Social Software, Social Revolution
SOCIAL SOFTWARE IS HERE TO STAY, BUT WHAT IS IT REALLY, AND IS IT A GOOD THING?
MOVE OVER, MYSPACE. STEP ASIDE, FACEBOOK.
These two technologies may have been pioneers in the world of social
software, but nowadays, colleges and universities across the country
are embracing better and more targeted forms of technology, to enable
their campus users to interact. Today, the world of social software
includes traditional venues and formats: blogs, wikis, and podcasts.
It also features fresh spins on these old standards, as well as newer,
more robust technologies designed to facilitate collaboration for students
and administrators alike (see “For Gators Only,” page 42 in our magazine).
Naturally, at schools such as Saint Mary’s College (CA), the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Washington University
in St. Louis (MO), these collaboration tools enhance the learning
environment. Still, the rise of social software on campus raises many
questions: How can these tools be leveraged to improve communications
and enhance instruction? What d'es the technology imply for
the campus IT department? Finally, is social software a significant
change in communications? The answers may be more obvious than
you think.
Social Software 101
Different people have differing definitions
of social software. Generally speaking,
however, the technology allows
individuals to interact around shared
interests and so form niche communities,
operate as collectives, and facilitate
interpersonal exchange. The software
used may be a single communication tool
or a combination of tools. Either way, it
includes an accessible, inclusive platform
with protocols for use. All in all,
this platform facilitates back-and-forth
discourse; it is not a medium for one-way
distribution of ideas.
In today’s academic environment,
social software exists in a wide range of
forms and flavors. It can be as simple as
a student exchanging instant messages
(IM) or e-mails with a friend, or as complex
as online deliberative democracy (a
method of arriving at reality through
group input). A one-to-many tool such
as a wiki (a type of website that allows
visitors to add, remove, and edit available
content, sometimes without the need for
registration) also could be part of the
picture, as long as the overall structure
leaves the option for return communication
from those among the “many,” possibly
even via a secondary software tool.
Scott Granneman, adjunct professor of
communications and journalism, and
also of information management, teaches
a class about social software at Washington
University in St. Louis. In the class,
Granneman has students read the work of
Clay Shirky, a consultant and adjunct professor
at New York University. Shirky
defines social software as software that
enables groups of more than two people
to interact. But Granneman says he
encourages his
students to dig
deeper for their
own definitions.
“One of the
things I always
like to have my students think about is the
difference between an interface where
humans are interacting with computers
and one where humans are interacting
with other humans,” he says. “Both are
‘social’ in the sense that they revolve
around interactions, but only the latter is
truly ‘social’ in the sense that there’s a
connection with other people.”
Katie Livingston-Vale, manager of
the curriculum integration support
group in academic computing at MIT,
has a much broader definition. She sees
social software as “anything that allows
people to be social and communicate
and connect.” Livingston-Vale notes that
the challenge with social software lies in
incorporating it seamlessly into the academic
environment
and utilizing
it in an
educational
context to
extend and amplify what students experience
in the classroom.
FOR GATORS ONLY
A RAZOR-TOOTHED ALLIGATOR is the mascot of the University of Florida, so it
stands to reason that alumni and others affiliated with the massive school in
Gainesville consider themselves part of the “Gator Nation.”Within this “nation,” UF
supporters have developed a variety of gator-oriented clubs
and organizations that boost school spirit.With the rise
of social software, the school recently has launched a
community of an entirely different kind: an online environment
known as the Gator Nation Network.
The network, launched in November 2005, is a private,
secure web-based community where students, alumni, faculty, and staff members can
come together to mingle, socialize, and find services. The site boasts web pages, blogs,
message boards, and more. According to Katie Seay, director of membership and marketing
for the school’s alumni association, the network is open to anybody affiliated
with the university in any way, and membership is free. “The network is great because
it’s only open to people with a connection to UF,” she says. It runs on technology from
Affinity Circles, and “helps Gators, who might not live in the
confines of Gainesville, to communicate and find each other.”
Once UF affiliates register, the network works like other social networking phenomena
such as Friendster, Facebook, and the nowdefunct
SixDegrees. Each individual user has a page. Users can search the database of
other users, and can “link” to friends or contacts. There’s also a broadcast feature, via
which the school can send out to everyone in the community up-to-the-minute messages
and news alerts about everything from football victories to road closures.
Unlike popular social networking sites, content on the network is entirely professional.
Seay says that the alumni association branded the site that way because they recognized
that potential employers would be looking at it. There are protocols on the network that
prevent spam and are designed to filter profanity. Still, the network d'esn’t have a designated
police force; instead, much like a standard wiki, users tend to police themselves.
