any concept box in a concept map to enable highly focused sharing of ideas. These discussions can also generate email notifications by message or by day to participants.
Students and instructors can also collaborate by using what are called "knowledge soups" where a concept map author may anonymously publish claims to knowledge in the form of propositions which are statements that can be judged as either true or false. The knowledge soup provides a method for selectively combining the concept maps of many students into a more comprehensive evaluated group concept map that can be used to share the understanding of all involved. The claims can be challenged by individual students, student teams, or instructors. These challenges take place in discussion forums where the merits of the ideas can be examined and this process can be used to move the group or class toward consensus about what is true in the content domain.
Coffee and Cañas (2003) has even been some initial work on developing online course delivery around concept maps. Their work extends the CmapTools server to include the Learning Environment Organizer (LEO) which provides an advance organizer for a course that maps the necessary prerequisites paths for each student for any given topic of instructional content. The LEO system also allows for student login, authentication, and tracking. In the most recent version, the LEO system has been enhanced to demonstrate that it can accommodate the very challenging content in the complex technical knowledge domain of XML applications (Coffey, 2007).
There are several other graphic knowledge mapping applications with ranging from a shared whiteboard like space from http://thinkature.com/ to collaborative online mindmapping where several students can work on the same map at the same time. A similar mindmapping product by http://mind42.com/ enables additional possiblities with optional notes and images. Other applications from http://www.kayuda.com/ and http://www.bubbl.us/ are pretty conventional mindmaps with boxes and and linking line but supporting realtime collaboration. The big difference between mindmaps and concept maps is that with concept map the links between the concepts are labeled with the relationship between the concepts. The task of labeling the relationships is thought to be the task that involves more elaborate and deeper conceptual processing which in turn produces the enhancement of learning and memory with concept maps.
In summary, concept mapping is an empirically validated teaching/learning methodology that gains extra power when extended to be the base for academic social networks. The CmapTools client and server applications facilitate academic social networking with synchronous group concept mapping, as well as focused annotation, threaded discussions, plus a knowledge soup style of group collaboration. Concept maps have been shown to provide an effective social context for online group problem solving with shared maps. The cmaptools developers have created three public server sites and there are several hundred other server resources. An examples of the public html access without the free client for setting up folders and making map can be viewed at url http://cmapspublic3.ihmc.us/servlet/SBReadResourceServlet?fid=1160514559572_1737856583_34544 In the case of my own undergraduate psychology students, using the the CmapTools concept mapping client was regarded as easy and "fun" technology by novice users even in the stand-alone client mode. The evolution of concept mapping into a graphic organizer for online learning management as well as a method of choice for knowledge elicitation and transfer bodes well for academic social network mash-up applications in the near future.
References
Elliot Aronson style JigSaw Classroom Task (http://www.jigsaw.org/ )
Cambridge, D. (2006) Retrieved on August 31 from http://ncepr.org/ncepr/drupal/node/45
Coffey, J. A. J. Cañas, LEO: A Learning Environment Organizer to Support Computer-Mediated Instruction, Journal for Educational Technology Systems 31(3), pp. 275-290 (2003). Retreived on August 31, 2007 from http://cmap.ihmc.us/Publications/ResearchPapers/LEO-A%20Learning%20Environment%20Organizer%20to%20Support%20Computer%20Mediated%20Learning.pdf
Coffey, J.W. (2007). A study of the use of concept maps and knowledge models to organize and communicate a complex technical knowledge domain. Proceedings of EARLI2007, The 12th Biennial Meeting of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction. Budapest, Hungary, August 28 - September 1, 2007. Retrieved on August 31, 2007 from http://earli2007live.nqcontent.net/nq/home/scientific_program/programme/proposal_view/&abstractid=1085
Crandall, B., Klein, G., & Hoffman, R. (2006). Working Minds: A Practicitioner's Guide to Cognitive Task Analysis. MIT Press, Boston Massachusetts.
