“Social Computing Tools in the Curriculum” by Katie Vale of MIT

[this ended up being a mix of a survey of blogs with discussion about some of their pedagogically and academically interesting aspects]

• “What is a ‘blog’?”
  • web-based
  • reverse-chronological ordered
  • often text
  • simple publishing
• “What’s a ‘wiki’?”
  • a shared reference site
  • [a way for multiple authors to work on the same piece of text / media]
• Blogs are useful pedagogically:
  • for personal reflection
  • for citizen journalism (i.e. documenting your own perspective on an event you experienced)
  • for personal publishing
  • for easy reader feedback
• Katie teaches a blogging course at MIT, and most of her freshmen [a self-selecting crowd on at least two levels, but still...] already had a blog in high-school [it'd be interesting to know what blogging software they used]
• The MIT Admissions blogs are good examples of some ways with colleges can use blogs [and in fact general community tools. However, they're not good pedagogical examples.]
• many more examples of different types/styles of blogs can be found in her power point on the NERCOMP SIG website
• highschool and younger people are NOT savvy about personal [web/internet] security [this is a really good point - we need to make sure to go over this with anyone for whom we might provide blog space in any official capacity]
• schools should think about their communication/information policy
• regarding using blogs in class
  • she had to give very specific guidelinesa bout what she wanted in the blogging [this is intriguing, as it is counter to the experience of Kathleen Fitzpatrick (of Pomona) in her Writing Machines course, where she had a lot of success with very open ended requirements and actually had to refrain from giving specific blogging assignments. However, Kathleen was teaching largely to upperclassmen and Katie is teaching freshmen, and that might account for most of the difference]
  • as an instructor, comment often, but judiciously
  • people reveal things in blogs that they wouldn’t in class [it's a kind of seductive medium]
  • they help you / each other get to know team members
  • students are and will be familiar with blogs when that arrive at college. We (faculty and staff) need to use that to our advantage [this seems related to Bryan Alexanders' point that blogging is not new technology - it's been around since the mid to late 90's]
• ideas for wikis in education [the presentation was definitely focused on blogs, but she at least gave a nod to wiki's and MMORPGs]
  • student feedback about what to include in a new class
  • cooperative final project
  • as a community of support or practice for a geographically distributed population
• comments on World of Warcraft
  • with 7 million participants it has an etimated 50% market share for MMORPGs
  • teaches [ implicitly rather than explicitly, which I expects means that users learn the practical side very well but probably miss out on the theory]
    • teamwork
    • leadership
    • micro-economics
  • people who play are very comfortable with IM, VoIP, and other modern communication technologies
  • players are used to spending multiple hours on complex, coordinated tasks
• social computing is already a part of students lives
• social software CAN be integrated into teaching

“Electronic Constructivism: Inspiring and Motivating Students with Thought Provoking Questions and Emerging Technologies” by Maureen Yoder of Lesley

[I wasn't particularly thrilled with this talk. The general idea, a presentation/discussion about pedagogy using technology rather than about the technology itself, was fine, but I found the implementation lacking. Some issues were technical, e.g. the powerpoint went too fast, the presentation had too many quotes from notable historic educators and not enough actual content, the work was too focused on examples and not enough on general principles, etc. However, I think all that would have been OK if the presenter had actually tied things into to social software, but she didn't. There were a couple of references like "imagine how you could do this with blogs", but that's it.

There were a few good general ideas and points mixed in, but mostly the talk was more appropriate for a group high-school history teachers that weren't technically savvy than a group of college educators and professionals who all had a pretty good handle on this whole internet thing.]

• on-line discussion needs to be managed just as much [or more] as face-to-face discussion
• asking good questions / making good assignments is important; e.g. bad- write a report on the first president of the United States, good- compare the foreign policy of George Bush and George Washington [the presenter actually framed this more as an old-style / new-style point, but it's valid regardless of whether the student has access to an old set of World Book Encyclopedia or the whole internet and whether the result has to be in a specific format or is open ended. Technology doesn't magically make bad teaching better.]
• Having your students do on-line journaling, public or private, can be a good way to debug work groups. However, be careful you don’t get more than you want! A couple of sentences per entry is probably plenty - any more and you’ll have way too much reading to do way too often.

