Beyond Difference: Reconfiguring Education for the User-Led Age

Slide 1: c re a tiv e in d u s trie s Beyond Difference: Reconfiguring Education for the User-Led Age Dr Axel Bruns Media & Communication Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology Brisbane, Australia a.bruns@qut.edu.au – http://snurb.info/ creativeindustries.qut.com

Slide 2: c re a tiv e in d u s trie s Key Questions ‒ How does education: • prepare graduates to become expert users of the information available from user-led content creation environments? • prepare graduates to be expert participants in user-led content creation environments? creativeindustries.qut.com

Slide 3: c re a tiv e in d u s trie s Produsage – User-led content creation is emerging in various domains: • open source software • multi-user gaming development ∘ e.g. The Sims, Everquest, Second Life, Spore • online publishing • media sharing and creative ∘ blogs practice ∘ open news – e.g. Slashdot, ∘ e.g. Flickr, ccMixter, YouTube Indymedia, OhmyNews , Jumpcut, Current.tv • knowledge management • reviews and viral marketing ∘ wikis – e.g. Wikipedia ∘ e.g. Epinions, IgoUgo ∘ social bookmarking – e.g. • automatic aggregation del.icio.us, digg ∘ geotagging – e.g. ∘ Google, Amazon, Technorati Google Earth, Frappr creativeindustries.qut.com

Slide 4: c re a tiv e in d u s trie s Produsage ‒ Beyond production: • ‘anyone can edit’ – users become producers of content • content is no longer a distinct product – it is a temporary artefact of an ongoing process, and is continuously evolving • usage and production are increasingly, inextricably intertwined • strict distinctions between producers, distributors, and consumers no longer apply • a new “Generation C” of content produsers? this is produsage creativeindustries.qut.com

Slide 5: c re a tiv e in d u s trie s Common Characteristics ‒ Shared across these environments: • Community-Based – the community as a whole, if sufficiently large and varied, can contribute more than a closed team of producers, however qualified • Fluid Roles – produsers participate as is appropriate to their personal skills, interests, and knowledges; this changes as the produsage project proceeds • Unfinished Artefacts – content artefacts in produsage projects are continually under development, and therefore always unfinished; their development follows evolutionary, iterative, palimpsestic paths • Common Property, Individual Merit – contributors permit (non- commercial) community use and adaptation of their intellectual property, and are rewarded by the status capital gained through this process creativeindustries.qut.com

Slide 6: c re a tiv e in d u s trie s Implications ‒ Challenges to traditional paradigms: • new business models, new industry sectors • new sources of information, new repositories of knowledge • new forms, new understanding of content • new forms of collaborative work (scientific, intellectual, artistic) • new approaches to intellectual property • new measures of personal standing and success ‒ Or rediscovery of even older models: • open academic collaboration and sharing of knowledge • reputation and social status as non-monetary currency • commons-based intellectual property models creativeindustries.qut.com

Slide 7: c re a tiv e in d u s trie s Graduates and/as Generation C? ‒ Generation C (Trendwatching.com): • Content, Creativity, Casual Collapse, Control, Celebrity – Cash ‒ Graduates need to be able to • understand this environment, and • be able to be part of it (if they so choose) ‒ Examples: • software engineers: work as open source developers • journalists: collaborate with citizen journalism produsers • knowledge workers: operate effectively in wikified environments • artists: collaborate widely but protect reputation and IP creativeindustries.qut.com

Slide 8: c re a tiv e in d u s trie s The C4C ‒ Four crucial graduate capacities: • Creative: engage in collaborative creative produsage work (and understand reasons for wanting to do so) – economic, social, individual • Collaborative: evaluate when, where, and with whom to collaborate (and when not to do so), and understand potential positive and negative consequences – especially for intellectual property and personal reputation creativeindustries.qut.com

Slide 9: c re a tiv e in d u s trie s The C4C ‒ Four crucial graduate capacities: • Critical: evaluate quality of content and skills of collaborators, assess own capabilities, identify best sites of / venues for produsage – and be able to express and share such critique constructively • Communicative: understand the communicative models of produsage environments, and work effectively within them – also participate successfully in communication about the shared collaborative effort: metacollaboration creativeindustries.qut.com

Slide 10: c re a tiv e in d u s trie s Implementing the C4C ‒ The C4C framework is a mission statement: • outlines the core capacities • describes the underlying motivations for pursuing them • situates this in an overall framework of produsage ‒ How do we implement this framework in everyday learning and teaching practice? • Model produsage environments (safe sandbox) • Transition education itself from production to produsage – learners as co-creators of education • Engage with (educational) produsage communities outside of the academy – accommodate transient learners, partner with Wikiversity and other emerging projects? creativeindustries.qut.com

Slide 11: c re a tiv e in d u s trie s The Future? Here’s where we are … (Todd Richmond, in Rheingold, 2006) … but where are we going next? creativeindustries.qut.com