Educational Social Software Edmedia 2007

Slide 1: Social Learning 2.0 Ed-Media 2007 Terry Anderson with lots of help from Jon Dron Slides available at slideshare.com

Slide 2: Presentation Overview Traditional Opening Joke  Setting the Context  Affordances of the Web  Emerging Pedagogies  Granularity of Social Learning 2.0  Social Learning 2.0 across:  Personal Learning Environments  Formal education delivery  Institutional learning  Design principles for educational social software  Adoption context and ways forward 

Slide 3: Why is E-Learning Better Than Sex? If you get tired, you can stop, save your place and • pick up where you left off. You can finish early or take the time your need without • feeling guilty. You can get rid of any viruses you catch with a $50 • program from McAfee With a little coffee you can do it all night. • You don’t usually get divorced if your spouse • interrupts you in the middle of it. And If you're not sure what you are doing, you can • always ask your tutor.

Slide 4: Values We can (and must) continuously improve the  quality, effectiveness, appeal, cost and time efficiency of the learning experience. Student control and freedom is integral to 21st  Century life-long education and learning. Education for elites is not sufficient for  planetary survival

Slide 5: The Net Changes Everything! Affordances of the Net, Net 2.0, e-learning  2.0, Semantic web and related other acronyms: Content  Communication &  Agents  (Anderson and Whitelaw, 2004)  New pedagogies 

Slide 6: Affordance 1. - Massive Amounts of Content Any information, any  format, anytime, anywhere Customizable content  Interactive content  User created content  Wiki-everything  Open access content 

Slide 7: A Tale of 3 books Commercial publisher Open Access E-Learning for the 21st Century 934 copies sold at $52.00 84,000 downloads plus Commercial Pub. Buy at Amazon $$$ 1200 sold @ indiv. chapters $135.00 350 hardcopies sold @ $50.00 2,000 copies in Arabic Translation Free at @ $8. cde.athabascau.ca/online_book

Slide 8: Open Access Press New Distance Education and Educ.  Technology series www.aupress.ca

Slide 9: Content - conclusion Cheap or free  Need to learn to develop business models,  technologies and culture allowing us to share and re-use content and learning designs Don’t build your value on your content  Content is necessary, but not sufficient, to  create a quality educational experience

Slide 10: Affordance #2 High Quality, Low Cost Communication Multi mode  Synchronous, asynch  Text, audio, video multi-media  A2A (avatar to avatar)  Stored, indexed and retrievable  Reflective, emotive and cognitive  Mobile  Embedded & Pervasive  Learner, teacher, community and  commercially created

Slide 11: Chaz Maloney www.slideshare.net/ccosmato/conferencing-on-the-cheap-with-web-2

Slide 12: Challenge: Creating Incentives to Sustain Meaningful Contribution

Slide 13: What’s so great about Face-to-Face? “I learned more about Clive by reading his introduction tonight online than I did in our entire course together last summer” (Kerlin, R-A, 1997)  http://kerlins.net/bobbi/research/diss/

Slide 14: Affordance 3 Agents Google Alerts  MeetingWizard  RSS  Athabasca  Freudbot AIML  E-Advisor  Are you ready for AU  ? Agents

Slide 15: Affordances of the Educational Semantic Web (Anderson & Whitelaw, 2004) Content Learning Objects Open Access Press Del.icio.us WIKI Flicker Blogs Filtering FaceBook Learning Agents Communication SecondLife Calendaring RSS Geotracking Email, Skype, IM Google Alert

Slide 16: Emerging Pedagogies Our educational discourse is largely stuck in a time warp, framed by issues and standards set decades before the widespread use of the personal computer, the Internet, and free trade agreements.” Stewart and Kagan (2005) Connectivism – “Knowledge exists in the network”  (Siemens, 2005) Community of Inquiry – Garrison and Anderson, 2003  Integrating online learning – pedagogy of nearness  Mejias, 2005 Participatory Culture – Jenkins 2006  New Learning Environments John Seely Brown, 2006 

Slide 17: Interaction Models of Learning Effective interaction between and among  learners, content and teachers makes authentic learning happen.

Slide 18: Educational Interactions Learner / learner Learner Learner / Learner / teacher content Teacher Content Teacher / content. Teacher / teacher Content / content •Anderson (2002) Equivalency Theorem

Slide 19: Educational Interactions Group as Learner / learner educational actor Jon Dron, 2007 Learner Learner / Learner / teacher content Teacher Content Teacher / content. Teacher / teacher Content / content •Anderson (2002) Equivalency Theorem

Slide 20: Stephen Downes, 2006 Group as Learner / learner educational actor Stephen Downes, Learner 2006 Learner / Learner / teacher content Teacher Content Teacher / content. Teacher / teacher Content / content •Anderson (2002) Equivalency Theorem