[and I have to admit by about 1/2 way through the talk I lost interest entirely. Luckily I had my laptop out and so was able to get other stuff done. I hope other audience members found it more useful.]

“Teaching and Learning in a Virtual World” by Rebecca Nesson of Harvard

This presentation took place in Second Life on Berkman Island. That is, someone in the room ran a Second Life client which was projected on the main screen at the front of the room and we had a Skype call to her so she could talk to us (Second Life doesn’t yet support voice). The audience avatar then went to Berkman Island where the speakers avatar was waiting, and we then got to see the talk / demonstration from the perspective of a second life user (more or less).

[This is a weird presentation format. The audience spends the entire time looking at the back of their avatar, which is a little weird. If 2L supports a through-the-eyes view that would probably work better for presentation such as this. Also, speech isn't the normal mode of communication in 2L, so having the skype connection was a not-entirely-fair representation.]

• The college building representation was a good move for setting the feel of the island. It really sets the tone for the place. Part of their startup funding went to hire a person to build the place.
• [Strange that the virtual set up in the building is so very much a mimic of the real-world setting. Is a real-world conference setting so good that given the freedom to do anything that's what you do?] Turns out no - most of the actual classes takes place in the amphitheater area. Real life comfort is not virtual comfort. Enclosed spaces are tricky to navigate for newcomers. There’s a definite learning curve to the interface. There’s a neat tool for showing video and audio from anywhere on the web.
• [Arranging a good classroom / lecture interface in a virtual world is tricky, and dependent on the particular UI of the VR system being used.]
• The library setup is interesting. Viewing spaces for a number of people. 2L screens are sized for 1 viewer at a time.
• They’ll be running a mock court, and creating a courthouse for that. [2L seems like a good framework for simulations].
• “2L is head and shoulders above the rest of the DL systems because of the high quality of interaction.”
• Berkman Island is generally a public area, but has a private space as well for discussion, experimentation, etc. Also has a ’sandbox’ area for experimentation / creation.
• [NOTE: when running a presentation like this, the person controlling the audience avatar should really be very proficient. Ours was OK, but not great and the presentation suffered a bit for that.]

