Networked Learning and Sympathetic Spaces in Libraries

Business Insider has an interesting argument indicating that Craiglist is being slowly, but surely, disrupted.

Generally speaking, Craigslist has been “good enough” to not be disrupted head-on. Nevertheless, the world moves on, and the gaps in their product (due to a stubborn obstinate refusal to invest in technology) grow wider and wider. As tablets, smartphones, etc disrupt, and craigslist doesn’t invest in those platforms, the feature gap grows wider.

The disruption that has happened has occurred on a category-by-category bases, as this graphic by Andrew Parker (http://thegongshow.tumblr.com/po…) shows:

That graphical analysis of sources for disruption is really interesting. What would the same type of analysis look like for academic libraries? Here’s a lightning quick example using the library I work at as an guinea pig. This image is not meant to be comprehensive, just a proof of concept. This doesn’t prove that libraries are imminently doomed to be disrupted, only that many services external to the academy would like a slice of the action. Let me know in the comments what I’m missing.

Active Sources of Library Disruption:

The Educause 2011 Horizon Report is out [ PDF ].

A key finding that caught my  eye:

The world of work is increasingly collaborative,
giving rise to reflection about the way student
projects are structured. This trend continues
from 2010 and is being driven by the increasingly
global and cooperative nature of business
interactions facilitated by Internet technologies.
The days of isolated desk jobs are disappearing,
giving way to models in which teams work actively
together to address issues too far-reaching or
complex for a single worker to resolve alone.
Market intelligence firm IDC notes that some
one billion people fit the definition of mobile
workers already, and projects that fully one-third
of the global workforce — 1.2 billon workers —
will perform their work from multiple locations by
2013.

I believe collaboration is a key component in networked learning. More on that soon.

How powerful is the effect of social proof on middle-school aged football players? Fairly powerful as seen below.

Found via elearnspace, here is a useful article from apophenia on the three types of social networks along with an important caveat:

1. Sociological “personal” networks
2. Behavioral social networks
3. Publicly articulated social networks

“We do ourselves an intellectual disservice when we assume that these different types of networks are interchangeable or that studying one automatically tells us about another.”

Fun video taken at the Sasquatch Festival this year which demonstrates a social proof timeline:

innovator > early adopters > mob

If you ever get a chance to see a show at the gorge in George, WA … do it.

A recent article by Chung & Duckett over at In the Library with the Lead Pipe has inspired me to try and expand on some thoughts on the importance of social proof. I especially like their third category of learning objects:

CATEGORY 3. Provide students with MORE CONTEXT to understand a process or concept — the BACK STORY for how information is created, vetted, stored, accessed, and used. Resources in this category address social issues surrounding information and other scholarly communication topics  …

With the kind of one-off teaching I do, I’m often tempted to get into the concept of social proof, but haven’t yet found the best way to go about it that justifies the time spent. Creating a learning object may be the best route, since it’s something a student can work through on their own time, and it wouldn’t take up valuable class time. If an instructor only has 50 minutes a semester to teach a subject, every minute counts. Here’s an outline for a potential learning object, if I were to do one that satisfies category 3 above:

Outline for an Academic Publishing / Social Proof Learning Object

In Cialdini’s book Influence: the psychology of persuasion (I’m referring to the second edition-1988), he describes the phenomena thusly:

The principle of social proof states that we use information about the way others have behaved to help us determine proper conduct for ourselves. As the dropped-wallet experiment showed, we are most influenced in this fashion by the actions of peoople who are like us. [p. 140]

As Cialdini demonstrates in his book, “the principle of social proof is so wide-ranging and powerful that its domain extends to the fundamental decision for life or death.” Where this effect really comes into play is in areas of uncertainty. Take for example this story from 2007 about the renowned violinist who played in the DC subway. The passersby were unknowingly thrust into a very uncertain situation:

Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he’s really bad? What if he’s really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn’t you? What’s the moral mathematics of the moment? … No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. … In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

The answer, of course, was no. This led the Washington Post to shout the following question (emphasis is theirs):

IF A GREAT MUSICIAN PLAYS GREAT MUSIC BUT NO ONE HEARS . . . WAS HE REALLY ANY GOOD?

