The following four papers follow a order logic of looking at the topography of the battlefield, understanding the main weapons/resources on the field , how those on the battlefield have deployed the weapons/resources, and then looking at ideal methodologies for deploying the resources in a civilised manner.

It is common for civilians faced with new situations to run around like headless chickens rather than apply some logical processes to get on with organising themselves. From my reading the 'Headless Chicken' analogy seems to apply to Social Networks and how people have used them to collaborate.

Or described in another way:
1. Evaluating the framework of education institutions regulating participation in web 2.0 based mediums.

2. Specific analysis on the web 2.0 hosted medium of Facebook and the collaborating momentum it has achieved with students.

3. An example or student deployment of web 2.0 mediums for the purpose protest.

4. Examples of education institutions' deployment of web 2.0 mediums for the purpose of improving education processes and results.

Establishing Guidelines for the Use of Social Media in Higher Education
Andrew J. Lenartz (2012), Chapter 16 Establishing Guidelines for the Use of Social Media in Higher Education, in Laura A. Wankel, Charles Wankel (ed.) Misbehavior Online in Higher Education (Cutting-edge Technologies in Higher Education, Volume 5), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp.333-353
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/books.htm?chapterid=17010101

E Collaboration in educational institutions makes use of web 2.0 based social mediums. Such as Facebook, You Tube, and Flickr. These social media do not require institutional permission to join so it is the education institutions that have to catch-up if they are to harness the benefits of social media. Likewise, many of the teachers at educational institutions use social media but are handicapped in deploying these media for the benefit of the students and the institution when there are non existent guidelines from their employer. It is because education centres are accredited institutional organisations, they are not online crowds or movements, that brings about a situation where guidelines are required. The consequences for employees of educational institutions using social media incorrectly can be severe. Ethics, Integrity, Trustworthyness can all be undermined if a personal approach to social media is used. Getting it wrong when part of an organisation can result is loss of reputation and unemployability.

This paper provides a suggested pathway for organisations to adopt. This is most important as this paper points out on page 342 that out of 132 accedited medical schools in the USA where 96.97% had a website containing student guidelines and policies. Only 10.16% had locatable online social media guidelines regardless that 95.45% of the schools had a presence on Facebook.

Melbourne Girls Grammar School on March 2011 claims to be the first Australian school to promote a Social Media policy www.handeye.com.au/images/home/news/news24.pdf .
Curtin University posted a Social Media Policy in June 2010 (over 6 years after Facebook began). Australian educational institutions appear to be following the same slow pattern as those educational institutions in the USA. Therefore this paper is very relevant to evaluating Collaboration and Organisation in Higher Education.

Facing off: Facebook and Higher Education
Debra Bateman, Julie Willems (2012), Chapter 5 Facing off: Facebook and Higher Education, in Laura A. Wankel, Charles Wankel (ed.) Misbehavior Online in Higher Education (Cutting-edge Technologies in Higher Education, Volume 5), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp.53-79
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/books.htm?chapterid=17010090

This paper provides very good case studies of how e collaboration via Facebook has occurred within Higher Education institutions. The paper provides reasons why Facebook is important - '.. we now expect flexibility in order to work, learn and study whenever and whatever we wish to'(P54) Points to the fact that online social networking human dynamics in the educational arena is also a reality of most other organisations. Educational institutions have specific challenges for e collaboration for example '… between 78% and 95.5% of all enrolled students in Higher Education have indicated that they use Facebook. … and 'only 1.5% of teaching staff within universities are members' (of Facebook) (P56). As mentioned by Mike Kent in Tutorial 'Curtin university specifically has a preference that OASIS is usedto coordinate with students.'

Facebook is a more popular medium partly because it will remain accessible after graduation. When students graduate they will be disconnected from Oasis or will have no need to login to Oasis. Therefore, there is a compelling reason to use Facebook to maintain contact with your hard earnt friends.
Curtin University has placed high importance on mentoring new students as a means to reducing drop out rates. Mentors are difficult to attract and keep as my own wife is a mentor and has taken on the work of three other mentors that have dropped out. Yet an embracing of Facebook may hold the answer for Curtin University as "… the main reason for students' non completion of courses is the result of a perceived lack of social presence or 'unhappiness with the social environment." (P58)
As contained in the final paper below - students have a preference to first ask fellow students for assistance rather than ask the teacher. Therefore,
"Facebook provides students with opportunities to teach each other in synchronous communication through instant messaging and asynchronous communications through the discussion strings."(P60)

