Education 298
Social Machines: Online
Learning Communities
Spring 2007 (3 Unit Seminar)
Roy Pea
Office: Wallenberg Hall, Rm. 232
Email: roypea@stanford.edu
TIME: Wednesdays 10:00-12:50 pm
PLACE: Wallenberg Hall (aka Bldg 160), Room 127
TA: Daniel Steinbock steinbock at stanford dot edu
SESSION 1: Wednesday, April 4th The Social Machine of Web 2.0 and its History
SESSION 2: April 18th What do we mean by “community” and “online learning community”?
SESSION 8: Wednesday, May 30th Professional Online Communities: Collaboratories
OVERVIEW
The past two years has seen explosive growth of what many are calling ‘Web 2.0’ – a set of principles and practices that use the web as a platform for services that enable users to control their own data and media, and with a central focus on participation so that collective intelligence can be harnessed from distributed user communities. We include as Web 2.0 examples: Google’s search breakthrough using PageRank (web link structure) to improve search, Amazon’s user reviews, blogging and blog tagging (Technorati), vlogging (videoblogs), wikis (for online group information publishing), social bookmarking (del.icio.us), photo uploading and tagging (flickr), and video uploading and tagging (YouTube), music community sites (last.fm)—among many categories. Web 2.0 platforms are often marked by continuous improvements from ongoing participatory design input from their most avid users, and increasingly, by rich user experiences (e.g., Google Maps and affiliated mashups) and learning by recommendation and discovery. If these examples are foreign to you, you’ll come to understand how they offer vital tools for creating new learning architectures. If these examples are commonplace to you, you’ll develop deeper theoretical and historical understanding of their significance for advancing the sciences and practices of learning. As computers increasingly come to serve as social machines for such collective learning, what incentives and techniques are being used to productively harness user contributions and architectures of participation? What design principles might inform productive design of online learning communities? How is mobile access to networks of information and people enabling mobile learning communities?
This course will examine historical foundations, theoretical perspectives, underlying learning theories, case studies and key enabling technologies in order to provide a critically informed perspective for understanding, designing, and researching online learning communities using Web 2.0 approaches and tools. We will consider online learning communities for diverse topical areas over the lifespan, and for communities as wide-ranging as teachers, K-12 learners, professional scientists, and many informal communities of interest in society. Class work will have a major focus on participation in online learning communities and in-class collaborative teams, affiliated journaling, and reflecting on learning via such participative experiences, online within and outside of class.
Demonstrations of online communities of learning will be combined in a lecture and seminar discussion format with hands-on activities involving participation in multiple learning environments. We will take ample advantage of the collaborative computing and wall-sized computer displays of Wallenberg Hall’s Advanced Resource Classrooms (http://wallenberg.stanford.edu/), students’ computers, and wireless mobile Internet tablets.
Enrollment is limited this year to 21 students, who will form 7 teams of 3 for project work during the quarter. These three-person project teams will be created with instructor guidance to make for a productive mix of backgrounds, interests, and prior experiences. Teams will work together for the quarter - being responsible for activities for one week’s readings (see below), and creating a team-developed final project.
In each session after the first
two weeks, a student group will work together in collaboratively developing and
contributing a brief summary presentation of the key ideas of the assigned
readings, the questions that they raise, and a class activity involving the
technologies involved in the week’s readings (to be developed in consultation
with the TA and instructor). I will
moderate these discussions and provide additional background and interpretive
context for each class. An integrative
team-written final paper that develops from a mid-quarter proposal is due on
Wednesday, June 6th, when each group will have a 24-minute period to
present and discuss their work to the class (including roughly 15 min for
presenting and 9 minutes for a Q&A period). Assessment will be on the basis
of in-class and out-of-class contributions to our learning community, oral
presentations, a learning journal, and the written paper (see below).
ED298: Social Machines: Online
Learning Communities, Course Reader. Available for purchase at the first
class session, or from CopySource,
Rheingold, H. (2002). Smart Mobs: The next social revolution
(transforming cultures and communities in the age of instant access).
Castronova, E. (2005).
Synthetic Worlds: The Business and
Culture of Online Games.
·
Required attendance
and engaged participation - we are looking for knowledge-building contributions
to our local community of learners, not only in the classroom but also
extending to participation in online forums. Taken as a whole, such participation
will account for 20% of your final grade in the course. This is an individual
assessment.
