ICSLE 2015, Sinaia, Romania

1. 1
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

2. 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
2

3. 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
3

4. 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
4

5. 1. Social machines: computers
empower humans
5
• “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)

6. More people
Moremachines
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

7. 2. Research approach
(brief, see paper)
7

8. 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”
8

9. 9
See Cook, Ley et al. (2015)

10. 10
Mor, Cook et al. (2015)

11. 11
https://goo.gl/aL1MXt

12. 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

13. 3. Brief examples of social
machines
13

14. 3. A tweet then a Google hangout led to open
source project that created first virtual organism
14

15. 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

16. 3. Citizens Science: Zooniverse
over a million users
16https://www.zooniverse.org/#/projects

17. 17
http://www.chicagowildlifewatch.org/?_ga=1.239103875.1205722023.1440582848

18. 4. Smart Services co-
designed with UK health
sector workers
1818
Research Passport

19. 4. Confer (Learning Layers:
http://learning-layers.eu/)
19
(Led by Raycom, with Leeds & UWE)

20. 4. Confer
20
Confer Scaffolds online and face2face meetings in work group practice. Screencast
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ifvrtz4q7o1r3mo/CONFER_v2.mp4?dl=0

21. 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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22. 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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23. 4. KnowBrain (Learning Layers:
http://learning-layers.eu/)
23
KnowBrain tool has smart social and collaborative learning features for informal
workplace learning (led by Technical University of Graz) (Dennerlein, et al. 2015)

24. 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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25. 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
25

26. Thank You &
Questions
26

27. 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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