Facebook itself posts information that supports this paper on the uptake of users within educational institutions. "The image of college students arranging study groups is not the first image that comes to mind when thinking about Facebook use on campus. But our research suggests that students are using the site to support their academic, as well as social, goals." https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=487460320569



Cuts, Tweets, Solidarity and Mobilisation: How the Internet Shaped the Student Occupations
Yannis Theocharis (November 16, 2011) Retrieved from http://pa.oxfordjournals.org/content/65/1/162.short
Parliam Aff (2012) 65 (1): 162-194. doi: 10.1093/pa/gsr049
University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany
yannis.theocharis@mzes.uni-mannheim.de


This paper describes the characteristics of students and their ability and willingness to interact with social networks to collaborate in protest. Good general background information provides an insight in to how non participants perceive students, 'slaktivism', 'know nothings', 'informational exuberance', 'me generation' etc. Then in turn the students perception of politicians - students have a high level of distrust towards politicians. "… young people believe that politicians adopt social media to 'look cool' or because some adviser told them to do it." (P172)

The paper tends to theorise that there is a growing realm of young people's engagement in political issues through smaller types of participation. References included point towards the decline in traditional involvement of young people in the political process. I would like to suggest that it is not so much the youth disengaging but moreso that the people in leadership positions tend to be older and have not kept up with online collaboration or kept up in the correct manner so they are somewhat alien to the youth of today.

Pages 179 and 182 provide details on specifically how students collaborated via the social mediums. This alludes to the resourcefullness of the students and ability to strongly identify with each other via these mediums. The students had a common enemy that helped them unite. That enemy being government policy that was against the objective of investing in the education of the youth for the betterment of the economy.

There are some really interesting observations presented that highlight the willingness of students to get involved with the political process on their terms and the increasing disengagement of students from the standard political processes. "Social media appear to be a more effective model for participation than e-deliberation and e-democracy, and they are sometimes also matched by offline participation." (P188) This was "demonstrated in the Obama campaign, and perhaps, during the 'Arab Spring'. (P188) Here is a good example of how protests in Egypt were initiated, organised and then took on their own crowd momentum http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxJK6SxGCAw&feature=related

The early activist uses of social media also have flow-on benefits for minority groups that are seeking ways to gain more participation. Open Ideo has just completed a project seeking to improve voter involvement and used collaboration methodologies to find a way to gain more participation http://www.openideo.com/open/voting/brief.html

I think this paper is important because it describes how a groundswell of people can bring about change directly or indirectly.
1. This paper highlights that the intense student online activity grabbed the attention of journalists so that film and print news carried the students' cause even further.
2. Then in turn other movements around the world were inspired to act and through physical protest achieved more than the student protests in the UK.
3. Whilst concurrently people have seen the power of online collaboration being demonstrated and sought ways to deploy the technology for the benefit of non protesters.


Open Innovation and Organizational Boundaries: The Impact of Task Decomposition and Knowledge Distribution on the Locus of Innovation
Published: February 3, 2012, Authors:Karim R. Lakhani and Michael L. Tushman
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6930.html

This paper rounds off the previous three papers above by looking at organisational factors that facilitate Collaboration and Organisation within institutions. Three case studies are used as examples on how open collaboration has strengthend Apple, Lego, and NASA. The paper points to intrinsic motivators as contributors being more powerful for innovation than extrinsic motivators in the appropriate setting. The paper is thrilling in that it points to the value every student gains from studying this subject at Curtin University. The paper suggests that all corporations will require management to have a clear understanding of the business segments that ought or not be collaborating with the public for the purpose of strengthening the market position of the company.

The diagram below showing extrinsic and intrinsic motivators are referenced in this paper:


Worker Motivation in Crowdsourcing and Human Computation
Posted on July 9, 2011 by thimoschulze
http://crowdresearch.org/blog/?p=1245

The Open Innovation paper sugests there are two contingencies that influence the potential for an organisation to collaboration in its processes such as R&D. "The degree to which critical tasks can be decomposed and the extent to which problem solving knowledge for these tasks is distributed." (Page 6)
The paper discusses the managerial challenges facing organisations in implimenting collaborative processes that can be related to educational institutions.


