Www.londonknowledgelab.ac.uk the challenges of social collaboration on the internet dr sara de freitas university of oxford: 23rd march 2007.

www.londonknowledgelab.ac.uk

the challenges of social collaboration on the internet

dr sara de freitas

university of oxford: 23rd march 2007


background

based at the london knowledge lab lsrc fellowship l4all research project manager

consultant to the jisc innovation strand (technology enhanced learning environments)

serious games research innovatech llp


summary

1. self-organised criticality

2. social networks

3. web 2.0

4. implications for education

5. what are the challenges for social collaboration on the internet?

6. conclusions


1: self-organised criticality

per bak (1987) what is soc? ‘established solely because of dynamical

interactions among individual elements of the system’ (per bak, 1996:1-2)

soc is so ‘far the only known general mechanism to generate complexity’ (per bak, 1996:1-2)

tendency of large complex systems to be susceptible to ‘avalanches’/events of all sizes – no external factors


Source: University of Michigan, 2004

Yeast proteins: Sergei Maslov and Kim Sneppen, Specificity and stability in topology of protein networks, Science 296, 910-913 (2002).

High school dating: Data drawn from Peter S. Bearman, James Moody, and Katherine Stovel, Chains of affection: The structure of adolescent romantic and sexual networks, American Journal of Sociology 110, 44-91 (2004).

http://www.arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0205380

http://www.soc.washington.edu/users/stovel/Chains.pdf

http://www.soc.washington.edu/users/stovel/Chains.pdf


bill cheswick, lumeta corp (2004)


2: growth of social networks

rapid growth of online social networks – for social and business needs (e.g. friendster, friends reunited, linkedin)

wider opportunities for social collaboration (e.g. collaborative book/article writing)

larger and more distributed social groups emerging (e.g. myspace/live chat)



self-organised communications and tools

blogs wikis (wikipedia) tagging and social book marking (del.icio.us) multimedia sharing (youtube, flickr, bit torrent) audio blogging and podcasting (odeo) rss and syndication mmorpgs (fanzine communities)


significant change agents globalisation

global vs local control strategies vs open access

the internet fast access to information increasing amounts of data (161 billion gigabytes in

2006) mass user generated content - quarter of all data is

original - IDC estimates that 70% of content by 2010 will be user generated

user participation (1 billion in 2006) social interactions

distributed social networks


3: what is web 2.0?

link to: http://youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

http://youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g





4: what now for learning?

what implications… for learning, assessment, accreditation? for the universities?

need for better alignment between: policy development institutional processes empowering the learner?

new learning/new learner? exploratory learning game-based learning social interactive learning


future learning

visions of future learning:

towards what end?

towards what skills?

personalised learning environments?

immersive learning environments?


personalised learning environments

(wilson et al., 2006)


immersive learning environments

exploratory learning interactivity immersion

game-based learning alternate reality gaming mobile gaming

simulations ‘gamesims’


5: what are the challenges for social collaboration on the internet?

plagiarism debate

‘cut and paste’ generation

description over analysis

different forms of assessment

self-organised criticality

highly complex systems (e.g. social networks) are vulnerable to small ‘events’

changing skills

multimodality

different relationship to one another and to information


6: conclusions

considerable challenges of social collaboration for education for society

need for a new vision for learning immersive learning environments

need for greater alignment policy, institutional practice and the learner

new opportunities for learning user generated content


links

learning in immersive worlds report:

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/eli_outcomes.html.

lsrc report out soon

any feedback/comments to sara de freitas: [email protected]

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/eli_outcomes.html

Www.londonknowledgelab.ac.uk the challenges of social collaboration on the internet dr sara de freitas university of oxford: 23rd march 2007.

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