Information Science Reference

Table of Contents:

Chapter I: How the Crowd Can Teach

Dron & Anderson provide a framework for understanding the effective use of the Net for learning and teaching by differentiating between three modes of networked social organization. These are defined as the Group, the Network and the Collective. The chapter explores the consequences of this perspective, observing that each has both strengths and weaknesses in different contexts and when used for different applications. They conclude that to gain the greatest benefits from social software it is important to understand the different dynamics of different tools and the different contexts in which they may be used. Taking these into account, they hope that it will now be possible to perform more informed studies that will refine and develop these approaches more fully.

Chapter II: Social Networking and Schools: Early Responses and Implications for Practice

Abbott & Adler contribute to the debate about the apparent dichotomy between the trend for young people to embrace social networking sites enthusiastically while within education we are reluctant to embed social software in our learning and teaching environments. They examine the transition of online practices as a trajectory from personal website use through interactive services to the networking sites today. They conclude that social networking has initiated a series of practices which cannot now be abandoned, and that the challenge for the education system is not control or abolition but the inclusion of social networking within learning and teaching.

Chapter III: Cyber-Identities and Social Life in Cyberspace

Berki & Jäkälä identify social software as a key technology in communication within cyberspace and recognise they are gradually transforming virtual communities to potentially important meeting places for sharing information and for supporting human actions, feelings and needs. They examine the conceptual definition of virtual community as found in the literature and extend it to accommodate latest trends. Cyber-communities seem to dissolve the boundaries of identity and this questions the trust, privacy and confidentiality of interaction. They present a new way of classifying and viewing self-presentation and identity management in virtual communities, based on the characteristics that participants prefer to attribute to themselves and present to others.

Chapter IV: Weblogs in Higher Education

Beuschel uses an exploratory study to examine the value of blogs for learning and teaching, and their potential to support active student participation and collaboration. He shows that cooperative media like blogs cannot just be “prescribed” in an institutional setting, yet the share of informal activities is higher than with other media. Within his target group he found that students needed time and motivation to appropriate the media for their own needs. He concludes that the usage of blogs is generally encouraging, but he also raises some cautionary issues. He recommends that the early processes in a course should devote enough time and effort to explain the specifics of blogs and the activity of blogging in relation to the objectives of a class. He notes finally, that though the importance and prevalence of the social function of blogs was visible, the dimensions of use such as exploration and reflection were sometimes under-employed.

Chapter V: Social Navigation and Local Folksonomies: Technical and Design Considerations for a Mobile Information System

Bilandzic & Foth explore the innovative nature of social software services that enable users to create and share content and develop a collective intelligence. In the context of ‘geo-tagging’ they examine mobile information systems for collecting and harnessing everyday connections and local knowledge of urban residents in order to support social navigation practices. Network connectivity creates a mediated social environment where mobile phone users turn into in-situ journalists who can upload location based ratings, comments and recommendations to a shared community platform to form a huge social knowledge repository, decentralizing control over information about local services.

Chapter VI: Social Cognitive Ontology and User Driven Healthcare

Biswas et al introduce the readers to the concept of ontology with particular reference to its philosophical, social and computer science instantiations and tease out the relations between them. They propose a synthesis of these concepts with the term ‘social cognitive ontological constructs’ (SCOCs) and proceed to explore the role of SCOCs in the generation of human emotions that are postulated to have to do more with cognition than affect. They propose a way forward to address the emotional needs of patients and health care givers through informational feedback that is based on a conceptual framework incorporating SCOCs of key stakeholders. This would come about through recognizing the clinical encounter for what it is: a shared learning experience. The data contained within these records may then be shared between different patients and health professionals who key in their own experiential information to find matching information through text-based tagging on a Web 2.0 platform.

Chapter VII: Social Identities, Group Formation, and the Analysis of Online Communities

Code & Zaparyniuk discuss how communities form and develop over time within the context of Internet mediated communication that encourages self-expression and facilitates the formation of relationships based on shared values and beliefs. They consider the psychological challenges unique to understanding the dynamics of social identity formation and strategic interaction in online social networks. They explore how social identity affects the formation and development of online communities, how to analyze the development of these communities, and the implications that social networks have within education. Strategies for social identity experimentation in classrooms allow students to become active interpreters of social interaction and contribute to the student insight into the dynamics of learning and development as a social process.

Chapter VIII: The Emergence of Agency in Online Social Networks

Code & Zaparyniuk explore the emergence of agency in social networks. Agency, defined as the capability of individuals to consciously choose, influence, and structure their actions, emerges from social interactions and influences the development of social networks, and the role of social software’s potential as a tool for educational purposes. Practical implications of agency as an emergent property within social networks provide a psychological framework that forms the basis for a pedagogy of social interactivity. They discuss the psychological processes necessary for the development of agency to contribute to an understanding of engagement in online interactions for socialization and learning.