Nesbit, J. C., & Adesope, O. O. (2006). Learning with concept and knowledge maps: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 76, 413-448. Retreived on August 31, 2007 from http://www.sfu.ca/~jcnesbit/articles/nesbitadesope2006.htm
The above examples of blogging, wikis, social bookmarking, social media sharing, social networking and shared concept maps are far from the only social note taking sites - http://stu.dicio.us/, http://www.notemesh.com/, http://studystickies.com/
student peer review software - espace - http://www.educause.edu/apps/eq/eqm07/eqm07311.asp
As we've already seen, though, implementing social software as an educator (or using it as a learner) is not without challenges.
Privacy
Their Space versus Your Space (e.g. facebook as an "educational platform" - controlled by whom?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6245798.stm
One third of US online teenagers have been victims of cyber-bullying according to research by the Pew Internet Project.
IP - cf. Facebook's license - http://eduspaces.net/dtosh/weblog/195414.html
Need to preserve work used in assessment for long term
Flash in the pan - while there are definitely varying degrees of user loyalty and longevity across the broad field of social software, these are all by and large new sites and services, and popularity can be a fickle thing. While it might be that large numbers of current users are, independant or organizational initiatives, adopting a service like Facebook to facilitate
not having a large enough scale to truly benefit from 'network effects' (cf U Manitoba's 43 things knock off)
not enough incentive for learners to use yours (which may be represent a dead end for them at the end of their engagament) versus going off and using a generic internet one which will survive their engagement and -- or with an open source that is popular and therefore more transferable.
It is not that one must necessarily set out to build an internet-wide system, but if one starts small, preserves the conditions (openness, general web-based standards) that allow for larger Network Effects to occur and doesn't specific disable this from happening, it is possible to do small pilots and experiments which can, under the steam of the networks users themselves, turn into massively useful and massively used resources.
So there are issues for organizations both in using generic internet-wide services and with building their own services internally. None of these issues need to be insurmountable, and indeed in the examples we discussed in section 4, many of the implementors found ways to mitigate these issues. It seems the trick is a combination of
but in all of these cases, the issues raised are largely because of the various organization framings or perspectives
"The term 'borderless education' encompasses a broad range of activities and developments which cross (or have the potential to cross) the traditional borders of higher education, be they geographical, sectoral or conceptual. So, for example, the Observatory will track developments in areas such as e-learning, growth in private and corporate education, developing markets and international collaboration."
the role of Open Content / Open Educational Resources cannot be understated here.
It is no co-incidence either that leading providers of OERs are actively looking for ways to support learners supporting themselves, developing mechanisms that allow them to find each other and connect but on their own terms cf. OCW support communities, Tony's suggestion above, ways to tie internet-wide sites like 43 things together with specific OERs based on tags
- insert something about "social software and the PLE"
- insert something about "social software and the Third Place" - cf. http://www.slideshare.net/infe/serendipity-20-missing-third-places-of-learning/
Is it being used for learning? That's not the question. Increasingly it is moving past innovators and early adopters into the early majority of users. No, instead the question needs to be "how can we harness social software in such a way that doesn't disable its effectiveness by trying to fit it into institutional models in which it will not fit" or even "when should we be facilitating social software for our learners and when should we just be getting out of the way"
Yochai Benkler - "permeability" and the future of educational institutions - cf http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ECR0703.pdf
Joh Dron 2007 book from Idea Group Inc. - Control and Constraint in E-Leaning: Choosing When to Choose -- most of the essentials are in the review in innovate by Terry Anderson
http://community.uaf.edu/~iteach/wiki/IT07-SOE/TheoryOfEverything
Martin Owen, Lyndsay Grant, Steve Sayers and Keri Facer, Futurelab, "Social software and learning" http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/publications_reports_articles/opening_education_reports/Opening_Education_Report199/ Last Accessed: 21 August 2007
Stephen Downes, 'E-Learning 2.0,'OLDailyhttp://www.downes.ca/post/31741 Last Accessed: 21 August 2007
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Last edited by Ed Woodward on Nov 1, 2012 3:08 pm -0500.