·
Once during the
quarter, as part of a three-person team, leading presentation of readings,
seeding dialog with good questions, and planning and conducting a class
activity concerning the online community/topic under analysis. The schedule for
these presentations will be developed on April 3rd, kickoff after
the second week of the quarter. This is a group assessment, and the combined
effort represents 25% of your grade.
·
End of quarter
“learning journal” to be handed in on June 6th, 2007 for final class
(into Coursework). You will participate on a weekly basis in one
active web-based community that exemplifies Web 2.0 principles and
technologies, and reflect on your learning from such participation in terms of
a template framework to be provided.
Your journal will count toward 25% of your final grade. This is an
individual assessment. Your learning from this journaling may contribute to
your group project.
·
Final
integrative paper and presentation on June 6th, 2007, with two
milestones during the quarter for feedback purposes: a one page abstract due on
May 9th and a substantive outline due on May 23rd. Expect to provide your peers with useful
feedback on their abstracts using online community tools. This is a group
assessment, and the Final Paper and a Final Presentation about it on this day
will account for 30% of your final grade.
The
Final Paper should be an effective integration of the
literature, your course learning, and your learning journal reflections to
identify a specific learning community and users whose needs might be well
served by an online learning community using Web 2.0 technologies. You will
articulate their learning needs, how the community is addressing those needs
today online (if at all), and propose design recommendations for improving the
community (with constructive critique of current online approaches), on what
grounds you argue your suggestions would work, and how you could evaluate the
success of these changes. It is also possible to have your paper focus on
developing a new online community, if one currently does not exist, with
similar areas of treatment for your paper. The paper should be between
7000-8000 words in length, not counting bibliography (or roughly 15-17 pages
depending on your choice of font and spacing). The oral presentation should be
compact: 15 minutes for the presentation
plus 9 additional minutes for discussion. The paper will need be uploaded into Coursework on June 6th, 2007
before midnight.
After
the first two weeks, I will begin a prototypical class with a historical and
interpretive orientation to the reading materials, followed by the student team
presentation of a theory-oriented overview of the readings and a participatory
demonstration of the community technology referenced in (or related to) the
readings (approximately 90 minutes, with a short break included). The last 45 minutes of the class are devoted
to reflections and discussion that I will moderate.
Class
challenge: There is only now a ‘stub’
(incomplete entry) for “Online learning
community” in Wikipedia.
I propose that we build one together as part of this course, based on what we
come to define as the core features of online learning communities, their
history, and their emerging properties.
Below is a listing of the topics and assigned readings for each class session, as indicated. Please complete all assigned readings before the class for which they are assigned, as active participation in discussions is expected. Unless otherwise noted, readings are included in your course reader; when available, the on-line address is listed.
Background readings are always available on request for students interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the topics and for broadening class discussions for which you are responsible. (NOTE: By popular student request from previous years, optional background readings will not be made available as part of a binder at cost.)
The Social Machine of
Web 2.0 and its History
View: “Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us” (http://youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE)
Required
Rouse, W. (2005, July 5). Social machines. Technology Review. (12 pp) (http://tinyurl.com/29cehe)
Levy, S. & Stone, B. (2006, April 3). The new wisdom of the Web. From cover story: “Putting the ‘We’ in Web: From MySpace to Flickr and YouTube, User-Generated Sites are rocking the Internet.” Newsweek, pp. 47-53. (http://tinyurl.com/o5jrp)
O'Reilly, T. (2005, Sept 30). What Is Web 2.0? Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software (11 pp: see http://tinyurl.com/743r5)
Engelbart, D. abstract of Doug’s fifty-year career in inventing and advancing the personal computer and still-emerging social computing revolution. (10 pp: see http://tinyurl.com/24fta )
Engelbart, D. (1963). A Conceptual Framework for the
Augmentation of Man's Intellect. In Vistas
in Information Handling, Howerton and Weeks (Eds.),
These two Licklider papers below are available as a single report at: ftp://gatekeeper.research.compaq.com/pub/DEC/SRC/research-reports/SRC-061.pdf)
(1) Licklider, J.C.R. (1960) "Man-Computer Symbiosis," reprinted from IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, volume HFE-1, pages 4-11, March 1960.
(2) Licklider, J.C.R. & Taylor, R.W. (1968) "The Computer as a Communication Device," reprinted from Science and Technology, April 1968.
Optional Background
Engelbart (1962) "A Conceptual Framework for the Augmentation of Man's Intellect," longer report from Stanford Research Institute (140 pages: http://tinyurl.com/krego )
What do we mean by
“community” and “online learning community”?