Chapter IX: Exploiting Collaborative Tagging Systems to Unveil the User-Experience of Web Contents: An Operative Proposal

Malizia et al consider the user experience as a crucial factor for designing and enhancing user satisfaction when interacting with a system or computational by exploring collaborative tagging systems that allow users to add labels for categorizing contents. The chapter presents a set of techniques for detecting the user experience through Collaborative Tagging Systems and an example on how to apply the approach for the evaluation of web sites. Their work highlights the potential use of collaborative tagging systems for measuring user experience and user satisfaction and discusses the future implications of this approach as compared to traditional evaluation tools, such as questionnaires or interviews.

Chapter X: The Roles of Social Networks and Communities in Open Education Programs

Dholakia & Baraniuk investigate how the learner experience and the effectiveness of Open Education Programs that provide digitized educational resources freely to educators and learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning, and research, can be enhanced by incorporating new social networking technologies along with traditional virtual communities. The implications and impact of how social networking technologies will contribute to the next generation of open education programs is discussed through their experience and engagement with such project.

Chapter XI: Distributed Learning Environments and Social Software: In Search for a Framework of Design

Fiedler & Pata discuss how the construction of a design and intervention framework for distributed learning environments might be approached. They address some current technical and conceptual challenges for the implementation and maintenance of distributed learning environments. They utilise activity theory and the concept of affordance, as perceived possibilities for action, and discuss potential consequences for the design of learning environments. Their contribution is a proposal for a necessary reorientation and a call for debate about design and intervention frameworks for distributed learning environments.

Chapter XII: Exploring the Role of Social Software in Higher Education

Ryan & Fitzgerald consider the potential of social software to support learning in higher education by outlining a project where social software is used to support peer engagement and group learning. Here they are providing students with opportunities to engage with their peers in a discourse that explores, interrogates and provides a supplementary social ground for their in-class learning. The core of the article describes the results from the survey conducted with students and draws out a number of key issues and emerging trends: that no one-size-fits-all; institutional ICT services are not partners in innovation; open source software and ‘free’ web services are vital; that cross-institutional innovation is problematic; and a tension exists between decentralised and centralised educational models.

Chapter XIII: Identifying New Virtual Competencies for the Digital Age: Essential Tools for Entry Level Workers

Gow identifies those competencies that entry level workers, and graduates, will need to acquire to be successful in the 21st Century work environment. In order to succeed in the digital age, augmented ICT skills, including abilities to communicate across the web are prominent in this typology of competencies that includes knowledge and ability in use of social software. Other attributes, such as cross cultural and professional skills, along with an appreciation of web ontologies will facilitate transition of entry-level workers into the world of international liaisons. The chapter addresses the need for teaching institutions to engage in training about digital competencies to ensure a better equipped and competitive workforce.

Chapter XIV: Social Structures of Online Religious Communities

Hughes et al. present a description and functional taxonomy of interaction-oriented virtual communities of spirituality. They identify salient points of similarity and difference between online and offline religious social structures, and show that online spiritual communities as presently constituted, are unlikely to be able to directly replicate the traditional social structures of the offline religious institutions from which they originated. They explore the powers and constraints on action, embodied in social software and the implications for online virtual communities that this finding has. In conclusion they highlight the importance of the issues surrounding identity, authenticity and authority.

Chapter XV: Living, Working, Teaching and Learning by Social Software

Keegan & Lisewski explore emergent behaviours in the use of social software across multiple online communities of practice, ones where informal learning occurs beyond traditional higher education institutional boundaries. They trace the potentially disruptive nature of social software and social networking practices. They claim that new forms of online learning, with social interaction and metacognition at their core, pose a significant challenge to learners and teachers in terms of: the volume, authority and legitimacy of information; the relatively unbounded nature of communications; traditional assessment practices; and the role of the tutor. They conclude that the tensions between the formal and the informal, the centralised and the decentralised, must be managed effectively, and boundaries need to be negotiated across communities of practice and information networks in order to avoid participants becoming overwhelmed.

Chapter XVI: Supporting Student Blogging in Higher Education

Kerawalla et al explore the choices that educators have to make when they use social software. They focus on a research programme that investigated the blogging activities of different groups of Higher Education students: (undergraduate, Masters-level distance learners, and Doctoral students). They use their evidence of student experience, perceptions, and expectations of blogging to inform the development of a framework, for course designers and students, that raises awareness of the features of blogging. They present an empirically-grounded framework which can guide course designers and educators on whether and how to include blogging in their course-contexts. It encourages both educators and students to think about the socio-technical context of blogging and how/whether this may generate the potential for community-building.

