The seminar was designed to let students experience the power of Social Media in real-life situations, so we decided to have them cooperating with a fellow student from another university in another city, far away from home. So they HAD to use tools for keeping in sync with their partner, to communicate, coordinate and cooperate (you remember the classification of groupware from Teufel et al.?). So we introduced social media tools in higher education to them (thanks again to Cristina Costa for doing the lovely voicethread) and the students started to test Twitter, Delicious, Mendeley, SlideShare, FlashMeeting and Co for their work. We told them that we’d expect a collaborative presentation, a final report and an computer science artifact that represents what they did. After the first week we scheduled team meeting with the student groups where they presented their first ideas on the focus of their work and how the could design or implement the required artifact. The same thing took place 3 weeks later where we focused the topic even further and decided what artifact should be created. Nina and me were surprised by both the creativity, engagement and quality of the results in such an early phase of the seminar – because we knew different from former seminars. During the following weeks, we had two FlashMeetings with the whole group and some individual talks on Skype and gave little advice where help was needed. We could follow the students’ work from their bookmarks on Delicious and the shared articles in Mendeley (thank you guys for the extended shared collection, you really rock), could follow Tweets and had short ad-hoc face-to-face meetings at the coffee machine. All in all a pretty satisfying work load during the semester with pretty motivated students.

Today we had the final presentations; the students in Paderborn were sitting in a room in Paderborn, the students in Augsburg were in Augsburg. We used uStream.tv to stream the presentations from one city to another and Skype desktop sharing to transfer sound and the slides to both places simultaneously. Furthermore we had a Twitter backchannel and my boss was attending from another location via Skype as well. I thought: what a mess, technology will never do this. BUT IT DID. And it did perfectly. Yeehaw. You can see a picture of the Paderbornian setting here:

But then the students started to present their work. All in all we had the following topics:

1. Real-time collaborative learning
2. Media disruptions in Web 2.0 environments
3. Awareness in Learning Networks
4. Interactive Learning Ressources
5. Social Network Analysis in Artefact-Actor-Networks
6. Game-based Learning
7. University 2.0

Our students not only invested a lot of time in their presentations and the writing of well-formulated and substantiated articles, they also presented stunning prototypical implementations and architectural design for IT systems that would really make a difference (see the pictures on Flickr). One team was developing a MashUp real-time collaborative learning environment that combined a whiteboard with video chat, twitter integration and the ability to load any RSS feed. The widget-based environment was running on Django in Python (a language we do not teach in Paderborn) and allows for the creation and storage of differing MashUps that can be used, shared, stored and re-accessed later. Another team analyzed the daily routines of students in Paderborn and Augsburg and modeled the study-related part in EPK models (something we never thought of). The team identified a range of media disruptions during the exam application for example (12 disruption in Paderborn, with 4 different tools involved). Finally, the did paper prototyping for an improved system that could be used at various universities and developed an infrastructure design. Another team was developing an interactive PDF where Flash content from nearly all social media platforms can be integrated. They showed a PDF that incorporated fully functioning SlideShare presentations and YouTube videos, the above-mentioned VoiceThread and even FlashMeeting replays from our meetings. Moreover, they developed an application CommentInAPDF that allows to send tweets from within a PDF (there even was an extended version where they automatically added an a priori defined hashtag to the tweet). The presentation of the PDF was so impressing and opened up so many visions of what to do with such technical options, I’m still stunned. Here is a video of their presentation (in German).

Finally the University 2.0 group did an online survey among 470 German-speaking students regarding their vision of the University in the year 2030 and combined those findings with qualitative interviews with scientific staff. Furthermore they likened their findings with future predictions (e.g. The Horizon Reports) and produced this awesome Prezi presentation.

I have to say that I never had so motivated students, which invested their valuable time and lifeblood into a seminar and produced so cool artifacts. During the feedback session they told us, that the collaboration with others that they couldn’t talk to other than mediated to social software was very motivating for them and that they learned to love the tools we introduced to them. Also they mentioned that the permanent availability of the supervisors via social media tools gave them the feeling safety and encouraged them to ask for help and council.

Students, that was rocket science, thank you so much. I hope to work with you again soon!

Wissensarbeit zeichnet sich dadurch aus, dass sie größtenteils aus der Nutzung, Verwaltung und Erzeugung von Information besteht. Die Studie beschäftigt sich mit Wissensarbeitern, den Rollen die sie während der regelmäßigen Arbeit einnehmen und den Aktivitäten die sie zur Durchführung Ihrer Arbeit ausführen. Weiterhin wird versucht typische Tätigkeiten in der Wissensarbeit mit Applikationen zu verknüpfen.