Required
Virtual Community (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_community)
Shumar, W., & Renninger, A. (2002). On conceptualizing
community. In Renninger, K. A., &
Shumar, W. (2002). (Eds.), Building
virtual communities: Learning and change in cyberspace (pp. 1-17).
Brint, S. (2001, March). Gemeinscaft revisited: A critique and reconstruction of the community concept. Sociological Theory, 19(1), 1-23.
Wellman, B., & Gulia, M. (1999). Net surfers don't ride
alone: Virtual communities as communities. In P. Kollock & M. Smith (Eds.),
Communities in cyberspace.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation.
Rogoff, B. (1994). Developing understanding of the idea of communities of learners. Mind, Culture and Activity, 1, 209-229. (20 pp)
Kim, A. J. (2000). Community building on the Web: Secret strategies for successful online communities. Peachpit Press, 2000. Chapters 1 and 2 (book now out of print; pp. 1-73; available on our Coursework website)
Fundamental Tools of
the Social, Read-Write Web for User-Created Content Apps
Agenda: The Read-Write Web. The world of blogging (the most common read-write web platform), wikis (collaborative webspaces for authoring content), RSS feeds and aggregators (Really Simple Syndication, for content feeds), social bookmarking, and tagging “folksonomies” for letting web users categorize the meanings of text, photo, video, so that others can build on their knowledge. “Mashups” exemplified with Google Maps (for a directory, see: http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/) combined with other Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis (e.g., http://www.wikimapia.org/). www.programmableweb.com documents the emerging world of mashups.
Required
Gillmor, D. (2005). The Read-Write Web. [11 pp excerpt from his free web book, We The Media; available online, included in reader, but for footnotes, see: http://www.authorama.com/book/we-the-media.html]
Sifry, D. (2006, November). State of the Blogosphere, October 2006. [See on the web, not included in the reader since graphics are far better on the screen than in print: http://tinyurl.com/u8ths]
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia)
Google Maps (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googlemaps)
Mathes, A. (2004, December). Folksonomies: Cooperative classification and communication through
shared metadata.
Hammond, T., Hannay, T.,
Anderson, C. (2004, October). The long tail. Wired Magazine. (6 pp: see http://tinyurl.com/d7f7k). For
Alexander, B. (2006, Mar/Apr). Web 2.0: A new wave of innovation for teaching and learning? Educause Review, 33-44. (http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0621.pdf ]
(For the beginnings of a User-Created Content bookmark list, see:
http://del.icio.us/tag/hz07+user_content )
(For examples of Mashups, see Yahoo Pipes, an interactive feed aggregator and manipulator (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/) and
Mobile learning
communities
Agenda: We will examine rapidly emerging uses of wireless mobile devices for supporting community, collaboration and cooperation locally and globally. Rheingold’s book (and regularly updated website: http://www.smartmobs.com/ on ‘smart mobs’ highlights how mobile groups are using smart, Internet-enabled cell phones and other technologies to coordinate their activities — thus potentially extending the concept of “online learning communities” to mobile learning communities.
Rheingold, H. (2002). Smart Mobs: The next social revolution
(transforming cultures and communities in the age of instant access).
Pea, R. D., & Maldonado, H. (2006). WILD for learning:
Interacting through new computing devices anytime, anywhere. In K. Sawyer
(Ed.), The
“The phone of the future,” The Economist, November 30, 2006.
(For the beginnings of a Mobile Learning and Education bookmark list, see:
http://del.icio.us/tag/hz07+mobile )
Social media
communities: From photos to videos
Agenda: Photo and video based communities, tagging and annotation. For example, digital video is a powerful expressive, educational and research medium – how are Web 2.0 platforms from YouTube to DIVER making it possible to more simply use videos for anchoring discussions and learning? How might geo-tagging photos and other web media become useful for learning and education?
2007 Horizon Report (New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative). (28 pp). “Pulse-taking” from learning technology leaders about emerging trends: user-created content, social networking, mobile phones, virtual worlds, new media scholarship, massively multiplayer educational gaming).
Flickr. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flickr)
YouTube. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youtube)
Vlog. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlog)
Naaman, M. (2006, October). Eyes on the world: Contextual metadata can be used to manage large digital photo collections. IEEE Computer, 108-111. (http://tinyurl.com/36sqbq)
Pea, R. D. (2006). Video-as-data and digital video
manipulation techniques for transforming learning sciences research, education
and other cultural practices. In J. Weiss, J. Nolan & P. Trifonas (Eds.), International Handbook of Virtual Learning
Environments (pp. 1321-1393).