Chapter XVII: Blogs as a Social Networking Tool to Build Community

Kervin et al. discuss the activities of an online community of learners developed for beginning teachers in primary and early childhood education and organised around a site with a blogging feature. This provided a space for users to not only reflect critically on their own experiences and developing expertise, but also compare and comment on the experiences of others. Their analysis revealed that it was critical that students set the parameters for blogging and retained ownership of their blogs. They show that the networking opportunities that emerged from the blogging experience provided for focused and meaningful interactions to occur within both the physical and virtual environments.

Chapter XVIII: A Model for Knowledge and Innovation in Online Education

Linder-VanBerschot & LaPointe introduce a model that outlines the evolution of knowledge and sustainable innovation of communities through the use of social software and knowledge management. The participatory dimensions of social software increase interaction and introduce a diversity of perspectives into the classroom space. Knowledge management provides the opportunity to capture and store information so that content and learning can be personalized according to learner preferences. Their model describes a circuit of knowledge that includes instructional systems design, individualization of learning, interaction and critical reflection. It also represents a new framework within which communities develop and become more sustainable.

Chapter XIX: Using Social Software for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

Lameras, Paraskakis & Levy discuss how social constructivist pedagogies that embrace collaborative learning and communities of practice may be supported by the adoption of social software tools. They want to support higher education practitioners in theory-informed design by distilling and outlining those aspects of social constructivism that address the use of social software tools. They claim that the introduction of social software to institutional Virtual Learning Environments, with a strong focus on collaborative learning processes and engagement in online learning communities, will highlight the need for discursive tools, adaptability, interactivity and reflection.

Chapter XX: The Potential of Enterprise Social Software in Integrating Exploitative and Explorative Knowledge Strategies

Bibikas et al investigate the role of social software in integrating knowledge exploitation and knowledge exploration strategies. They approach these strategies through the lens of dynamic capabilities, organisational learning and knowledge lifecycle models. They argue that while current enterprise Information Technology systems focus more on knowledge lifecycle processes concerning the distribution and application of knowledge, enterprise social software can invoke knowledge exploration strategies and leverage knowledge creation and validation procedures.

Chapter XXI: Personal Knowledge Management Skills for Lifelong-Learners 2.0

Pettenati et al identify the Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) pre-dispositions, skills and competences of the effective lifelong-learner 2.0 and derive a PKM-skills model centred on a division into basic PKM competences, associated with the social software practices of create-organize-share and Higher-Order skills. These help to identify the enabling conditions and competences that favour the advanced management of one’s personal knowledge. Their main purpose is to understand whether such Higher-Order abilities are innate or should be learnt. They claim that they should be taught by educational institutions through the development of specific educational modules or activities.

Chapter XXII: Reconceptualising Information Literacy for the Web 2.0 Environment?

Markless & Streatfield question whether the shift from the Web as a vehicle for storing and transmitting information to the new Web as a series of social networking environments requires significant changes in student skills and competencies. They examine the changes in learning being brought about by Web 2.0 and they question whether adjustment of existing information literacy models is a sufficient response to deal with these changes. They conclude that although Web 2.0 developments are not fundamentally undermining the nature of teaching and learning they do provide important possibilities for more effective information literacy development work. A non-sequential framework is offered as a contribution to supporting HE students when seeking to obtain, store and exploit information in the informal social world of Web 2.0 and in their formal academic discipline.

Chapter XXIII: Pedagogical Responses to Social Software in Universities

McLoughlin & Lee examine new models of teaching and learning that meet the needs of a generation of learners who seek greater autonomy, connectivity and socio-experiential learning. The advent of Web 2.0, with its expanded potential for generativity and connectivity impacts on how the dynamics of student learning is conceptualized. Disruptive forces, fuelled by the affordances of social software tools, are challenging and redefining scholarship and pedagogy. In response to these challenges they propose a pedagogical framework which addresses participation in networked communities of learning, personalization of the learning experience, and learner knowledge creation and creativity that offers the potential for transformational shifts in teaching and learning practices.

Chapter XXIV: Knowledge Media Tools to Foster Social Learning

Okada et al explore how knowledge media technologies create opportunities for social learning in the Open Content movement context. They focus on an Open Educational Resources project which integrates three knowledge media technologies: Compendium (knowledge mapping software); MSG (instant messaging application with geolocation maps); and FM (a web-based videoconferencing application). They show how these tools can be used to foster ‘Open sensemaking communities’ that are characterised as open and self-sustaining communities that construct knowledge together from an array of environmental inputs by mapping knowledge, location and virtual interactions.