(Continued Next Page)



The paper points to the situations were there are low communication costs and knowledge is not solely held within an istitution then public collaboration can bring benefits to the institution. These variables are present for educational institutions.

The following podcast supports this paper as it presents information and case examples on how collaboration in educational institutions has been implimented. In the podcast you will hear how Internet Collaboration and Organisation facilitates student collaboration to learn and build a stronger sense of community under an institutional umbrella. The example in the podcast is similar to the Lego, NASA and Apple examples presented in the paper. You will hear how students write and present the class content and assist teachers to learn how to use the technology used.
Radio National, Future Tense, The Digital Classroom, Broadcast: Thursday 13 May 2010 8:30AM
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/the-digital-classroom/3105332#comments

I will post not much to try to draw these papers to the top of the list in an attempt to attract comment as it now is listed as 85 of 86 posts.

Yes the One-To-Many communication that social networks facilitate could have benefits for an emergency call centre to decrease the need for the same incident being reported multiple times. Maybe all phones would require a permanent App pre installed compulsory. When all phones also function as servers and for retransmission of wifi then their use for disasters can be relied upon. Goodbye to mains power and fibre or metal lines to create a network.

This paper has a unique story but similar in approach to many discussing Social Media, in that there are many papers that like to entertain the idea that people naturally don't want to share. Personally I struggle with these types of starting assumptions as it is foreign to me to not want to share and assist others and I think this also applies to participants collaborating over the internet using Social Media. Not all participants will want to share but the majority does or there are enough single entries that amount to a critical mass of participation to enable the medium to be a social success. The Prisoners Dilemma in this paper is a topic that can provide entertaining conversation. But I conclude that if you don't want to share at a point in time then ok with me because I will find others that do want to share. The transaction cost of the internet is so low that I do not have to force myself to interact with no sharers.

I guess what I feel is the same as Mike Kent proposes in his paper Strangers in the Swarm. "the presence of freeloaders will make the swarm less efficient thus encouraging people to move to more efficient groups."

I have experience two examples where I want to shop online a pay for something but because I could not find them in a shop or online I then turned to Bit Torrent to download them.

1st. I wanted to buy the student version of Adobe Master Edition at the start of 2011. I walked the streets of Perth and got shops to call their other shops but no one had a copy I could buy. I then searched online but could not find any online store that would allow an Australian based buyer to purchase it. So I found an inexpensive solution just in time for my Digital Design classes started.

Then at the start of this year I did another search to see if I could buy a student version of Master Edition online and I found could. I had to send my ID to prove I am a student along with $500 and I happily paid for the latest release of what I already had that did all I wanted it to do that was already a version ahead of what Curtin Uni uses.

2nd I want to buy a copy of 7UP. This is the show about following folk from the UK and interviewing them every 7 years of their life. The only place I found that was in a torrent that took about 7 days to download. If I could find a copy I could pay for today then I would.

So is there excellent sales opportunity information to be gained from evaluating Bit Torrents. As must as only 0.3% of traffic is legitimate I would be guessing that those heavily using it are under age or under paid. Bit Torrents enable future buyers to practice their commercial skills.

Yes certain links provide excellent SEO value like links from a .edu website. I always asked for a link from an educational institution in exchange for a discount. I managed to get 4 links in to Wikipedia many years ago that lasted for many years. But I could not find the whole page just now when I made a quick search.

This paper dazzles me with non stop cramming of terms and references. I simply can not hold all those reference points in my head at the one and same time to be able to come up with insightful learning. I would get most value from the references in this paper and use those references as part of a more tightly framed evaluation.

The paper is 7 years old, comes from an Architechture institution, focuses on the mentality to collaborate from a scientific perspective, contains some interesting phrases.

When I Google BTWorld to assist me see how much traction this paper has gained and to assist me evaluate the importance of this topic to collaboration on the Internet from a non technical viewpoint, I do not find any other results.

Structured Fighting. Clay made it clear that the Internet on it's own is not going to bring World Peace. The more people get together the more they can disagree and fight. By applying a structure for people to get together to collaborate then the internet is more productive.

Makes complete sense to me as I see people in social networks behaving like Headless Chickens not know what process to follow when they have a purpose they seek to achieve. I think this presentation ties in well to the fourth paper I posted in my assignment that looks at how organisations have deployed open collaboration and what sort of projects are suited to open collaboration.