And then various discussion, questions, and responses

• For the course Rebecca’s teaching, learning takes place in multiple sites:
  • live at the school
  • recordings viewed in 2L
  • readings online in the course website
  • discussions that happen on line (in 2L)
    • 2L is a poor format for lecture and a very good format for discussion (less of the shyness factor)
• Chats in 2L are different than chats elsewhere in that…
  • [presence is indicated visually, which cuts down a whole lot on the 'I'm here' kinds of messages]
  • The outfit/avatar that people use is a strong signifier [a kind fo visual profile]
• Things involved in getting the 2L course ready
  • had a lot of help in terms of the island being set up for them
  • had a staff person who was really proficient in building things
  • took a lot of time for the instructor to get used to the interface, and them to adjust the teaching to that new system
  • a lot of offer of support from the 2L community
  • LL offers free land / space to educators
    • the LL program is relatively small
    • contact pathfinder linden for more info about the program
• 2L teaching mode is different:
  • The types of questions that are asked are tricky, a big open ended question generates multiple simultaneous conversation threads which are hard to follow; try to keep questions relatively focused to keep discussions on track
• what’s the learning curve for the participants?
  • “We caught on very quickly”
  • “It was an almost negligible learning curve”
  • “interested participants already had a decent base of tech knowledge”
  • “difficult tot make the time to wathch the lectures online”
• “tough to connecct with the class students”
• What’s the bandwidth intensity?
  • “Can use it on a home, broadband wireless connection with no problem”
  • “Need a fast processor, a high end graphics card” [and a good net connection]
  • “Cable OK, but T1 much better”
• what about voice/skype?
  • it’s in the pipeline
  • Try there.com (a different, less customizeable VR system than 2L) if you really need voice.
• [easy to get distracted by object creation; tricky if programming isn't the focus of the class]
• [what does 'really works' mean in the context of a virtual world?]
• What about copyright issues for object created in 2L?
  • creative commons discussion
  • 2L supports a range of copyright options
  • [there's a brouha recently about a group which created a 2L client of some sort which allowed them to bypass 2L's normal copy restrictions in some way. See Copying a Controversy for more detail]
• Are classes conductedonly in realtime, or can classes be asynchronous?
  • taught realtime in the lawschool, and recorded for viewing in 2L
  • classes in 2L are realtime, though there are of course async components (e.g. readings, homework, etc.)
  • timing is tricky, especially for people in different time zones
  • the chat transcripts are a useful async recording of a real-time event; people who miss a session can catch up by getting a copy of the transcript
• Do the students ever get together elsewhere in 2L?
  • people to come to berkman island outside official class times
• Any accessibility standards?
  • not that any here knows [i.e. nope]
  • we’re just at the beginning of these technologies. We don’t yet know how to use these largely video-game based technologies for teaching.
  • some cerebal palsey people have a local person work with them
• How do you direct peoples attention to things? How do you orient people who are waching/using audio-visual aids?
  • tell them in the chat
  • [there's some kind of communication mismatch going on -- talking about direction in the world vs 'notice this thing I'm pointing at with a laser pointer']
• Barrier between people under 18 and 18+? [this question, much like the previous one, was misunderstood, I think. I think the question was more about social gaps, and the answer was more about technical or legal lines]
  • 2L uses credit cards for age verification
  • very much an issue of sex/porn
• Example of how 2L has/can be used to enhance learning in a higher ed academic area?
  • architecture classes as a building environment
  • object oriented programming (java is very abstract and tricky to ‘get’, but OO programming makes a fair bit of sense when working with actual objects)
  • simulated environments (e.g. mock trial)
  • [a lot of 'try new things', but little to no documented enhancement. That being said, I'm not really sure how you'd measure/document enhanced learning. Heck, we can't even really do that in real life, let alone after throwing all this new tech into the mix.]

This is a recap of and reaction to the first of four presentations at the NERCOMP Conference from November 14, 2006, titled Social Softweare for Teaching and Learning (SSTL).

“Social Software in the Classroom: Happy Marriage or Clash of Cultures?” by Eric Gordon of Emerson College