Slide 21: Dron & Anderson Group as Learner / learner educational actor Anderson & Dron, Learner 2007 Learner / Learner / teacher content Teacher Content Teacher / content. Teacher / teacher Content / content •Anderson (2002) Equivalency Theorem

Slide 22: Models of the Many “Collective representations exist outside of individual consciences, it is because they derive not from individuals taken one by one, but from their interaction, which is very different” Émile Durkheim Sociologie et Philosophie (1924 -1963 , translation Masse

Slide 23: Collective Conscious “Being placed outside of and above individual  and local contingencies, it sees things only in their permanent and essential aspects, which it crystallizes into communicable ideas. … it alone can furnish the minds with the moulds which are applicable to the totality of things and which make it possible to think of them\" (Durkheim 1954 (1912), p.444”). ...The state of anomie is impossible whenever  interdependent organs are sufficiently in contact and sufficiently extensive. (Durkheim 1972, p. 184 The Division of Labor in Society)

Slide 24: Evolutionary Model Of Collective Conscious Creation (from Durkheim) Collective Consciousness Primitive, similarity, dependence Mechanistic Family, tribe and religion orientated Modern Specialization Organic Division of Labour Mass media, State institutions Post modern, Net Based, Emergent networked, ubiquitous, weak and strong links, Syndication & Aggregation , Individuated media,

Slide 25: Taxonomy of the ‘Many’ Dron and Anderson, 2007 Group Conscious membership Leadership and organization Cohorts and paced Rules and guidelines Metaphor : Access and privacy controls Virtual classroom Focused and often time limited May be blended F2F

Slide 26: Network Shared interest/practice Fluid membership Friends of friends Group Reputation and altruism driven Emergent norms, structures Activity ebbs and flows Rarely F2F Metaphor: Virtual Community of Practice

Slide 27: Network Group Collective ‘Aggregated other’ Unconscious ‘wisdom of crowds’ Stigmatic aggregation No membership or rules Augmentation and annotation through use Metaphor: Data Mining Wisdom of Crowds Never F2F

Slide 28: Social Learning 2.0 Network Group Collective Dron and Anderson, 2007

Slide 29: Social Learning 2.0 Each of us participates in Groups, Networks and the  Collective. Learning is enhanced by exploiting the affordances of  all three sources of social learning. Issues, memes, opportunities and learning activities  arise at all three levels of granularity. Certain network tools are optimized for each level of  granularity - Can they be appropriated for effective use?

Slide 30: Choosing the right tool? http://www.go2web20.net 1313 logos as of June 22, 2007

Slide 31: Social Learning 2.0 Applications in Educational Contexts Groups Networks Collectives Personal Learning Environments Formal Education Organizational Learning

Slide 32: Formal Education and Groups: Comfortable, classes and cohorts  Increases:   completion rates,  achievement  satisfaction (Jung, Choi, Lim, and Leem (2002) Same logistic challenges as for institutional, campus -based  learning Can operate ‘behind the garden wall” to allow freedom for  expression and development Refuge for scholarship 

Slide 33: Formal Learning and Groups Longest history of research and study  Need to optimize:  Social presence  Cognitive presence  Teaching presence (Communitiesofinquiry.com)  Established sets of tools –  LMS  Synchronous (video & net conferencing)  Email 

Slide 34: Problems with Groups Confining in time, space  pace, & relationship Often overly confined by  teacher expectation and institutional curriculum control Relationships Foster learner dependencies  Isolated from the world of  Paulsen 1993 practice

Slide 35: Challenges of using informal social software tools for formal group tasks Control  Support  Privacy  Assessment  Ownership and perseverance 

Slide 36: Example: How are Blogs used in Groups? “You are required to post at least two messages to  your blog and respond to the postings of at least two other enrolled students. Please use your postings to address the issue  discussed on pages 34-38 of your text. Your post and responses will be assessed for 10% of  your final grade To protect your privacy, your blog is not accessible  outside of the LMS and postings will be destroyed at the end of the course.” Paraphrased from major UK university graduate school requirements

Slide 37: Assessing Reflective writing If we don’t assess the blog, will students use them??  “It is important to distinguish from the start journals that  are essentially available for public or semi-public inspection and those which are designed to prompt reflection. It is misleading to treat all forms of journal writing as equivalent to each other.” Boud, 2001 Only learners should be able to decide on the audience  - no-one; everyone (including Google); teacher; class; parents; etc.) Elgg has this capacity.

Slide 38: 2. Formal Learning with Networks Each of us may belong to many networks  Networks use and create artifacts, that are  searchable Networks connect self-paced and independent  learners Network leadership arises in multiple formats  Supported by multiple, mostly free communications  Allows connectivism to flourish (Siemens 2006)  “It is not what you know, but who you know to ask.”

