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Using the Hybrid Social Learning Network to

Explore Concepts, Practices, Designs and Smart

Services for Networked Professional Learning

ICSLE 2015, Sinaia, Romania

Cook, J.*, Ley, T., Maier, R., Mor, Y., Santos, P., Lex, E., Dennerlein, S., Trattner, C., Holley, D.

john2.cook@uwe.ac.uk

* Centre for Moving Images Research, UWE Bristol, UK

Learning Layers

Overview

1. Introduction

2. Research approach

3. Brief examples of social machines

4. Smart Services co-designed with UK health sector workers

5. Conclusions & next steps

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1. Introduction

• A big issue has been articulated by the inventor of the World-Wide Web – challenge of the ‘unfilled’ potential of the Internet

• Consequently this work aims to – reflect an innovative pedagogy

– grounded in practice and supported by theory

– enable the fusion of the people, technology and the pedagogy

– to transform smart learning environments

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1. The challenge of the ‘unfilled’

potential of the Internet

• Tim Berners-Lee – the challenge of the ‘unfilled’ potential of the Internet

• By introducing the concept of a ‘social machine’ Berners-Lee envisages that what is needed for the Internet to evolve – pervasive ecosystems of co-evolving social machines (smart) – people and machines (digital tools) work in partnership

• Example today are Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia • Twitter is software (a machine) but

– all the #hashtag process has to be added on top by people – citizens are empowered to create new social processes at

national and global level

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1. Social machines: computers

empower humans

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• “Real life is and must be full of all kinds of social constraint – the very processes from which society arises. Computers can help if we use them to create abstract social machines on the Web: processes in which the people do the creative work and the machine does the administration... The stage is set for an evolutionary growth of new social engines. The ability to create new forms of social process would be given to the world at large, and development would be rapid.”

Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web, 1999 (pp. 172–175)

More people

Mo

re m

ach

ines

Big Data Conventional Computation

Social Networks

Hybrid Social Learning Network (Social Machines)

Adapted from De Roure and Willcox (2015)

e-infrastructure (e.g. Cloud), analytics

online R&D

2. Research approach

(brief, see paper)

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2. Hybridity (Cook, Ley et al.,

2015)

• How can we reconcile post-Vygotskian theory with the core idea of social machines, the ‘50-50 partnership’ between people and machine?

• Hybridity – hybrid combination of formal and informal social structures in

terms of power and control in an activity system (Daniels, 2008). What are the rules? How do I play the game? Who are the players?

– hybrid in terms of how physical and digital cultural-historically developed tools mediate the individual’s and group’s relation to the world where the competence to handle such tools is acquired in social settings through guidance from other persons or guidance from digital tools in a “50-50 partnership”

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9 See Cook, Ley et al. (2015)

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Mor, Cook et al. (2015)

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https://goo.gl/aL1MXt

2. Respect the learners’ Zone

of Possibility (ZoP)

• The notion of a Zone of Possibility (ZoP) has been developed from theory (Daniels, 2008, p. 164) into a Design Principle to guide the participative development of smart services like the Confer and KnowBrian in a HSLN for health care sector

• Navigation and bridging is needed when moving around a ZoP (e.g. a working group) and when positioning oneself or being positioned within the ZoP

• These smart services provide mediational means for interlinking hybrid practice of professional learning 12

3. Brief examples of social

machines

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3. A tweet then a Google hangout led to open

source project that created first virtual organism

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3. Reading the Riots

A data-driven study into the causes and

consequences of the August 2011 riots

15 http://www.theguardian.com/uk/interactive/2011/dec/07/london-riots-twitter

Social process using social media that occurs on scale of the city

3. Citizens Science: Zooniverse

over a million users

16 https://www.zooniverse.org/#/projects

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http://www.chicagowildlifewatch.org/?_ga=1.239103875.1205722023.1440582848

4. Smart Services co-

designed with UK health

sector workers

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Research Passport

4. Confer (Learning Layers:

http://learning-layers.eu/)

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(Led by Raycom, with Leeds & UWE)

4. Confer

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Confer Scaffolds online and face2face meetings in work group practice. Screencast https://www.dropbox.com/s/ifvrtz4q7o1r3mo/CONFER_v2.mp4?dl=0

4. Design Pattern: Dealing with

Egos

• Context description: – In a group of peers there is often an imbalance of power. Sometimes

people with higher power/influence close off the discussion by posing an answer, discouraging others from making contributions

• Problem/challenge description: – To rebalance and allow contribution from everyone, before

conclusions are drawn.

