OUseful Info

Social Computing Forecasts

To what extend could we - and/or should we - be encouraging students to use Web 2.0 tools, either off their own back, or via institutional systems?

Last week, I ran a 'partial attention format workshop' on "Visioning Web 2.OU Personal Learning Environments" at the OU's annual (if namechanging!) Curriculum Teaching and Student Support (CTSS) Conference (it used to feature the word technology in the conference title.... hmmm... but then, as one PVC observed during the week, we aren't necessarily as up to speed with elearning as we might be, either in terms of technology tracking and adoption, or elearning pedagogy...). Whilst I was preparing for it, I was in two minds whether to go down the 'here are results from elsewhere' route. Time ran out on me, though, so here are some of the notes I was cobbling together but didn't use, as well as a couple of related links I've come across in the last day or two...

The context for using these notes would have been something along the lines of getting a handle on the processes by which we might encourage students into the web 2.0 way of working (see this JISC report on web 2.0 tools for more info, [UPDATE: or this more recent report: Web 2.0 Content Sharing for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, also for JISC, by Tom Franklin and Mark van Harmelen]), as well as trying to forecast the timescale on which significant rates of adoption of these learning technologies might be anticipated in adult higher education.

A report published a couple of weeks ago by Forrester's Charlene Li introduced the idea of Social Technographics, an analytic technique that attempts to classify consumers according to their level of participation in "social computing behaviours" - that is, participation in ICT mediated (online?) social activity.

Social technographics builds on the idea of technographics, another Forrester tool, which may be described as "measur[ing] consumers' attitudes towards technology".

(The Pew/Internet: Pew Internet and American Life Project also have a lot to say about this, as for example their recent Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users Report demonstrates. To see which type of user you are - omnivore, connector, lacklustre veteran, productivity enhancer, mobile centric, connected but hassled, inexperienced experimenter, light but satisfied, indifferent, or off the net - try out their quiz.)

Li's research forms part of a book project - Groundswell ("a spontaneous movement of people connecting, using online tools, taking charge of their own experience, and getting what they need – information, support, ideas, products, and bargaining power – from each other") - which is being developed, in part, via the blog.

One thing that particularly caught my eye in the report is their "participation ladder", which can be used to identify the extent to which consumers participate in those activities:

Note that users of different services or websites may be on different rungs of the ladder in terms of the extent to which they actively participate on those sites.

In certain respects, the ladder unpicks the creator/synthesizer/consumer pyramid, which demonstrates in an even more powerful, diagrammatic, way the different levels of participation in terms of user population share across creators, synthesizers consumers:

The formulation of a Web2.OU strategy could do worse than bearing in mind the Social Technographics data and the way users might climb the participation ladder (as well as moving through Pew Internet's classes of technology user).

In addition, a consideration of the time to (mass) adoption of particular technologies universally, as well as amongst different demographics, would be appropriate. Although the OU in its current incarnation tends to operate on near geological timescales (!), there is little point in making a push now to adopt technologies that will not be mature (in the sense of being stable enough to have become widely adopted) within the next 3 years. Although there is a point in tracking those technologies and softly developing ideas about how we might exploit them.

Part of the reason for being wary of too early adoption is that the rate of change of development in web technologies is ferocious at the moment, with large numbers of start-ups making land grabs for web based application areas: movie editing, photo editing, online office suites, content sharing, and so on.

The next 18 months at least are also likely to see the large media companies struggle to identify new business models as they experiment with content delivery models that do not involve Digital Rights Management (DRM). TVOIP/IPTV (internet TV) is just now becoming a reality, with download services already available from Channel 4 (4od) (and ITV anytime?), Joost is opening up invites all the time, the Apple TV is shipping (and is being hacked to bits), the BBC iPlayer is approved and waiting release and the BBC Archive Download trial also about to start.

The flurry of free online applications that have appeared on the web over the last two years will start having to look for sustainable business models and carve out, if they can, a niche market in the face of online office suites. Google are already two thirds of the way there (with Google Docs and Google spreadsheets), and they have a presentation suite on the way. Zoho have a compelling range of integrated online office tools, and Zimbra have just signed a deal with Comcast.

What is lacking at the moment from many of these suites is offline working: but that may not be for long... (Zimbra is already there, for example...) In late 2007, the 'online only' nature of the web will be challenged further with the introduction of browser implemented offline storage in Firefox 3.0 and offline runners from Adobe and Microsoft(?). Indeed, the Dojo offline toolkit already provides support for offline storage.

By tracking these technologies, we build up expertise in the technical details, and can maybe even contribute to their development (at a distance!) through early adopter demos and blog commentaries we have produced.

Lest we spread ourselves too thinly, of course, we need to focus on the technologies that our students are most likely ot use - or maybe already are using.

The most recent hook into this for me is "The Horizon Report (2007 Edition)", published by the New Media Consortium and Educause Horizon Project, which "charts the landscape of emerging technologies for teaching, learning and creative expression"

The structure of this report is based on a series of time-to-adoption technology forecasts over periods less than one year, two to three year and four to five year timescales.

(It would be interesting to see how these forecasts compare with the placement of corresponding technologies on the Gartner Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle for 2006, (and - when it comes out later this year - the 2007 report), as well as the Hype Cycles for elearning and Higher Education.)

Also relevant is the Online Tool Use Survey undertaken as part of the JISC funded SPIRE project. This project was "originally looking into the possibility of using peer-to-peer technologies in UK HE and FE for informal sharing but switched to a more Web 2.0 focus as it became clear that these types of services were already having an impact on the tertiary education sector", apparently. The report contains some interesting data on the current use of "Web 2.0" tools by students currently in UK Higher Education.

Martin blogged some of the headline results as he saw them in a post some time ago. Here is one of the highlight charts for me:

Okay - this post has gone on way too long, with more than enough reading for anyone who follows even a fraction of the links. It's an area I'll intend to keep returning to, though, hopefully in a little more depth and with a bit more critical analysis.

UPDATE: MySpace Report (April 2007) "Never Ending Friending"

Posted by ajh59 at May 8, 2007 10:39 AM