“
The best communities are those that police themselves,” says Seay. “That’s what we’re
striving for, and it’s why the network has worked so well thus far.”
Blogs and Wikis
At MIT, blogs have been the response to
this challenge. From the moment
prospective freshmen log on to MIT’s
admissions page, blogs greet them and
provide a more interactive experience.
A blog written by school admissions
officers outlines some of the vagaries
and specifics of the admissions process,
and gives applicants an idea of what life
at MIT is like. Applicants also can
submit comments or questions which
admissions officers answer in turn.
The blog immersion continues once
students enroll. Students have the option
of building a personal blog on the MIT
server. Many freshman and sophomore
courses also revolve around blogs:
Some classes require students to contribute
to a class blog, while others
require them to keep their own blogs
about class. Livingston-Vale teaches a
freshman seminar on blogging, and says
she is especially careful to make sure
students understand the cons as well as
the pros of the medium.
“A lot of our incoming students tend to think that the only people who read
their blogs are those they’ve told about
it,” she says, pointing out that they’re
mistaken: “Blogging is wonderful, but
it’s not the place for pictures or feelings
that students wish to keep private.”
Another form of social software in
action at MIT is the wiki. Wiki sites serve
as living encyclopedias, with an ease of
interaction and operation that makes
them effective tools for collaborative
authoring. At MIT, many computer science
and engineering programs have
launched wikis as an attempt to build
communities online.
The service is powered by Confluence
technology from Atlassian. So far, the school has about 120
wikis, all of which are part of a pilot service
started last year. Livingston-Vale
says that in one class, a professor and his
teaching assistants are using a wiki to collect
input from students, which the educators
will use to design a class for the
coming year. She notes that this kind of
collaboration never would have occurred
without social software technology.
“They’re asking the students for feedback,”
she says. “When was the last time
you heard of a professor doing that?”
Power of Pods
At Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, CA,
social software efforts revolve around a
different medium: that of podcasting.
Here, offerings break down into two
flavors—push and pull. Podcasts of
the push variety are those which professors
send out to students as part of the
regular learning process. Those that pull
are required of students, in lieu of or
in addition to traditional homework
assignments.
CLASSIFICATION G'ES TO THE FOLKS
SPEND TIME AROUND social software tools and
you’re bound to hear the phrase “folksonomy.” But
what is it? (Clue: Think taxonomy, circa 2006.)
Folksonomy is an internet-based informationretrieval
methodology consisting of collaboratively
generated, open-ended labels that categorize content
such as web pages, photographs, and web
links. Because folksonomies develop in internetmediated
social environments, users can discover
(generally) who created a given folksonomy tag,
and see the other tags created by that same person.
The result often is an immediate and rewarding
gain in the user’s capacity to find related content.
It’s like next-generation metadata. Go figure.
Linda Herkenhoff, associate professor
of quantitative analysis and organizational
behavior in the college’s Graduate
School of Business, uses both kinds of
podcasts. After every lecture, Herkenhoff
creates three that fall into the
“push” category. The first one is a
“CliffsNotes” version of the lecture—a
slowed-down audio file that hits on all
of the most important topics. The second
podcast is a word-for-word recording
of the lecture. The third version is an
in-depth look at one of the more sophisticated
topics she covered.
“People who show up in my class have
a wide range of backgrounds,” she
explains. “This way, I can offer the lecture
and follow it up with various forms of
information, to keep them all interested.”
Recently, Herkenhoff has begun to
embrace podcasts that fall into the “pull”
category as well. In her executive-level
MBA classes, for instance, Herkenhoff
asks students to solve problems in groups
and prepare podcasts or vodcasts (video
podcasts) about how their companies
view some of the techniques covered in
class. One group brought in an executive
and interviewed the individual within a
panel discussion that was set up as a podcast.
Members of another group interviewed
each other and created a video.
While these approaches certainly are
trailblazing, they are not without challenges.
First, Herkenhoff says she has
witnessed a generational divide: Younger
students are much more likely to embrace
podcast technology than older students,
some of whom don’t even own iPods.
Another challenge has been the issue of
file size: Recording files isn’t necessarily
a problem, but when students try to
download the files from computers at
home, older machines on dial-up connections
may experience serious trouble.
“We’re still grappling with an adoption
curve,” she says, noting that the curve
extends to professors as well, many of
whom still don’t know what podcasts are.
“Until this kind of technology becomes
widespread and commonplace all over
campus,” says Herkenhoff, “there will
always be students and faculty alike who
don’t embrace it or can’t get it to work.”
Fuel for the Fire
Whatever form social software takes,
one of the most important technologies
that ties it together is RSS, or Really
Simple Syndication. In a nutshell, this
application establishes what is termed a “web feed,” which notifies subscribing
readers when content on a site changes.
