Building Advanced Social Networks at a Large U.S. University

Kyle Mathews twitter.com/kylemathews http://kyle.mathews2000.com

Masters of Informations Systems Management at Brigham Young University in Provo Utah

Agenda Introduce problem Future of learning == social networks Examine island.byu.edu (semi)-deep dive into social objects, nodal points and other fun social networking theory

Life Goal: Help organizations work and learn faster and better

My job (as defined for me): Research assistant studying how to use web2.0 tools in the classroom (do academic gubbidy guck)

My job (as defined by me): (help) fix Universities through social media

The Problem: “ How did institutions designed for learning become so widely hated by people who love learning?” – Michael Wesch

The world is a changin'

The web is changing us

How we work

Play

And learn

Much much more information

The world changes faster and faster

Schools can't teach us just knowledge and set skills (as their value depreciates in a few years)

Key skills for 21 st century citizens Separate needed information from chaff Think/work/learn like experts Mastering networked learning

Replicate success of open source communities (which at their heart are fantastic and massively successful learning communities)

Future of learning – fully social, deeply personalized, and passion-based

Key design principle for social learning systems Link people to people Not people to content

Why haven't Universities already adapted these tools?

Universities acting like media businesses – don't want to change, defend tradition

Plus they don't get it. . .

“ It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” – W.E. Deming

Now on to the main act

What is social networking? How are we using social networking to support learning at BYU?

Past two years building social networking sites for classes in the Information Systems department at BYU

A brief history. . .

A wee walk about. . .

Goals of Island 1. Connect people / knowledge which aren't connected but should be 2. Provide tools for supporting learning communities (classes and otherwise) 3. Provide tools for building library of knowledge

Social Objects (or sharing devices)

“ The Social Object, in a nutshell, is the reason two people are talking to each other, as opposed to talking to somebody else.” – Hugh Macleod

Or in other words, take away the social object and the two people now have no reason to talk to each other.

When was the last time you talked to some of your old coworkers?

Social objects are the tools we use to provide us opportunities to socialize with others

Some examples

You get married and have a kid – your marriage and child are social objects

You go bowling on Wednesday night with some friends – bowling is a social object

Two women shop for cloths – the mall and clothing are social objects

Drupal is a great social object

Drupal is really Dries' brilliant and diabolical plan to get him tons of really smart, interesting fun friends. . .

Sounds crazy but. . . It worked!

I joined the Drupal community for the community

Successful social networks have good social objects at their core

Or strong communities form around good social objects

Flickr = photos Dogster = dogs Youtube = videos

What are Drupal's social objects?

Drupal itself Modules in contrib and core Documentation Issues Larger topics such as social networking, education, semantic web, performance, etc.

groups.drupal.org == a bunch of social objects

Objects become more valuable when they become social objects (Drupal is great software but it's even more cool because it helps you find good friends)

How to build a social networking site around social objects?

"Define the objects, name the verbs, network the objects" – Chris Messina

Flickr Verbs == upload, download, embed Network == comment, share via url, or updates sent to other social networks

Dogster Verbs – create profiles (for their dogs), give gifts, adopt other dogs, post videos and pictures, and find dog related businesses near their homes.

Drupal Issues Verbs – create, change status, comment on, discuss (in irc, email, g.d.o), enlist help, write code for, test patches (really another social object)

Drupal's key to success == it's a great social network

A thought exercise: Paper towel social network Object = paper towels of all sizes, colors, purpose, origin Verbs = buy, sell, trade, write about, post videos, comment on

Education and social objects

Quality of content not critical as long it's a good social object (i.e. it gets students talking)

“ For instance, content that may be imperfect is often good for encouraging others to participate, or content that is contentious may be better at stimulating debate. The very hard lesson for academics here is that the educational value is not in the content itself but the social interaction it begets.” – Martin Weller

Turn homework from an object to a social object

Resources: Social Objects in Education: http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2008/01/whats-a-social.html Kyle Mathews: “What are Social Objects” http://kyle.mathews2000.com/blog/2009/02/21/what-are-social-objects Kyle Mathews: “How to Design a Social Networking Site Using Social Objects” http://kyle.mathews2000.com/blog/2009/02/27/how-design-social-networking-site-using-social-objects

How Island will use or does use networked social objects?

Island's social objects # Groups # Posts (discussions, blog posts, job postings, events) # Comments # Status updates

Something about how I'm trying to increase the amount of socialization around the social objects + increase velocity of socialization with real time stuff

Link people to people through objects Not people to objects

Nodal Points (patterns in data)

Recognizing patterns from large amounts of data

Information overwhelming, need help

Facebook News Feed

Ways to find interesting conversations, detect patterns: Search Pattern (implemented) Group Pattern (implemented) Follow Pattern (not implemented) Collaborative Filtering Pattern (not implemented)

Future of Island (or how mining for collective intelligence will help BYU students find cool people to do learn with and do great stuff)

Import lots of data from: Twitter Flickr Delicious Facebook Wherever else that'll be so kind as to share

Mash it all together, let people interact, detect patterns, display patterns, repeat.

Key Question: Is there something happening in my network I should know about?

Complex Adaptive Systems

Some examples

Kyle Mathews and 8 others are attending the lecture “How to bring about world peace on less than a buck.”

Fred Buizman and 2 others commented on John's post “How to install Drupal in 5 minutes while juggling a tricycle.”

Beets Robinson and 7 others recently joined the “Web Services” group

What are people from your major saying? What are people saying about the big football game? What events are popular with people you follow?

Who is like you? Who should you follow? What groups should you join?

Let's make the world a better place through social networks

Resources: Jyri's lecture on nodal points http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiWjAVcWK4g Tim O'Reilly's def of web 2.0 http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system https://island.byu.edu/wiki/social-gestures-ideas-wiki

Starting a company selling Island-like software to Universities!

Be good for something not just good at something

Questions?