Blogs, tagging, online identities, social bookmarking – these social software practices are hot technology trends with millions of people flocking to web sites like myspace.com, flickr.com and del.icio.us.
Now UBC researchers David Vogt and Lee Iverson are looking at ways to bring these types of software together under one umbrella for new applications such as community building, knowledge management, information exchange and student engagement.
The first application that Vogt, the Director of Digital Learning Projects in the Faculty of Education, and Iverson, an assistant professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, have created is GUSSE – the Global Urban Sustainability Solutions Exchange. They are also examining how the technology behind GUSSE can be used to increase student engagement and enable students and instructors to build a body of collective knowledge by organizing and managing knowledge and information on their own terms.
“The way most classes are taught right now, the course content and syllabus is determined by the instructor and their body of knowledge,” said Vogt. “We want to turn that around and upside down.”
A prototype of GUSSE, a peer-to-peer, open-source approach to sharing knowledge about urban sustainability, was launched at the World Urban Forum 3 (WUF3) in June 2006. GUSSE was conceived together with Elisa Campbell, Director of the Design Centre for Sustainability at UBC, as a distinguished global legacy of WUF3. It is built on social software practices that integrate a range of tools, such as searching, tagging, bookmarking, blogs, chat and content repositories.
“The very interesting application is at the post-secondary level,” said Vogt, whose research focuses on mobile experience design and social software solutions. “Now knowledge is being constructed by the classroom community, vetted in a peer to peer model, so that the most relevant, current and important information is clearly outstanding. This creates an open process into social network of learning and allows learning to occur as student engagement.”
GUSSE provides an integrative tool for both instructors and students to collect resources for their own research and assignments and to organize them by tagging them with their own key words, while storing them in a shared online space.
“It allows you to organize information for your own purposes but in a shared space that allows others to engage with your own organization and interpretation of the world,” said Iverson, who focuses on software engineering, human computer interactions and collaboration systems.
According to Vogt and Iverson, using this technology for information exchange to help people across the globe solve urban sustainability challenges is just one application for this set of tools. They are also exploring how it can be used in other arenas, such as government, industry, and higher education, including applications for research and learning at UBC.
Currently, Vogt is exploring several possibilities for developing applications at UBC, including potential projects with the Ike Barber Learning Centre and campus planning initiatives.
Iverson, meanwhile, is developing ways for people to be more selective about which resources they share and with whom so that instead of having to render all resources as either private or public, people can determine for themselves how they share information with individuals and communities.
Both remain committed to the idea that social software can have profound effects on the way people process information.
“When you discover others who share your interests and problems you’re trying to solve, you find connections and touch points with how others work,” said Iverson. “The more information and the richer the context of the world you’re creating, the more potential that others will discover it and find it useful.”
At the Teaching and Learning with Technology presentation on Oct. 26, Vogt and Iverson will give a demonstration of the GUSSE framework and discuss issues related to learning and community engagement. They invite the audience to bring their experiences with e-Portfolios, blogs, and other social networking applications in the classroom to the discussion.
For more information about GUSSE, visit http://gusse.org.