Under this setup, programs known as
feed readers or aggregators check a list
of feeds on behalf of a user, and then display
any updated articles that they find.
Most of these programs then bring users
the newest content, automatically.
This technology isn’t only convenient;
it also facilitates syndication and the
sharing of ideas. While the medium isn’t
synchronous (meaning interaction happens
in real time), it is definitely social.
Granneman at Washington University
says that because social software can be
anything that facilitates some form of
interaction and sharing of ideas, RSS is in
many ways the most “social” of all flavors
of social software on the market today.
“To me, RSS isn’t any less social than
a face-to-face conversation or voice
conversation,” says the adjunct professor,
who also serves as chief executive
of WebSanity, a
website development and hosting company
in St. Louis. “You’re communicating;
being social; interacting with someone
else. This is all that matters.”
BLOG IMMERSION: MIT’s admissions blogs
provide prospective freshmen with an interactive
experience. Once students enroll, the blogging
continues; each student can build a personal
blog
on the MIT server—often a requirement
for first- and second-year courses.
Yet critics maintain that RSS isn’t
legitimately “social” because the heart
of the technology d'esn’t involve users
at all. Sure, one user must create content
and another must select his or her RSS
feeds, but while other forms of social
software such as blogs, wikis, and e-mail
or IM require two active participants,
most of the work with RSS happens
entirely behind the scenes. Still, it’s
hard to challenge the notion that users
can choose which feeds they want, and
that the feeds all link back to original
content that is shared.
Where do you find RSS? In many
cases, the technology is built right into a
user’s web browser. The newest edition
of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, for instance, known
commercially as IE 7.0, has RSS built in.
Some educational institutions use a program
called Bloglines, which is administered by IAC Search & Media, better
known for such sites as Ask.com and
Evite.com. Still others work with Google Reader. There
are more programs available, as well,
most of which are free.
“I think we’ll see more of RSS in the
months ahead,” Granneman says. “It’s
really the future of content syndication.”
REVOLUTIONIZING THE PODCAST
IF THE NAME Denon Professional
sounds familiar, that’s because it is.
The audio/visual hardware company
has been making equipment for music
studios for more than 70 years. Now, in
a unique arrangement with A/V vendor
Marantz Professional, the company is bringing its expertise
to the higher education field. The
new venture is D&M Professional.
In one corner, D&M specializes in a
variety of solid-state digital recorders
designed to capture lectures and other
presentations for conversion into podcasts.
These devices have built-in condenser
microphones, and are compatible
with both Apple computers
and PCs.
In the other corner, the company
offers a network media player, which
educators can use to organize and manage
a variety of audio and video digital
files. The device also offers browserbased
access to DVD and other image
program material, empowering administrators
to operate a campus’ network of
digital signs from one central location.
With podcasting on the rise, these new
entries may be something to think
about. (Prices vary; for more information,
click here.)
Down the Road
Despite these types of predictions, not
everyone in academia is sold on the
notion of social software just yet. Take
Jim Phelps, senior IT architect at the University
of Wisconsin. On his blog, Phelps is outspoken
on the subject of technology in the classroom.
This summer, he posted his
thoughts about the role of social software
in higher education, and drew attention to
a number of implications, possibilities,
and difficulties in dealing with social
software in an academic setting.
First, Phelps questioned the privacy of
academic networks open to the world at
large, and assailed the solution of a “trusted
network” inside the campus firewall.
He noted that while protecting a network
on a campus intranet creates a secure
environment, in order for the communities
to work, virtual communities and a
critical mass of people with overlapping
interests are also needed. “Would you
reach critical mass if the population was
limited to the enterprise, or do you need
to be sharing in the wide world for the
magic to occur?” he asked rhetorically.
Phelps also questioned the perception
of control. Many social software systems
appear to be under the control of
the schools that use them, but actually
are hosted by third-party vendors. Ultimately,
he said, this scenario leads to
institutional business being conducted
at a site that is completely out of the
control and governance of an institution.
It also leads to institutional information
(such as course content and possibly
student performance data) being outsourced
to an external partner.
Down the road, Phelps implied, the
best social software solutions will meet
both privacy and control challenges,
enabling students to participate in the
wide world of collaborative learning in
a safe and educational way. For now,
however, many social software tools
struggle to achieve that balance. In the
meantime, experts such as Saint Mary’s
Herkenhoff say that any tools that facilitate
collaboration and encourage students
and faculty members to extend
interactions beyond the classroom, are
worthwhile.
“It’s all about a matrix of communication,”
she says. “Whether students are
connecting with each other or they’re
connecting with me, this kind of technology
can only enhance the learning
experience.”
WEBEXTRA :: Social software can stand in for the traditional campus-based student center: Click here.