About KMi

Contact Us


If you have a general enquiry or require further information about KMi, please contact us:

Postal Address:

Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
United Kingdom

Tel: +44 1908 653800

Fax: +44 1908 653169

Email: KMi Support

Comment on our website

If you have any comments, suggestions or general feedback regarding our Website, please email us at the address below.

Email: KMi Systems Team
 
The Open University
 

Social Software is...


Social Software
Social Software can be thought of as "software which extends, or derives added value from, human social behaviour - message boards, musical taste-sharing, photo-sharing, instant messaging, mailing lists, social networking."

Interacting with other people not only forms the core of human social and psychological experience, but also lies at the centre of what makes the internet such a rich, powerful and exciting collection of knowledge media. We are especially interested in what happens when such interactions take place on a very large scale -- not only because we work regularly with tens of thousands of distance learners at the Open University, but also because it is evident that being part of a crowd in real life possesses a certain 'buzz' of its own, and poses a natural challenge. Different nuances emerge in different user contexts, so we choose to investigate the contexts of work, learning and play to better understand the trade-offs involved in designing effective large-scale social software for multiple purposes.