Immersive Worlds and Massively Multiplayer Games as Online Communities
NOTE: One page abstract for final paper is DUE posted in Coursework.
Agenda: Examine how immersive worlds such as Second Life (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_life) and massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) serve as online learning communities. You will sign up for an account in Second Life to visit spaces for learning and education (http://secondlife.com/businesseducation/education.php). For a comprehensive directory of uses of Second Life in Education, check: http://tinyurl.com/zbwlj. Del.ic.ious also has extensive Second Life bookmarks relating to education and learning.
View: NMC Second Life Campus: Seriously Engaging
(http://youtube.com/watch?v=S9VZKTT6gZ8 )
Castronova, E. (2005).
Synthetic Worlds: The Business and
Culture of Online Games.
Second Life (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life)
Squire, K. (2006, November). From content to context: Videogames as designed experience. Educational Researcher, 35(8), 19-29. (http://tinyurl.com/2wck4u)
Yee, N. (2006). The Psychology of MMORPGs: Emotional
Investment, Motivations, Relationship Formation, and Problematic Usage. In R.
Schroeder & A. Axelsson (Eds.), Avatars
at Work and Play: Collaboration and Interaction in Shared Virtual Environments (pp.
187-207).
Online communities
for teacher learning and professional development
NOTE: In Coursework,
constructive comments DUE on the one page abstracts for final papers of at
least four student teams.
Agenda: Online communities and video resources are increasingly used for supporting teacher preparation and ongoing professional development, e.g., Teachscape.com (click ‘Take a tour’ at http://www.teachscape.com/html/ts/public/html/05_serv.htm).
Required
Lieberman, A. (1996). Creating intentional learning communities. Educational Leadership, 54(3), pp. 51-55. (5 pp)
Lu, J., & Rose, R. (2003). Seeing math through multimedia case studies. @Concord, 7(1), pp 1-5. (5 pp). (For examples, see: http://seeingmath.concord.org/sm_elementary_video.html )
Schlager, M.S., & Fusco, J. (2003). Teacher professional development, technology and communities of practice: Are we putting the cart before the horse? The Information Society, 19, 203-220. (17 pp)
Barab, S., MaKinster, J., & Schecker, R. (2004).
Designing System Dualities: Characterizing An Online Professional Development
Community. In Barab, S. A., Kling, R., & Gray, J. (Eds.). Designing
for virtual communities in the service of learning.
Professional Online
Communities: Collaboratories
NOTE: Substantive outline DUE for final paper in
Coursework.
Agenda: Online professional communities of learning. The birth and growth of “collaboratories” as an important example (doing science over the Internet). The power of “us” – collective science on demand (Innocentive and other examples around the world). Explore http://www.scienceofcollaboratories.org/ an alliance devoted to understanding the science of collaboratories.
Required
Bos, N., Zimmerman, A., Olson, J., Yew, J., Yerkie, J., Dahl, E., et al. (2007). From shared databases to communities of practice: A taxonomy of collaboratories. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(2), http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue2/bos.html
Farooq, U., Ganoe, C. H., Carroll, J.M., & Giles, C.L.
(2007). Supporting distributed scientific collaboration: Implications for
designing the CiteSeer collaboratory. 40th Annual
( http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/HICSS.2007.506)
Cothrel, J., & Williams, R. L. (1999). On-line communities: helping them form and grow. J. Knowledge Management, 3(1), 54-60.
Huston, L., & Sakkab, N. (2006, March). Connect and Develop: Inside Procter and Gamble's New Model for Innovation. Harvard Business Review. (http://tinyurl.com/yqh7d4)
Class designed
session on an emerging topic of common interest during the quarter
(Numerous candidates and relevant readings are already in store, but I want to leave this open given the unusual opportunity in a fast-moving field for us to customize this week’s curriculum to a new topic.)
NOTE: Final Paper DUE and Final Learning Journals DUE at the beginning of the session, posted in Coursework.
Agenda: FINAL
PRESENTATIONS. The session will be devoted
to presentations of your papers by each team, with approximately 15 minutes for
each presenting team (expecting 7 teams of 3), and the following 9 minutes
devoted to questions.
Have a Great Summer!