• Talking about leveraging MySpace (and other system) familiarity towards academic purposes, and some consequences (good and bad and indifferent) of that.
• Young people [i.e. college and highschool students] are not just using media differently, they’re using culture differently [I don't think this is really as profound as it sounds. The people of 'the next generation' are always creating their own culture, using the tools (and larger context) of their times.]
• “Chat” has become the primary discursive medium for the new culture. There are different kinds of discourse, and Chat doesn’t necessarily match well with academic talk / style / approach. [he has a lot more to say about Chat later]
• “Colleges and universities should appropriate, not capitulate” [another good sound bit, and a succinct summary of the whole talk, I think.]
• When students come into the classroom they have more of a claim to it than they did in the past. Students are being trained that their whole world can be customized and personalized.
  • students rely more on personal stories and anecdotes
  • students demand that course materials be directly relevant to their lives
• post-lawsuit napster: “Own nothing, have everything” [the latter clause is a major culture change - not necessarily in desire, but in capability. Students (and people in general) now have the capability to have almost everything almost all the time for things that data based. In many ways this makes things harder because availability no longer is a factor in descision making - if you can have anything then you need to make choices about which things you actually want (and why).]
• students want to be fully connected all the time
• Users want access to everything with out the liability of ownership [the adolescent dream of power without responsibility - Spiderman is the parable for our times]
• ready, no-effort access has become a necessity, not a luxury. [well, there's necessity and then there's necessity. I'd say maybe it's become more habit or expectation than necessity, but the larger point is still valid - it's no longer a luxury / special case]
• “Users locate themselves in networks by customizing personal spaces, much like an unfurnised apartment in the physical world” The capabilities of MySpace outside the classroom are being increasingly demanded inside the classroom.
• Privacy vs Publicity
  • perceptions of privacy maintain distinction between social and academic spaces
  • student assume privacy [or rather, anonymity] in MySpace, Facebook, et al [not just students, seems to be a general thing. People are used to the idea of being anonymous or lost in the crowd, but modern search / data-discovery tools mean that finding needles in haystacks or people in crowds is actually a relatively easy task.]
  • students in academic settings assume NOT private
    • the audience is identified, and knows the student
    • [interesting conflation of privacy and anonymity]
    • [this is kind of fascinating to me because it's almost backwards from what's true - posting in a class actually gives more security and privacy than posting on the larger internet
• Chat is different than a dialogue
  • verbalization for reassurance of presence (e.g. hey, what's up, etc.) makes up a good part fo the conversation [but no stats to back that up were presented - it's certainly plausible, but it'd be good to have some analysis of a large set of chat logs (and forum and comment) or some such. It'd also be interesting to see how those stats change in different contexts.]
  • ‘hanging out’
  • sharing and acknowledging receipt: “look what I did” “Cool”
    • e.g. 1000s of YouTube comments that just say ‘cool’
  • E.g. in the American Idol board an attempt to move a forum discussion to a more serious level failed.
  • What does that failure mean for the goal fo forum as a serious discussion format for the classroom? [unanswered, but I think it's all about CONTEXT - in some forums it would have worked]
• Humor plays on YouTube, and also in the classroom [again, no stats presented]
• [typical response/comment is a demonstration of presence as much as an acknowledgement of receipt]
• Chat is important for community cohesion:
  • neighborhood groups
  • political groups
  • friend groups
  • etc.
• How is academic dialogue different from Chat?
  • self-reflexive
    • all comments / contributions are scrutinized by and reflected upon by the whole community
  • built-in, known audience, lack of privacy [lack of anonymity really]
  • delimited, the network scale is local and defined/bounded
  • contributive, content is added to a predefined framework
  • self policing [not so much self policing as just plain policing in my view]
    • established hierarchies maintain standards of conversation [this seems to argue against calling it self policing, unless you take 'self' to mean the community as a whole rather than the individual]
• Chat and academic dialogue are not mutually exclusive, BUT they have different goals
• “Satire and parody get the most traffic” [no stats presented to back that up]
• Emerson College is trying to get a community space up and running into difficutlies. The problems are not technical but social.

Various commentary from the audience:

• Demarcate which settings/approaches are appropriate to which discourse. Wellsley has a published guide of how to talk to professors in various mediums.
• Unless you make a minimum requirement, students will do nothing. There is too much competition for their attention / time.
• “We’re trying to blend the exploration in their [the students] personal. digital lives and their academic lives”
• Social space is student space, and if we want that space we have to conform [at least somewhat] to their world rather than trying to force them to ours.
• Rewards for interactions are greater on myspace [and other open social networks] than in the classroom. [are grades more carrots or sticks? probably depends most on the student...]
• NOTE: Wellsley has good online community usage. They use FirstClass. FirstClass differentiates by NOT being primarily web based (though it does have a web interface, there’s significantly less functionality there than in the client). Since there is no channel to other online identities, that becomes it? [Adam notes that FirstClass was (originally, anyway) software for conferences]

[Consider the role of multiple identities. People on line often have multiple 'faces' for different contexts - facebook, forums, personal vs professional blogs, at work, at home, on vacation, etc. Can the participation in the college community be a new identity? Might have better success appropriating the model rather than trying to claim the complete online identity?

I talked with Eric after the presentation. His take was that there was a general consolidation going on in online presences, but I don't think I agree. Certainly in some realms (e.g. MySpace ate Friendster), but not all realms are integrated and I don't think they ever will be. New ones are being created all the time. It would be interesting to see some statistics and find out whether it's especially heading one way or another.]

• Restricted and/or topic-based communities tend to have a higher level of discourse - not just Chat.
• Someone has had success shifting online community to classroom community by shifting the approach from 1-many to many-many. [however, the more common problem is shifting classroom discussion/action online. Still useful to consider: first shift the class mode to a more many-many approach, then the transition online is easier]
• To be effective social software has to be built in to the pedagogy, and vice versa. Starting with a ‘normal’ class and just throwing socila software at it is highly unlikely to produce anything useful.