dr sara de freitas university of oxford: 23rd march 2007

1. the challenges of social collaboration on the internet dr sara de freitas university of oxford: 23rd march 2007

2. 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

3. summary • self-organised criticality • social networks • web 2.0 • implications for education • what are the challenges for social collaboration on the internet? • conclusions

4. 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

5. 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 Sociology110, 44-91 (2004). Yeast proteins: Sergei Maslov and Kim Sneppen, Specificity and stability in topology of protein networks, Science296, 910-913 (2002). Source: University of Michigan, 2004

6. bill cheswick, lumeta corp (2004)

7. 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)

9. 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)

10. 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

11. 3: what is web 2.0? link to:http://youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

12. 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

13. future learning • visions of future learning: • towards what end? • towards what skills? • personalised learning environments? • immersive learning environments?

14. personalised learning environments (wilson et al., 2006)

15. immersive learning environments • exploratory learning • interactivity • immersion • game-based learning • alternate reality gaming • mobile gaming • simulations • ‘gamesims’

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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: sara@lkl.ac.uk