• Solution (feature[s]): – In the contextual discussion areas (Orange Step) in Confer we ask

users to categorize their contributions, but we don’t include the option to provide a definitive answer in the drop down menu to discourage closing down conversation and we do include a neutral ‘chat’ option to encourage onboarding (which is another Design Pattern and also a form of ZoP)

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4. Design Pattern: Disagree to

agree

• Context description: – Where people are happy to brainstorm and evaluate

together, the negotiation of a shared conclusion is a difficult step to achieve, because of personal attachment to certain options.

• Problem/challenge description: – How do we make it easier to create a neutral ground with

a gentle slope towards convergence?

• Solution (feature[s]): – Allow the group to identify for each option (Blue Step) in

which situation it would be the best one, before the final recommendations is written up

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4. KnowBrain (Learning Layers:

http://learning-layers.eu/)

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KnowBrain tool has smart social and collaborative learning features for informal workplace learning (led by Technical University of Graz) (Dennerlein, et al. 2015)

5. Conclusions & next steps

• We extend the notions of ‘social learning’ and ‘networked learning’ by the concept of hybridity

• HSLN provides rigorous approach within which we investigate mechanisms for interlinking practice and theory to inform and enhance both

• Our approach shows how we employ empirical and design work and a participatory pattern workshop to move from (kernel) theories via Design Principles and prototypes to social machines articulating the notion of a HSLN

• It offers a powerful explanatory frame and step-by-step guidance of the functioning and scope for learning in hybrid professional networks

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5. Conclusions & next steps

• In future work we will test the impact of our tools on scaffolding practice towards more effective social learning at the workplace – Trails Confer taking place now

– Link KnowBrain to Confer - ongoing

– Evaluate Confer in 2016 using a Design Patterns approach

• Generalise Design Principles and patterns to other areas and initiatives

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Thank You & Questions

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References • Berners-Lee, T. and Fischetti, M. (1999). Weaving the web: The original design and ultimate destiny of the

world wide web by its inventor. San Francisco: Harper.

• Cook, J., Ley, T., Maier, R., Mor, Y., Santos, P., Lex, E., Dennerlein, S., Trattner, C., Holley, D. (2015). Using the Hybrid Social Learning Network to Explore Concepts, Practices, Designs and Smart Services for Networked Professional Learning. In Yanyan Li, Maiga Chang, Milos Kravcik, Elvira Popescu, Ronghuai Huang, Kinshuk, Nian-Shing Chen (Eds.), State-of-the-Art and Future Directions of Smart Learning, Proceedings of International Conference on Smart Learning Environments (ICSLE 2015), 23-25 Sep'15, Sinaia, Romania. Lecture Notes in Educational Technology, Springer-Verlag, GmbH: Heidlberg. Link to pre-print: https://goo.gl/nAxQNs

• Daniels, H. (2008). Vygotsky and Research. Routledge, UK.

• Dennerlein, S., Theiler, D., Marton, P., Santos Rodriguez, P., Cook, J., Lindstaedt, S. and Lex, E. (2015). KnowBrain: An Online Social Knowledge Repository for Informal Workplace Learning. EC-TEL 2015, Spain.

• De Roure, D. and Willcox , P. (2015). “Coniunction, with the participation of Society”: Citizens, Scale, and Scholarly Social Machines. Scholarly Communications Workshop, Boston, Massachusetts.

• Mor, Y., Cook, J., Santos, P., Treasure-Jones, T., Elferink, R., Holley, D., and Griffin, J. (2015). Patterns of Practice and Design: Towards A Methodology for Educational Design Research. Four page paper in Proceedings of EC-TEL 2015, Spain. Link to paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5iNZunquTigZGtMem5UMUl0M2s/view

• Shadbolt, N., Smith, D. A., Simperl, E., Van Kleek, M., Yang, & Y. Hall, H. (2013). Towards a classification framework for social machines. SOCM2013: Workshop on Theory and Practice of social machines, WWW2013, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

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