Building Advanced Social Networks

at a Large U.S. University

 Kyle Mathews
twitter.com/kylemathews
http://kyle.mathews2000.com
Masters of Informations Systems
Management
at Brigham Young University
in Provo Utah
 Agenda
Introduce problem
Future of learning == social networks
Examine island.byu.edu
(semi)-deep dive into social objects, nodal
points and other fun social networking
theory
 Life Goal:
Help organizations work and learn faster
and better
 My job (as defined for me):
Research assistant studying how to use
web2.0 tools in the classroom (do
academic gubbidy guck)
 My job (as defined by me):
(help) fix Universities through social media
 The Problem:
“How did institutions designed for learning
become so widely hated by people who
love learning?”
– Michael Wesch
The world is a changin'
The web is changing us
How we work
Play
And learn
Much much more information
The world changes faster and faster
Schools can't teach us just knowledge and
set skills
(as their value depreciates in a few years)
 Key skills for 21st century citizens
Separate needed information from chaff
Think/work/learn like experts
Mastering networked learning
 Replicate success of open source
communities (which at their heart are
fantastic and massively successful
learning communities)
Future of learning – fully social, deeply
personalized, and passion-based
Key design principle for social learning
systems
Link people to people
Not people to content
Why haven't Universities already adapted
these tools?
Universities acting like media businesses –
don't want to change, defend tradition
Plus they don't get it. . .
“It is not necessary to change.
Survival is not mandatory.”
– W.E. Deming
 Resources:

http://www.slideshare.net/opencontent/openness-and-the-disaggregated-
future-of-higher-education-presentation

Minds on FIre
http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/MindsonFireOpenEdu
cationt/45823?time=1236222379

http://kyle.mathews2000.com/blog/2008/10/23/internet-reduces-need-experts-w

http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/10/a-vision-of-students-today-what-teache

http://www.jonmott.com/blog/?p=14

http://www.cognitive-
edge.com/blogs/dave/2008/10/rendering_knowledge.php
Now on to the main act
 What is social networking?
How are we using social networking to
support learning at BYU?
Past two years building social networking
sites for classes in the Information
Systems department at BYU
A brief history. . .
A wee walk about. . .
 Goals of Island
1. Connect people / knowledge which aren't
connected but should be
2. Provide tools for supporting learning
communities (classes and otherwise)
3. Provide tools for building library of
knowledge
Social Objects (or sharing devices)
 “The Social Object, in a nutshell, is the
reason two people are talking to each
other, as opposed to talking to somebody
else.”
– Hugh Macleod
Or in other words, take away the social
object and the two people now have no
reason to talk to each other.
When was the last time you talked to some
of your old coworkers?
 Social objects are the tools we use to
provide us opportunities to socialize with
others
Some examples
You get married and have a kid – your
marriage and child are social objects
You go bowling on Wednesday night with
some friends – bowling is a social object
Two women shop for cloths – the mall and
clothing are social objects
Drupal is a great social object
Drupal is really Dries' brilliant and diabolical
plan to get him tons of really smart,
interesting fun friends. . .
Sounds crazy but. . .
It worked!
I joined the Drupal community for the
community
Successful social networks have good social
objects at their core
Or strong communities form around good
social objects
 Flickr = photos
Dogster = dogs
Youtube = videos
What are Drupal's social objects?
 Drupal itself
Modules in contrib and core
Documentation
Issues
Larger topics such as social networking,
education, semantic web, performance,
etc.
groups.drupal.org == a bunch of social
objects
Objects become more valuable when they
become social objects (Drupal is great
software but it's even more cool because
it helps you find good friends)
How to build a social networking site around
social objects?
"Define the objects, name the verbs,
network the objects"
– Chris Messina
 Flickr
Verbs == upload, download, embed
Network == comment, share via url, or
updates sent to other social networks
 Dogster
Verbs – create profiles (for their dogs), give
gifts, adopt other dogs, post videos and
pictures, and find dog related businesses
near their homes.
 Drupal Issues
Verbs – create, change status, comment on,
discuss (in irc, email, g.d.o), enlist help,
write code for, test patches (really
another social object)
Drupal's key to success == it's a great
social network
 A thought exercise:
Paper towel social network
Object = paper towels of all sizes, colors,
purpose, origin
Verbs = buy, sell, trade, write about, post
videos, comment on
Education and social objects
Quality of content not critical as long it's a
good social object (i.e. it gets students
talking)
“For instance, content that may be imperfect is
often good for encouraging others to participate,
or content that is contentious may be better at
stimulating debate. The very hard lesson for
academics here is that the educational value is
not in the content itself but the social interaction
it begets.”
– Martin Weller
Turn homework from an object to a social
object
 Resources:
Social Objects in Education:
http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2008/01/whats-a-social.html

Kyle Mathews: “What are Social Objects”

http://kyle.mathews2000.com/blog/2009/02/21/what-are-social-objects

Kyle Mathews: “How to Design a Social Networking Site Using Social Objects”
http://kyle.mathews2000.com/blog/2009/02/27/how-design-social-networking-site-using-social-
objects
How Island will use or does use networked
social objects?
 Island's social objects
# Groups
# Posts (discussions, blog posts, job
postings, events)
# Comments
# Status updates
Something about how I'm trying to increase
the amount of socialization around the
social objects + increase velocity of
socialization with real time stuff
Link people to people through objects
Not people to objects
Nodal Points (patterns in data)
Recognizing patterns from large amounts of
data
Information overwhelming, need help
Facebook News Feed
Ways to find interesting conversations,
detect patterns:
Search Pattern (implemented)
Group Pattern (implemented)
Follow Pattern (not implemented)
Collaborative Filtering Pattern (not
implemented)
 Future of Island (or how mining for
collective intelligence will help BYU
students find cool people to do learn with
and do great stuff)
 Import lots of data from:
Twitter
Flickr
Delicious
Facebook
Wherever else that'll be so kind as to share
Mash it all together, let people interact,
detect patterns, display patterns, repeat.
 Key Question:
Is there something happening in my
network I should know about?
Complex Adaptive Systems
Some examples
Kyle Mathews and 8 others are attending
the lecture “How to bring about world
peace on less than a buck.”
Fred Buizman and 2 others commented on
John's post “How to install Drupal in 5
minutes while juggling a tricycle.”
Beets Robinson and 7 others recently joined
the “Web Services” group
What are people from your major saying?
What are people saying about the big
football game?
What events are popular with people you
follow?
 Who is like you?
Who should you follow?
What groups should you join?
Let's make the world a better place through
social networks
 Resources:
Jyri's lecture on nodal points

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiWjAVcWK4g

Tim O'Reilly's def of web 2.0

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system
https://island.byu.edu/wiki/social-gestures-ideas-wiki
Starting a company selling Island-like
software to Universities!
Be good for something not just good at
something
Questions?