Social Computing Symposium, Redmond, Oct. 2008
Sensemaking & SocialLearn
…in 5 mins
Simon Buckingham Shum
Knowledge Media Institute, Open U, Milton Keynes, UK
Open U: http://www.open.ac.uk/about
SocialLearn: http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/sociallearn
Me: http://kmi.open.ac.uk/sbs
Licensed under Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 License
© Simon Buckingham Shum 1

Sensemaking
“Sensemaking is about such things as
placement of items into frameworks,
comprehending, redressing surprise,
constructing meaning, interacting in pursuit
of mutual understanding, and patterning.”
Karl Weick, 1995, p.6
Sensemaking in Organizations
© Simon Buckingham Shum 2

In sensemaking communities
Ideas and ways to argue
truth/plausibility are of
first order importance
© Simon Buckingham Shum 3

In sensemaking communities
Ideas and ways to argue
truth/plausibility are of
first order importance
Representations
externalise and
distribute cognition,
mediate discourse,
negotiate boundaries
© Simon Buckingham Shum 4

In sensemaking communities
Ideas and ways to argue
truth/plausibility are of
first order importance
Representations
externalise and
distribute cognition,
mediate discourse,
negotiate boundaries
Arguably, social computing for
sensemaking will make it easy to share
and annotate representations and
overlay conceptual and social networks
© Simon Buckingham Shum 5

Ideas as embeddable social objects,
overlayed on a social network
http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/sbs/2008/10/science-web2-social-notworking
cohereweb.net
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is one tool in
SocialLearn
cohereweb.net
© Simon Buckingham Shum 7

Why SocialLearn?
What does a University look like as a
disaggregated, interoperable suite of
learning services integrated via an
open web platform competing in a
online marketplace?
© Simon Buckingham Shum 8

Why SocialLearn?
The Digital Commons: you are what you
share. Open Educ. Resources movement.
How to make it sustainable?
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Why SocialLearn?
du
?
An online marketplace
brokering learners, mentors and providers?
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Learner-centric environment
Personalised, mobile Learner-selected
instruction and peer support network
information feeds
Personalised
Learner-selected
resource archives
learning mentors
© Simon Buckingham Shum 11

The Social Learner…
! Connected via the SocialLearn API, they could smoothly
exchange important learner-centric data
API
API
API
API
© Simon Buckingham Shum 12

Web Dashboard [Contacts + Stream]
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From 30,000 feet…
Micro
2Learner
Learner
micro-blog your manage your
thoughts, learning goals
learning goals
• Identity
and resources SocialLearn • Portfolio
server • Activity History
and Website • Social Network
Cohere
cohereweb.net
manage connections
between learning
goals/resources/ideas
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© Simon Buckingham Shum 15

Social computing pedagogy?…
learning relationships
learning conversations
learning exchanges
learning paths
learning design patterns
learning architectures for
participation
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Business scenarios
“Facebook for Learning”
B2C “Life/Learning Coach”
“eduBay”
Corporate CPD
B2B HEIs
Publishers
Extension of current
OUX Open U services
© Simon Buckingham Shum 17

http://kosmar.de/archives/2005/11/11/the-huge-cloud-lens-bubble-map-web20/
http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/
http://web-2-0.gemzies.com/show/entry_3402/RSS_logo.html?tag=1554
http://flickr.com/photos/thefangmonster/352439602/sizes/s/
http://flickr.com/photos/luc/1824234195/sizes/s/
http://cohere.open.ac.uk Acknowledgements
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