UBC- Merging Social Networking Tools

From: Tag This! How UBC Researchers are Merging Blogs, Bookmarking, and More for Learning and Community Building

The power of building community is one benefit of social networking that is very important for educators to understand. Why do you think Second Life, MySpace and flickr are popular sites among youth today? Socializing and youth go hand-in-hand. Educators should capitalize on the power of social networking to build community. By sharing knowledge and expertise students greatly expand their capacity to learn.

David Vogt and Lee Iverson of UBC are looking at ways to combine new methods of knowledge sharing through merging blogs and social networking tools to engage students in their learning, so learning occurs naturally through student engagement.

Vogt and Iverson have designed a software application GUSSE- the Global Urban Sustainability Solutions Exchange, that allows the sharing of information to problem solve real-life issues such as global sustainability. Through this project they hope to realize a pool of collective knowledge contributed through student engagement. GUSSE "is built on social software practices that integrate a range of tools, such as searching, tagging, bookmarking, blogs, chat and content repositories.”

Vogt and Iverson are hoping this idea of merging social networking tools will turn course content upside down. . Usually in higher education the instructor develops curriculum content, but GUSSE is engineered and driven by student input instead. To me, its sort of a ‘create your own adventure type novel’ where students input information, ideas, and share knowledge and the ending- the learning- is created by their input. A ‘novel’ idea to curriculum design.

Student engagement is key to student learning. New social networking tools provide the opportunity for students to draw upon their need to be social, engaged in their learning naturally.