Bridging the Gap Between Web 2.0 and Higher Education

This chapter looks at some of the areas of tension between the new social networking, Web 2.0 communities and the values of higher education. It argues that both the granularity of formal education and the manner in which the authors formalise learning are subject to change with the advent of digital technologies and user generated content. The gap between higher education and Web 2.0 could be bridged by, amongst other approaches, a sort of flickr for learning design, which allows users to share activities and sequences, thus meeting the diverse needs of learners and utilising the best of social networking approaches.

A Model for Knowledge and Innovation in Online Education

The objective of this chapter is to introduce a model that outlines the evolution of knowledge and sustainable innovation of community through the use of social software and knowledge management in an online environment. Social software presents easy-to-use, participatory technologies, thus bringing increased interaction with others and a diversity of perspectives into the classroom. Knowledge management provides the opportunity to capture and store information so that content and learning can be personalized according to learner preferences. This 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.

Identifying New Virtual Competencies for the Digital Age

This chapter focuses on the identification of a range of competencies that entry level workers, and thus graduating students, will need to acquire to be successful in the 21st Century of work. While core or basic competencies will still form the prerequisite generic skills that all entry level workers must demonstrate, as the first year progresses, depending on the field in which they are employed, they will be asked to utilise self management, entrepreneurial, and virtual competencies in order to maintain their employment status. Even if they have ICT skills, they will need to have the knowledge and ability in social software, as well as the ability to communicate across the Web, in order to succeed in the digital age. Other attributes, such as cross cultural and professional skills, along with an appreciation of Web ontologies will facilitate entry-level workers as they move into the world of international liaisons.

Social Cognitive Ontology and User Driven Healthcare

The chapter starts from the premise that illness and healthcare are predominantly social phenomena that shape the perspectives of key stakeholders of healthcare. It introduces readers to the concepts associated around the term ontology with particular reference to philosophical, social and computer ontology and teases out the relations between them. It proposes a synthesis of these concepts with the term ‘social cognitive ontological constructs’ (SCOCs). The chapter proceeds to explore the role of SCOCs in the generation of human emotions that are postulated to have to do more with cognition (knowledge) than affect (feelings). The authors propose a way forward to address emotional needs of patients and healthcare 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 chapter proceeds to identify problems with the traditional development of top down medical knowledge and the need to break out of the well meaning but restrictive sub specialty approach. It uses the term de specialization to describe the process of breaking out of the traditional top down mold which may be achieved by collaborative learning not only across various medical specialties but also directly from the patient and her “other” caregivers. Finally it discusses current efforts in the medical landscape at bringing about this silent revolution in the form of a Web-based user driven healthcare. It also supplies a few details of the attempts made by the authors in a recent project trying to create electronic health records in a user driven manner beginning with the patient’s version of their perceived illness with data added on as the patient traverses his/her way through various levels of care beginning from the community to the tertiary care hospital. The data contained within these records may then be effectively and anonymously shared between different patients and health professionals who key in their own experiential information and find matching individual experiential information through text tagging in a Web 2.0 platform.

Personal Knowledge Management Skills for Lifelong-Learners 2.0

In this chapter the authors identify the Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) pre-dispositions, skills and competences of the current effective lifelong-learner 2.0. They derive a PKM-skills model centred on a division into basic PKM competences, associated with social software Web practices of create-organize- share, and Higher-Order skills (HO-skills), which identify enabling conditions and competences which favour the advanced management of one’s personal knowledge (PK). To derive the PKM-skills model we addressed a survey to 16 interviewees who can be defined as expert lifelong-learners 2.0. The HO-skills branch out into four macro competences, identified as connectedness, ability to balance formal and informal contexts, critical ability and creativity.

Presence in Social Networks

This chapter describes the mechanisms of presence in social networks and presents an ontology that frames the purpose, content, methods of production and methods of consuming presence information. The concept of presence in social networks has been steadily evolving along with the Internet. Recognised as an essential feature of all instant messaging services from the IRC onwards, mechanisms for constructing and consuming presence information have become more elaborate, with the addition of more sophisticated mechanisms for producing, consuming and representing presence. A model for systems that offer presence services is developed, and this enables a number of future trends to be identified.

A Critical Cultural Reading of "YouTube"

This chapter looks into YouTube as one of the most popular Social Software platforms, challenging the dominant discourse with its focus on community formation and user empowerment. On the basis of an analysis of the steering mechanisms embodied in the infrastructure as well as empirical observations of YouTube’s content fluctuations during a period of time, insight is provided into the embedded cultural values and practices and into the nature of the ongoing negotiation of power and control between the YouTube controllers (owners, designers, editors) and the “prosumers”. This exploratory study is theoretically inspired by Michel de Certeau’s ideas of utilization as a productive activity involving strategic and tactical behaviour. Methodologically the model for ‘hybrid media analysis’ (Pauwels 2005) is taken as a point of departure for analysing various aspects of the Website’s platform (including structure, design, hyperlinks, imagery, topics and issues). This model is geared towards decoding the multimodal structure of Websites and their social and cultural significance.

Supporting Student Blogging in Higher Education

With a variety of asynchronous communication and collaboration tools and environments such as Wikis, blogs, and forums, it can be increasingly difficult for educators to make appropriate choices about when and how to use these technologies. In this chapter, the authors report on the findings from a research programme on educational blogging which investigated the blogging activities of different groups of Higher Education students: undergraduate and Masters-level distance learners, and PhD students. The authors discuss empirical evidence of students’ experiences, perceptions, and expectations of blogging. We provide an empirically-grounded framework which can guide course designers and educators in their decision-making about whether and how to include blogging in their course-contexts so as to create value and to generate a positive student experience. Also, this framework can help guide students who are either thinking about blogging for themselves, or who are undertaking course-directed blogging activities.

The Roles of Social Networks and Communities in Open Education Programs

Open Education Programs provide a range of digitized educational resources freely to educators, students, and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning, and research. In the current chapter the authors study how the educational experience for users and the effectiveness of these programs can be enhanced by incorporating new social networking technologies along with traditional virtual communities, such as bulletin boards and chat-rooms. An overview of open education programs is provided, discussing their common characteristics and participants’ motivations for joining and contributing to such programs. The authors also consider the roles played by collaboration processes in open education programs, examine how communities evolve on theses sites, their roles in making the programs sustainable, and what site organizers can do to enhance these processes. They conclude the chapter with a discussion of future trends and how social networking technologies will contribute to the next generation of open education programs. Throughout, their discussion is informed by our experiences and engagement with the Connexions project (www.cnx.org).

Weblogs in Higher Education

Weblogs are a popular form of Social Software, supporting personal Web authoring as well as innovative forms of social interaction via internet. The potential of Weblogs to emphasize active student participation and collaboration raises great expectations for a new pedagogical quality in higher education. In this chapter, the author explores the value of Social Software, specifically Weblogs, for learning and teaching in institutional education. An exploratory study serves as background for the discussion. Critical issues and areas of research for using Social Software in education are concluding the chapter.