Slide 39: Formal Education and Networks (cont.) Provides resource from which students’ extract  information In school one should learn to build, contribute to  and manage one’s networks Through exposure, provides application and  validation of information and skills developed in formal learning Basis for ongoing support and advise from alumni  and professional communities

Slide 40: Network Tools Most web 2.0 apps including:  Profiles: Finding significant others  Blogging - outside the garden wall  Recommendation systems (Slashdot, Diigo, Diig,  Cite-u-like) Scheduling meet-ups for study, debate,  collaboration Connecting people and resources - syndicating 

Slide 41: Network Learning Applications Examples:  Extract and comment on a themes from last  month’s IT Forum – blog results Create an analysis of affordances of Second Life  for educational purposes – blog results Search and summarize from Technorati the roll-out  of OLPC $100 laptop program? Using quotes from Hansard and Members Blogs,  define the Conservatives’ position on global warming, and blog preliminary results for group and network feedback

Slide 42: 3. Formal Education and Collectives Personal and collaborative search and filter for learning  tasks Smart retrieval from the universal library of resources –  human and learning objects Requires high skill and literacy skills to effectively  extract Requores contribution to the collective (tagging, sharing  whenever possible, leaving traces) (only 16% of users are taggers (Pew, 2005)  Allows discovery and validation of academic norms,  values and paradigms

Slide 43: Collective Application - Amazon

Slide 44: Example 2 Wisdom of Crowds “The concept is simple but brilliant; Ask enough people  simple yes or no questions with knowledge of the demographic data of those you ask and you create an extremely useful resource. Offer those same people access to the data they've  helped build Let those same people define the questions they're  asked and you've created a self-propelling phenomenon that taps the wisdom of diverse communities.” http://www.downloadsquad.com

Slide 45: Unplanned, unanticipated encounters are central to democracy itself. Such encounters often involve topics and points of view that people have not sought out and perhaps find quite irritating. They are important partly to ensure against fragmentation and extremism, which are predictable outcomes of any situation in which like-minded people speak only with themselves (Sunstein, 2001, P.8)

Slide 46: How do you design effective activities for  Groups, Networks and the Collective ??

Slide 47: Design principles for Social Learning 2.0 Emergence, Evolution and Complexity:  Principle of Adaptability;  Principle of Evolvability;  Principle of Stigmergy  (Dron, 2007) (from FLYTREE)

Slide 48: Design principles for Social Learning 2.0 Architecture and Design;  Principle of Constraint,  Principle of Parcellation;  Principle of Scale.  (Dron, 2007)

Slide 49: Design principles for Social Learning 2.0 Social Psychology &  community, Principle of Sociability  Embedded opportunity for  building relationships; Principle of Trust –  personal control  (Dron, 2007) Photo by Eye Press.

Slide 50: Design principles for Social Learning 2.0 (Dron, 2007) Networking Theory  Principle of Connectivity  all components linked  (syndicated) to each other (Dron, 2007) OpenID Windley

Slide 51: Steven Warburton, 2007

Slide 52: Are Social Networking and Collective activities Disruptive Technologies? Start out as not being good enough for the  established market Have scalability, mass production  advantages Appeal to non traditional consumers  Not understood by mainstream organizations  Clayton M. Christensen Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave, his

Slide 53: Should you establish a formal institution presence in FaceBook? Is it ‘their space’ or ‘our space’ or  ‘everyone’s space’?? Where will Facebook be in 12 months? 

Slide 54: Don’t Expect help from your IT department “in the bowling alley (pre tornado, rapid adoption phase) you are  asking a company to adopt a new paradigm in advance of the rest of the market. This is not in the interest of the IT department. It means extra work for them, and it exposes their mission-critical systems to additional risk. Far better for them is to stay with their current paradigm a while  longer, experimenting with the new one off line, but not embracing it. Instead you must turn to the end-user community.\" p. 46-47  Moore’s 1995 Inside the Tornado

Slide 55: Strategies for Early Adopter Leaders Use the tools you want others to explore  Develop learning activities in new Network  and Collective spaces Develop an action or design-based research  program to validate and learn from your interventions Communicate the results through your  networks

Slide 56: Importance of this issue Educational challenges are not met through  evangelism, threats or technologies alone. Change happens when teachers, administrators and  learners make it happen Perceived benefits – Personal  Readiness - Organizational  Pressure – Inter-organizational  Chwelos; Benbasat; Dexter, 2001)  Each of us is an agent of change 

Slide 57: Conclusion: Benefits of Using Social Learning 2.0 tools and concepts Lifelong learning skill  Enhances involvement with and awareness  of learning processes –unfreezes old patterns Creates legacy and real world artifacts  Supports collaborative and reflective learning  Increases integration with institution, teacher,  other students across the taxonomy of the Many

Slide 58: “ \"He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not as - Chinese Proverb Your comments and questions most welcomed! Terry Anderson terrya@athabascau.ca Blog: terrya.edubogs.org