The Landing is progressing nicely since our launch earlier this year. We're continuing to deploy (and develop) new plugins to improve the functionality of the service. 

Social Glue

Jon Dron frequently uses the term "social glue" to describe the Landing. Traditional campuses have social spaces where learners can interact with each other on topics and interests of their choosing (and even study groups). These social spaces may not directly support academic activity, but they are critical for the formation of learner identity and sense of connectedness to the university. Within AU, the Landing will hopefully serve to increase social interaction, learner connectedness to AU, and identity development for both the learner and the university.

Social glue, however, requires a different metric of evaluation than online courses. It requires a certain level of trust on the part of AU to advance and promote social interactions that are not shaped and driven by the university. It requires a different view of success as well. Developing a new program can be assessed on a cost input/output basis. How can social connectedness be measured? How will AU know if the Landing is successful?

For Teaching

We (TEKRI and CLDD) recently ran a networked course on Teaching and Learning in Social and Technological Networks. The course focused on how faculty and staff can use the Landing as an educational tool. Obvious uses include: blogs, wikis, discussion forums, groups, image sharing, micro-blogging, and splicing information streams as "collections". The entire course was conducted in the Landing so participants could get a sense of the initial somewhat disorienting "centre-lessness" of networked courses. 

This is only one perspective. Faculty can use the Landing to augment existing moodle courses or as a program-wide social connection. Going back to the traditional university example: social spaces have a permanence that courses do not. If you're completing a degree at University of Manitoba, classes and courses are held all over campus and locations fluctuate from term to term. But the gathering places for studying and for interacting with friends are more permanent: libraries, pub, eating areas, student commons. In this sense, at AU, the Landing is to Moodle as social spaces are to courses in a typical university.

How to start with social networking (the Landing)?

Most use of social networking tools in higher education are currently driven by individual faculty: a prof decides to add a facebook component to a course...or to use blogs for learning journals...or to use delicious for resource sharing. This model is a great start. But more is needed. For maximum impact, the social networking needs to be implemented at a program level - particularly in self-paced open enrolment programs.

This approach helps in the formation of social spaces that have permanence beyond individual courses. Even though learners may not interact extensively with each other during the course, social spaces create "trailing identities" that are valuable in developing a sense of community and connectedness to AU and the program. Social interactions have a social presence that continues to exist well after the interaction has ended. I frequently encounter conversations on blogs from a year ago or so...and as I read the discussion, I feel a better sense of connectedness to the ideas and people involvement than I possibly could through only an article. Social presence trails well past the initial interaction.

Thinking larger

To foster these types of interactions, programs need to think about social networking tools at a higher level than an individual course (for obvious reasons - a course is a short-term construct whereas social spaces have greater permanence). Designers, deans, and faculty should plan for social interaction at the program-level: design for social interaction between courses much in the same way that social interaction (in Moodle) is often designed into courses). 

Most learners tend to the social. They seek interactions, connectedness. Sometimes, however, these interactions require a bit of social lubrication. To this end, a program director (or designer) should plan to include social events and activities in their Landing group: planned conversations, Q & A, recorded tutorials, live interactions (in Elluminate or on Skype), treasure hunts, etc.

Social connectedness needs nurturing. While we are still at the early stages or research on this, my bias is that successful uses of the Landing at a program level will be determined by fostering intentional and planned social activities. But this isn't really anything new, is it? Any successful community has regular social events and activities - concerts, festivals, and community suppers. Finding out how to best lubricate social interactions is an important area of research.

Making the Landing more intelligent

Social learning networks represent the future of education. By extrapolation of that unbiased statement :), the Landing is an important component of AU's future. As an online university, Athabasca should be focused on researching and understanding the nature of social interactions in networks. That's where TEKRI comes in. TEKRI has a threefold focus: mobile technologies, personalization and adaptation, and social networks and media (I'd like to add a fourth: learning analytics).

There is some obvious exchange of information across all three research areas, but I think the connections need to be made more explicit. In particular: how can we make the Landing more intelligent? How can we use the landing as a test-bed for basic research? How can we integrate mobiles and personalization/adaptation into social networks?

If that line of reasoning is extended, we soon bump up against questions about "what is a course"? What is the role of educators in social networks? How does self-paced learning with trailing social identity compare with cohort-based learning? What new tools are needed? What types of skills do educators and learners need in this environment?

I'm eager to discover the amplification effects of integrating mobiles and personalization into the Landing. Integration of these three research areas will have far greater impact than stand alone activities. After all, integration, not information, is power.