It’s a tree falling in the forest kind of question. But the answer has to be yes, he is good. The problem was that he had no social proof going for him at all. Cialdini suggests proving this to yourself by conducting the following experiment on your own on two subsequent days. The first day stand on a crowded corner and look up at a section of sky for one full minute. Chances are you’ll have no one else look up. The next day, at exactly the same time, bring along four of your friends to look with you. Chances are on the second day you’ll receive a great deal of interest. Your friends will be “similar others” to yourself. It will inspire other similar people to take a look as well. If the Washington Post had dressed up four or five people as commuters, and placed them in the subway listening, enraptured by the music, they would have probably created a pedestrian traffic jam.

I believe this is related to academic peer review in the following way. Take a look at this image from Cialdini’s book, pg. 114:

Let’s parse the cartoon one stage at a time, from left to right:

1. The lonely researcher, working in relative isolation on things only s/he is paying attention to.
2. An editor pays attention. (Who is the child? How should I know? Work with me here!) Note that in a non-academic setting, this could well be a marketer instead.
3. The arrival of “similar others”. In academic publishing these are peer reviewers. They would be colleagues with knowledge in the field, serious types. In the non-academic world, the marketer will have selected “others” similar to the ideal target market.
4. A crowd recognizes a group of “similar others”, and, possibly through some form of self preservation, will take a look for themselves since it’s obvious that it is important. Note that the woman in the ivory tower (okay, it’s just a window) has noticed the rabble as well. She looks up  for the same reasons.
5. The whole world is now looking, even the authorities notice (here represented by an angel.)

The phenomenon of social proof is everywhere on the web. In academics, peer reviewers are used to establish seriousness in the form of thoroughly-vetted “similar others”. On the open web, similar others are discovered by paying attention to certain social software systems and communities: Facebook, Twitter, Digg (or Digggraphr), HotStuff, and Memeorandum are a few examples among thousands.

- end of tutorial -

So that’s the learning object outlined, everything aside from the hard work of animating it. I believe Chung and Duckett are right that back stories are crucial for students to understand concepts such as academic publishing. Librarians need to dig deeper and create more objects that can be shared widely to promote this type of knowledge. I’ll be sharing this one as soon as I can get it peer-reviewed.

All My Internet Friends

This one is by internet friend Amanda French, inspired by Clay Shirky. Check out the lyrics at the link below.

http://allmyinternetfriends.com/

CopyBlogger has an interesting write-up on social proof. A lengthy quote:

So, social proof gives us important cues about how to behave in ambiguous social situations. But what’s ambiguous about social media?

First of all, we’re not sure if we should pay attention. Given the vast amount of information we’re exposed to daily, we naturally look for quick cues about the quality of what we come across. And we’re wired to look to others for those indications of quality.

Secondly, we look for cues as to whether or not to accept the message itself. If you’re reading something in your area of expertise, you’re less likely to look for external indicators. But if the topic or position is new to you or novel in any way, you’ll likely be influenced by the raw popularity of the piece, plus the specific comments of others who’ve come before.

But there’s also a negative side to the effect. If no one really knows what’s going on, and everyone is basing thier judgements on everyone else, then bad things can happen. Here’s a quote from Erin Prophet, daughter of Elizabeth Claire Prophet from the Church Universal and Triumphant, on what happened in the early 90′s when a prophesied end of the world didn’t occur:

In the book’s preface, Prophet writes that one reason she penned the account is to expose the flawed thinking that led to her mother’s “apocalyptic prophecies” and the shelters built in their wake.

“Since then I have spent many sleepless nights asking myself why and how it happened and whether there was anything I could have done to change the outcome,” she writes. “It was a mistake, a Napoleon-invading-Russia sort of blunder, which arose from a collection of ideas that obscured and tarnished my mother’s life work.”

She sees CUT’s story “as a cautionary tale of what happens when such ideas are taken to an extreme.”

As powerful as social proof is, there is a potential downside. The potential this downside has on the social internet, I have no idea.

As a follow-up to a recent post on self-publishing fiction, I just ran across this promising website called the Web Fiction Guide. Here’s a blurb from their about page:

It’s free.  It must suck.

Fortunately, that’s not true.  Web comics are free, but some of them are better than what you’d get in a newspaper.  Opinion blogs are free, but some are better than what you’d get in a magazine.

Quality and price seldom have much to do with each other, when it comes to creativity.

Pretty interesting.