The Next Generation of Online Social Media Applications in Education

ICHL 2013, Toronto Canada
“The Next Generation of
Online Social Media
Applications in Education”
Bebo White
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Stanford University
bebo@slac.stanford.edu

“Education and learning has and will always be a social
activity because it involves transfer of knowledge between
humans either directly or indirectly”
“So in the end, education and learning is about
communication and the ways that humans communicate”

Agenda
• Status of “Online Social Media Applications in
Education”
• What are the potential disruptive
applications in the immediate future?

It remains a carefully craftedIt remains a carefully crafted
blending of these elementsblending of these elements
even with increasingeven with increasing
technologytechnology
It remains a carefully craftedIt remains a carefully crafted
blending of these elementsblending of these elements
even with increasingeven with increasing
technologytechnology

Primary focus is on
communication,
not learning
(www.BestMastersinEducation.com)
Moves conventional
ideas and methods
online

There is still too much
emphasis on “Web 2.0”

Some of my “hot (to be explored) list” of
Future Social Media in Education Tools &
Techniques
• “Socially Shared Reading”
• MOOCs
• Gamification in Learning
• Applications of “Social Machines”
• Pervasive Learning/Embedded Ubiquitous
Learning

Isn’t this learning?
Wouldn’t it be great to
see Einstein’s marginalia?
One of history’s greatestOne of history’s greatest
research projects beganresearch projects began
with notes in the marginwith notes in the margin
of a bookof a book
One of history’s greatestOne of history’s greatest
research projects beganresearch projects began
with notes in the marginwith notes in the margin
of a bookof a book

We can collaborate (annotate, markup, version) documents
Why not (non-destructively) reading assignments?

“Socially-Shared
Reading”
• Can be a future component of book
publishing
• Goes beyond book reviews or reports
• Stimulates group/individual learning
• Notes/annotations could become a
permanent part of the book corpus

MOOCs

Massive Open Online
Course
• A course that is open, participatory, distributed, and
connects students to a digital world interested in
the same topic
• Provides a massive network of tools and people for
students and educators to build their technology
skills and professional networks for life-long learning
• Have attracted media interest due to huge
enrollments and the involvement of “elite”
institutions

It’s the cMOOCs Where
the Innovation Is (IMHO)
• Based on connectivity
• Enables learning networks
• Each of the participants provides meaning
by their own learning process
• Each experience can be unique, chaotic, but
no less rich or interesting

• In cMOOC communities
• there is a single platform, or defined only material
• there is not a single linear pathway if the contents
are created from the contributions of all
participating nodes
• they are based on co-creation and generation of
content rather than simple aggregation or
replication
• there is a learning community where the lines
between teachers and students is blurred; the
teacher might only be “the adult in the room”

• cMOOCs are not a panacea
• They are suited to advanced learners who are
comfortable online and used to sharing
experiences online (e.g., users of blogs, wikis,
Twitter, recommender systems, etc.)...Web 2.0?
• Pedagogically, cMOOCs involve less
transmission/interaction than xMOOCs
• Peer assessment (crowdsourcing to manage
MOOC scale) is hard!

• Who do they benefit - the students or the
sponsoring institution?
• How do they affect the future role of teachers?
• Is it like the naiveté of the early Web or will
they be monetized like other social media?
• Connectivist or Instructivist?
• Etc., etc.
Will MOOCs survive &
continue or just be a fad?

Gamification
• IT, games, and education will never go away
- just get more sophisticated
• The pedagogy is to use the design elements,
interaction techniques, and (now) the social
networking models of online games to
leverage teaching and learning
• Social gamification can explicit (Second
Life?) or implicit (Foursquare)

(jmapsimoes, 2012)

Why is It Still Relevant?
• A generation that knows gaming
• Successful game designers are experts in building
motivation, interface design, user experience design;
they are motivated themselves by the desire to reach
as large an audience as possible
• A matter of scale - audiences that MOOCs would envy
• Variety of platforms - any place can be a learning space
• Technology - powerful devices, ubiquitous broadband
and wifi

7 Game Motivation
Principles
• Experience bars measuring progress
• Breaking things down into lots of long and short-termed
calibrated aims
• Reward even smallest efforts and don’t punish failure
• Feedback - link actions and consequences
• Uncertainly in getting rewards - different probability rates
• Enhanced attention
• Collaboration and competition
(ref: Tom Chatfield)
If you did not know
I was talking
about gam
es...

Pedagogical Elements of
Gamification
• “Learning by doing”
• Alternatives to “test and letter grade”
assessment
• Collection of player metrics/competencies
with ability to compare in peer/social group
• Motivated to exchange information within
their social group in order to achieve desired
goals

You may think that I have dismissed Web 2.0’s role...
What about The Semantic Web, Web 3.0, or whatever?
It’s “Social Machines for Education”

“real life is an must be full of all kinds of social
constraint – the very process from which society
arises. Computers can help if we use them to create
social machines on the “real life is an must be full
of all kinds of social constraint – the very process
from which society arises. Computers can help if we
use them to create social machines on the Web:
processes in which the people do the work and the
machine does the administration…The stage is set
for an evolutionary growth of new social engines.”:
processes in which the people do the work and the
machine does the administration…The stage is set
for an evolutionary growth of new social engines.”
---Sir Tim Berners-Lee
It is hard to imagine a more fundamental construct to the
growth of a society than education...

This is a “Fourth
Quadrant” Concept

Consider the potential of any subset of these in a “Social
Machine for Education!”

Pervasive Learning
“learning at the speed of need through
formal, informal and social learning modalities”
Pervasive: “having
the quality or
tendency to pervade
or permeate”

What About the “Web
of Things?”
• Everyday objects become
“first class citizens” on the
Web via sensors or other
embedded devices
• Why not also members (and
friends) in social networks?
• Why can’t such objects be a
part of a Personal Learning
Network Network?

Ubiquitous Embedded
Learning
• Discovery and delivery - “learning at the
speed of need”
• Machine to Machine (M2M) communication -
“learning profiles” accessible by machines
• Embedded Learning - networked learning is
built into every device, tool, etc.
• The Web 2.0 components may already be
here

Blogjects - objects that blog
(Julian Bleeker, USC)

Spimes - “a location-aware, environment-aware,
self-logging, self-documenting, uniquely
identified object that flings off data about
itself and its environment in great quantities”
(Bruce Sterling)

“The significance of technologies like RFID and 2D
barcoding is that they offer a low-impact way to
‘import’ physical objects into the datasphere,
to endow them with an informational shadow”
(Adam Greenfield)

What are the challenges of integrating Web 2.0 social
learning with the “Web of Things?”

Summary
• Social media applications in education need to move
beyond the familiar Web 2.0 models
• Rich new and innovative social media technologies
have been developed but require definition of new
educational models and pedagogies to support them
• Many of the longterm dreams of “classrooms without
walls,” approachable distant education (removing the
digital divide), and lifelong learning are now possible
and social interaction is a major component of them

None of the concepts
discussed in this talk
appear in this book
They should be!
Help us to build the
next edition!

Questions/Comments?
bebo@slac.stanford.edu

The Next Generation of Online Social Media Applications in Education

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