Chapter XXV: A Critical Cultural Reading of “YouTube”

Pauwels & Hellriegel use a ‘hybrid media analysis’ approach to examine YouTube, one of the most popular social software platforms that is challenging the dominant discourse with its focus on community formation and user empowerment. By analysing the steering mechanisms embodied in the infrastructure as well as empirical observations of YouTube’s content fluctuations over time, insight is provided into the embedded cultural values and practices and the nature of the ongoing negotiation of power and control between YouTube controllers and ‘prosumers’. Their model of analysis is geared towards decoding the multimodal structure of websites and their social and cultural significance. They end by highlighting the subtle struggle for power and control between owners and users as well as pointing at possible effects of cultural mainstreaming or ideological reproduction.

Chapter XXVI: The Personal Research Portal

Peña-López proposes the concept of the Personal Research Portal (PRP) – a mesh of social software applications to manage knowledge acquisition and diffusion. This is premised on the belief that there is a place for individual initiatives to try and bridge the biases and unbalances in the weight that researchers and research topics have in the international arena. The chapter highlights the main perceived benefits of a PRP that include building a digital identity, information sharing, the creation of an effective e-portfolio, and the sharing of personal and professional networks. He concludes that the main challenges that need to be addressed include access to technology and developing appropriate skills, problems that are recognised as stemming from the digital divide.

Chapter XXVII: Ambient Pedagogies, Meaningful Learning and Social Software

Ravenscroft et al. present a new approach to designing learning interactions in the digital age that reconciles learning processes with digital practices in the context of social networking and Web 2.0. They begin by offering some theoretical pointers and methodological perspectives for research and development that play against current educational articulations of Web 2.0; they see a misalignment of social practices that are ostensibly oriented towards and motivated by ‘interest’ with those that are oriented towards and motivated by ‘learning’. They explain how an ongoing initiative in advanced learning design has developed notions of ‘ambient learning design’ and ‘experience design’ to address these issues and describe a new methodology for developing digital tools that incorporate these concepts.

Chapter XXVIII: Interactivity Redefined for the Social Web

Sachdev, Nerur & Teng review the importance of “interactivity” and propose it as an important research construct in the context of social computing. They extend the traditional definition of interactivity by adding three new dimensions to produce what they term Social Computing Interactivity (SCI), a concept that they see as likely to be more useful in understanding issues surrounding social computing. They go on to suggest possible operationalizations of the dimensions of SCI and explore the theoretical bases that could inform a study of the relevance of these dimensions in predicting the continued growth of social computing.

Chapter XXIX: Transliteracy as a Unifying Perspective

Thomas et al. suggest that transliteracy might provide a unifying perspective on what it means to be literate in the 21st century. They define transliteracy as “the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media” and open the debate with examples from history, orality, philosophy, literature, ethnography and education. In their approach they record responses to, expansion of, and development of the term. They report that transliteracy is a ‘disruptive innovation’ which presents challenges that will shape the way we think of teaching and learning in the context of the open economy. In their view, developing transliterate creative production practices and communication across multiple platforms represents a sensory and cultural explosion that will frame new kinds of experience and knowing.

Chapter XXX: Bridging the Gap Between Web 2.0 and Higher Education

Weller & Dalziel have looked at the tension between new forms of social networking, web 2.0 communities and higher education, arguing that there are differences between cultures and values. They claim that both the granularity of formal education and the manner in which we formalise learning are subject to change with the advent of user generated content and distributed and personalised technologies that are informal, and socially oriented. They recommend that the gap between higher education and web 2.0 could be bridged by approaches that meet the diverse needs of learners and utilise the best of social networking.

Chapter XXXI: Destructive Creativity on the Social Web: Learning through Wikis in Higher Education

Wheeler examines the use of wikis, a freely available form of open architecture groupware, and their use as a shared online space to encourage students to generate their own content and foster a supportive and dynamic community of learning. The chapter reports on student perceptions of the limitations and benefits of a wiki as a social writing tool. It focuses on the tension between creative and destructive uses of wikis and offers recommendations on their effective use in mainstream higher education. Interviews with the students revealed a certain amount of disconcertion and readjustment where students share and co-edit the same space on a wiki and some felt that the anonymity of the form denied them appropriate recognition. However, Wheeler argues that when viewed over a period of time, group based generation of content on wikis can be both creative and fulfilling, with long lasting and positive learning outcomes.

Chapter XXXII: Presence in Social Networks

Scott Wilson describes some of the key concepts and technologies in presence and puts forward an ontology of presence for social networks and related services. The author shows how presence represents a fundamental component of the online experience, and though it has originated to some extent within the specific demands of instant messaging networks, the concepts and technologies of presence have become embedded within social networks. These include the development of new networks that have presence as a primary purpose, for example Twitter and Jaiku. Wilson argues that these developments reinforce the notion that the next phase of social network technology will have a central role for presence. In the final part of the chapter an ontology is elaborated that can be used to position presence technologies within the existing landscape of social software.