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KMi Seminars
The SocialLearn Project
This event took place on Thursday 18 March 2010 at 11:30

 
Dr Simon Buckingham Shum

SocialLearn is exploring the potential of the social web for learning and sensemaking (both academic, and in the workplace) with specific interest in how different OU communities might benefit (e.g. students, staff, researchers, alumni). In this session, we'll give an update on some of the project's thinking and prototyping.

http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/sociallearn

 
KMi Seminars
 

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.