Giving talk Wednesday 10th Sept 2014 to visitors to UWE from Shenyang Aerospace University (China). Slides are up and includes ideas UWE-led ideas on Hybrid Social Learning Networks. Why? To meet the challenge of the ‘unfilled’ potential of the Internet. Provide equity of access to cultural resources (broadly defined) as a democratic right. #LearningLayers

1. 1
Social Network Innovation in the Internet’s Global
Coffeehouses: Hybrid Social Learning Networks
Shenyang Aerospace University talk,
Room 2N9, UWE, September 10 2014
Professor John Cook, http://tinyurl.com/p9sez8a
John2.cook@uwe.ac.uk, UWE Bristol, UK
Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/johnnigelcook

2. Overview
1. The disruptive power of social networking from
1600s to now
2. Design Research
3. Learning Layers
4. Hybrid Social Learning Networks
5. Challenges
2

3. 1. The disruptive power of social
networking from 1600s to now
3
A 1668 illustration showing a contemporary London coffee house. Photo: Lordprice Collection / Alamy

4. Social networks stand accused of being so
called ‘weapons of mass distraction’ or worse
4

5. When the speaker asking
the audience to turn off
their cell phones,
something unbelievable
happened
• http://gnli.christianpost.com/video/when-the-speaker-
asking-the-audience-to-turn-off-their-cell-
phones-something-unbelievable-happened-
27694
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6. In fact in England in the late 1600s, very similar
concerns were raised about coffee houses!
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7. Social network
innovation in the
Internet’s global
coffeehouse
social networking within
companies could increase the
productivity of “knowledge
workers” by 20 to 25 percent
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8. Modern fears about the dangers of
social networking are overdone … But!
8

9. 2. Design Research
McKenney, S. & Reeves, T.
(2012). Conducting
Educational Design
Research.
NOT Same as Research-based
design …
9

10. Example: Augmented
Context for Development
Cook, J (2010). Mobile Phones as
Mediating Tools Within Augmented
Contexts for Development. IJMBL.

11. 3. Learning Layers:
Scaling informal learning
Project Coordination
Technology Research
Scaling Partners
Regional Application Clusters
Health Care – Leeds
Construction &
Building – Bremen
Technology Partners
http://learning-layers.eu/

12. How we organize
http://learning-layers.eu/

13. Integration Diagram
13

14. 14

15. Internet fuelled coffeehouses
are very much alive in Layers
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16. 4. Hybrid Social Learning Networks
• Why?
– Challenge of the
‘unfilled’
potential of the
Internet
– Equity of access
to cultural
resources
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17. 4. Hybrid Social Learning Networks
• How?
– Co-design: guide users to develop solutions with
us
• What?
– Interdisciplinary research: more capable peers,
temporal and emergent nature of learning
contexts, trust, tagging and recommendations
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18. Help Seeking Tool
• Personal Learning Networks (PLN): Curating, managing and
promoting a PLN develops critical, creative, 21st century skills
and socio-emotional capabilities.
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http://odl.learning-layers.eu/seeking-support-prototype/

19. Professional practice:
healthcare context
19
Research Passport

20. Construction context
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21. 21
“I like the vision! Sounds like exciting work with a
real emphasis on people rather than just the
technology … in fact the tool might help them to
develop that trust.”
(Project Manager & user representative, Leeds
Institute of Medical Education, on reading 2 page
document)

22. Social Semantic Information Spaces
22
Layers EGs: Ach So! –
Mobile video
recording app &
Help Seeking tool
http://www.w3.org/2008/09/msnws/papers/sioc.html / http://odl.learning-layers.eu/ach-so-mobile-video-recording-app/
Layers Social
Semantic
Server

23. Social machines and related
areas (Shadbolt et al., 2013)
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Hybrid Social Learning Networks

24. Layers extended polyarchy (after Shadbolt et
al., 2013) for Hybrid Social Learning Network
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25. Questions …
• How does theory orientation taken at one level
propagate through the polyarchy?
• How can the Social Semantic Server support the
emergent and dynamic nature of temporal contexts for
development?
• How does adding Collaborative Filtering impact on
service design for different initiatives?
• How do inputs from the PLNs get validated, trusted,
aggregated and turned into a useful outcome?
• How are all these challenging issues translated to
design?
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26. 26

27. 27
Natasha
Mark
Registration
guidelines on
diabetes
Patricia

28. 28
Natasha
Mark
Registration
guidelines on
diabetes
Patricia

29. 29
Natasha
Mark
Registration
guidelines on
diabetes
Patricia
Booking
interpreters
for a patient

30. 30
Natasha
Mark
Registration
guidelines on
diabetes
Patricia
Booking
interpreters
for a patient

31. • The services & connections provided/made by
Social Semantic Server in this example are:
– User event service (finding a pattern)
– Recommendation service
– Connection between the 3 people (green)
– Relationship between those two sets of data
(purple lines)
– Suggests for person to join a discussion (red line)

32. 5. Challenges
• There are certain assumptions built in the
Social Semantic Server
• Based on artefact-actor networks and Piagetian schemas
• Still need resolving with our socio-cultural-historical
approach (Vygotsky) of Help Seeking
• Investigate further notion of meaning making
across contexts
• Ethics of storing interaction data
• Balance my coffee intake …
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33. 33

34. Relevant papers
• Cook, J. (in press). Designing for Lifelong Learning. To appear in: Handbook of E-learning
Research, (2nd Edition). Caroline Haythornthwaite, Richard Andrews, Jude Fransman, and
Michelle Kazmer (Eds.). Sage (due 2015).
• Cook, J. (2014). Hybrid Social Learning Networks – Developing a research programme.
Learning Layers Research Note (internal), 05/06/14. Email author for a copy.
• Cook, J. (2010). Mobile Phones as Mediating Tools Within Augmented Contexts for
Development. International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning, 2(3), 1-12, July-
September. Link to paper http://goo.gl/NFWnSZ
• Cook, J. and Santos, P. (accepted). Social Network Innovation in the Internet’s Global
Coffeehouses: Designing a Mobile Help Seeking Tool in Learning Layers. Educational Media
International (in press).
• Cook, J. and Pachler, N. (2012). Online People Tagging: Social (Mobile) Network(ing) Services
and Work-based Learning. British Journal of Education Technology, 43(5), 711–725. Link to
paper goo.gl/S5kfgi
• Holley, D., Cook, J., Santos-Rodriguez, P. and Peffer, G. (2014). Bridging the ‘Missing Middle’: A
Design Based Approach to Scaling. ALT-C 2014, September, University of Warwick, UK.
• Santos, P., Cook, J., Treasure-Jones, T., Kerr, M., & Colley, J. (2014). Networked scaffolding:
Seeking support in workplace learning contexts. Networked Learning Conference, Edinburgh,
UK. 34

35. Thank You
Acknowledgement of work used in this talk:
Tom Standage (The Economist), Carl Smith, Claire Bradley, Brenda
Bannan, Patricia Santos, Tribal, Owen Gray, Tamsin Treasure-Jones,
Micky Kerr, & various Learning Layers colleagues
Learning Layers is a 7th Framework Large-scale integrating project co-funded
by the European Commission; Grant Agreement Number
318209; http://learning-layers.eu/
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