Group items tagged

This paper explores the impact of communication media and the Internet on connectivity between people. Results from a series of social network studies of media use are used as background for exploration of these impacts. These studies explored the use of all available media among members of an academic research group and among distance learners. Asking about media use as well as about the strength of the tie between communicating pairs revealed that those more strongly tied used more media to communicate than weak ties, and that media use within groups conformed to a unidimensional scale, showing a configuration of different tiers of media use supporting social networks of different ties strengths. These results lead to a number of implications regarding media and Internet connectivity, including: how media use can be added to characteristics of social network ties; how introducing a medium can create latent tie connectivity among group members that provides the technical means for activating weak ties, and also how a change in a medium can disrupt existing weak tie networks; how the tiers of media use also suggest that certain media support different kinds of information flow; and the importance of organization-level decisions about what media to provide and promote. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for Internet effects.

referred to in EdFuture.net webinar by Simon Buckingham Shum, Associate Director (Technology), Knowledge Media Institute, Open University, UK - uses student data generated from LMS (inc Bb and Moodle) discussion forums reinterpreted into a network diagram Can visually depict - disconnected (at risk) students - key information brokers within a class - potentially high and low performing students so to plan interventions before deadline for grading - before/after snapshots to indicate impact of intervention - student reflection/benchmarking in informal self-assessment

networks "jane hart" "social learning"

Challenge: The Completions Priority "The completions marketplace should be redesigned to improve overall scalability, measurable impact, mutual affordability, and sustainability. To do so while avoiding intrusive government regulation and retaining local autonomy will require voluntarily confirmed "rules of the road" that enable effective completions practices at autonomous micro levels to be rolled up collectively into mutually affordable common-good macro solutions." Solution: Economic Governance for the Completions Marketplace - a common good critical to economic and social progress "The wisdom of a crowd willing to inform and support adaptive change leadership might help create common ground in a nonprofit, non-governmental global Education Leadership Commons (ELC) formed for the purpose of developing and evolving open interoperability of common educational services, processes, and accountability metrics, all at a minimally intrusive, trusted level of economic governance. Modeled along the lines of the Internet Society's so-far successful governance mechanisms, the ELC could be operationalized through standing working groups, their advisory or governance committees, and other nested and loosely-coupled, efforts to advance and sustain educational attainment within and across the three dimensions of the completions marketplace." - Completions Productivity Task Force - Economic Governance Council chart on page 6: Governance Matrix of Rights and Responsibilities in the Completions Marketplace student, assessment provider, education provider, government (other other funding source) 8 possible outcomes, including accreditation's formative peer-review process is retained "to create "trust-but-verify" economic governance collaborations" "If government can't provide the leadership and funding stability required for victory, then we the people should do so through a social networking micro-contribution mechanism, not unlike the micro-loan infrastructure cr

Andrew Chung (partner, Khosla Ventures); Beth Comstock (senior VP, GE); Andie Grace aka "Actiongrl" (communications manager and regional network manager, Burning Man); Jason Silva (co-founding host, Current TV); Don Tapscott (co-author, Macrowikinomics) "This is not an Information Age - it's one of networking, collaboration"; Craig Hatkoff (co-founder, Tribeca Film Festival) "The question is are we wise enough"?

Dissects how a digital scholar might construct "a networked research cycle" (planning, collecting data, analyze, reflect); themes which will have increasing relevance "whether it is because they become accepted practice or because the research community reacts against them." Granularity (e.g., iTunes vs music industry's album) Pushback from outlets (e.g., open blog vs scholarly publication - shift from output to focus on ongoing activity, engagement and reputation - more difficult to measure and reward) Crowdsourcing (inc. layers of filter and publication) Light connections and nodes (sharing in "a frictionless manner") Rapid innovation "These emerging themes sit less comfortably alongside existing practices and can be seen as a more radical shift in research practice. A combination of the two is undoubtedly the best way to proceed, but the danger exists of a schism opening up between those who embrace new approaches and those who reject them, with a resultant entrenchment to extremes on both sides. This can be avoided in part by the acknowledgement and reward of new forms of scholarship..."

a wise and wonderful essay - especially important for those scholars who might buckle under the bullying and harassment so common in academia but more frightening when open and in the public domain. MOOCs should encourage public scholarship - and help to make it more valued... and of higher quality - but they will need to include in the design that the facilitators modeling advocacy and constructive kinds of alliances for the participants. That is, providing that "institutional commitment" for public scholarship that is thoughtful and intriguing (vs. public showboating).