OERInterop-SocialGraph

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Interlink content with the social graph
 * Help people find others like themselves (COP)


 * Facilitate trust relationships (reputation management)


 * Facilitate question/answer and other support for using OERs


 * Connect people to content through non-authoritative metadata

Recommendations:


 * We are not tackling the issue of how people link directly. We can do it through content, making it more findable and discoverable.


 * Encourage sites to add social bookmarking widgets.


 * You should not try to build your own social network. It's better to leverage others (the list of which will change over time).


 * Look for ways to leverage one integration into others -- can a Facebook application today lead to an OpenSocial application tomorrow?


 * As tools like Gobbler emerge, provide metadata that they can ingest.


 * If you create a forum, work to ensure that questions are answered, and most of them are answered correctly.

Divide between Automated Methods and People Methods

What are the ways that like-minded people can find each other? Some sites already have social networking (i.e. open learn), or we can leverage existing networks (i.e. Facebook).

Can't prescribe for users how to use OER/OCW. But how we can let people know that we exist? It has to happen organically, but how can we get it started.

For Highlights for High School, someone on staff we focus on distributing to social networks.

But what is the "it?" Is it about learning about OER, people who want to create content?

They will likely self-associate.

What are the recommendations for encouraging?

There are different uses of the social graph. Sometimes it's just to discover new content; sometimes it's to meet new people.

How many people have Facebook accounts? All but 2.

If you set up a facilitator with a responsibility to answer questions, then a forum can be very successful. Everyone understands that's where to get answers to their questions.

Does OCW have a community? There's a forum, which started strong, but has since faded.

It's possible to set expectations too high. Geographically related, small communities of practice are easier to organize.

Students prefer to organize in cohorts, with a focus of space, time and goal. Teachers may organize more broadly, as a community of practice.

Difference between landmark and port towns. Landmarks get one visit, but people need to return tothe port town over and over, and meet the same people.

Is sustained community the only goal? No. People may benefit from brief visits, if users leave something of value behind.

Do we expect users to register and create a profile? Is it something we want to encourage?

There's an existing open resource finder on Facebook.

If the goal is to work with existing communities, does the OER community need instruction on how to do so, e.g. how to create a group on Facebook.

Should we implement single sign-on? Open University uses OpenID. Teachers Domain uses Shibboleth. OpenID "can be implemented by mere mortals."

Do these really solve the problem? They mostly deal with authentication, not the profile information (like interests, preferences).

What about Open Social?

Luc feels his site's blog givers a personal face that end users can interact with. Also social bookmarking widgets to digg, etc. Working on tagging. Button to request translation. Collectively, community tools.

Tools can be used to overlay social data on top of existing sites, such as Makeapath.

What's the opportunity here? What are the goals of social interconnection?

The focus of OER has been on the content, but less so on the human resources. How do I find people who want to create and modify content?

Can we learn something by looking at our own social graph, of OER projects & sites?

Does the user need to represented by a URL? How else do you link people?

EduCommons next version will have recommender service, but it's mostly based on content, not on users' behaviors.

What about adding presence to the site -- to know who's looking at the same page and the same time, and how to contact them.

What would you want to do for a teacher? David would like to know who else used it, how it worked to use it.

Yahoo Teachers demo. Gobbler lets you pull things together and then build community around it. Are there simple things we have to do to interoperate with these tools? Unique URLs. Gobbler can in theory drag in any rdf associate with a resource. CClearn is working on having them pull in license metadata. Gobbler relies on fair use for display.

Yahoo Teachers is a community worth engaging, but one of many. This will require on-going effort as new communities emerge, with different expectations.