Wir freuen uns über Eure Teilnahme an der Studie, die auf deutsch und englisch verfügbar ist. Insbesondere wollen wir Euch bitten, diesen Aufruf in Euren Communities zu verteilen. Die Umfrage ist selbstverständlich anonym.

In the focus of the study are knowledge workers, the multiple roles they take on during their regular work and the actions they perform during accomplishing their work. A knowledge worker is anyone who develops or uses knowledge in his or her daily working tasks. Furthermore we try to associate application types with the knowledge actions.

We would like to ask you for your participation in the study which will take approximately 25 minutes. Your participation is anonymous and all answers will be treated confidentially.

You can access the survey at http://bit.ly/KWRStudy

Please feel free to forward the link to the survey to your colleagues, retweet or blog about this call for participation.I count on the power of my social network…

We will keep you updated about the results of the study.

If you only could follow one person on Twitter, who would that be?

I gave my answer (which I cannot tell you here…) and thought it would be a cool thing to explore with a wider public. That’s why I put up a really simple questionnaire over at Google Spreadsheets and would be really happy if you could distribute it to your fellow Tweeple.

Update: Our paper won the Stuart Elliot Madnick Best Paper Award. Thanks to the committee.

The final draft of the paper is available online at Scribd.

Reference: T. Friberg and W. Reinhardt: An Empirical Study on Criteria for Assessing Information Quality in Corporate Wikis. In: 14th International Conference on Information Quality 2009.

AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ON CRITERIA FOR ASSESSING INFORMATION QUALITY IN CORPORATE WIKIS

If you are involved in a project, where software is developed, designed or planned and if you and your team is willingly to participate in the study please let me knoe. It does not matter if you are a large or small team, if you are open or closed source, in India or Germany. If you want to support me in my research just let me know and I will invite your team to the survey.

PS: Please share my call for participation in your network. Thanks.

So does the application possibility strongly depends on the people at the conference and the type of official incorporation in the conference communication?!

Here are some statistical data and voices from the attendees of the TNC2009:

Did you have a Twitter account before the TNC 2009 conference?

What was your main reason to use Twitter during the TNC 2009 conference? (multiple selections allowed)

Do you think Twitter encouraged the discussion of topics presented during the TNC 2009 conference?

Please tell us why you think Twitter encouraged the discussion of topics during the TNC 2009 conference?

• 1. Getting a second opinion on stuff you hear, while hearing it. 2. Catching stuff that you’d have missed otherwise due to ignorance, bad hearing, noisy neighbours or such.
• Allowed for parallel discussions
• Because I didn’t twitter myself (just didn’t notice the track) but heard there was noticeable usage I assume encourage of discussion. I would have used it if I would have been aware of the track
• brings in participants from outside the conference, easy way to rate other people’s reactions that isn’t possible during short question times in sessions.
• Easy way to send clear and potentially discussion-provoking statements
• For me (in my case) twitter was useful because it gave me the possibility of discussing with my collegues about the topics we suposed were most interesting to us.
• It can be hard to find people physically at the conference in coffee breaks so you discuss with people in real time, but not in person.
• It can do a more interactive relation between the speaker and attendant.
• It was a back-channel for less formal discussion and occaisionally critical/dissenting views that aren’t readily expressed in the context of the session itself
• Tweets make it possible to make brief comments about what is happening right now, and to make topical, focused comments – and it makes it possible for others to get different perspectives on presentations and current topics.

Please tell us why you don’t think Twitter encouraged the discussion of topics during the TNC 2009 conference.

• A discussion should not take place on two different places.
• Not enough delegates were on twitter
• It was not even discussed among the attendees I spoke with.
• the conference is about meeting people – not about reading messages.
• TNC is a small conference. I can talk to each other and there is enough time for questions in the meetings.to send mails I must not travel to Malaga. “networking the networkers” does not mean: send mails!
• Too few people tweeting or following.

Please rate these communication channels according to your frequence of use during the TNC 2009 conference.

In your opinion, what is the added value of tweeting in conferences?

• virtually  meeting new people, added context to the presentations, feedback and evaluation from other attendees
• actually it is at least for some a way to give feed-back
• Another collaboration platform
• Getting hints on good presentations and novel ideas from people you know and trust. Sharing ideas. Learning about things “in real time”.
• Getting to know people interested in the same topics, sharing one’s opinion. Receiving hints about what s going on in other parallel sessions.
• Having fun
• identifying potential starting points of discussions
• In general, as part of backchannel discussion. At this particular conference, sharing news from the conf with people not attending in person.
• It is fast and simple way to communicate.
• low-threshold way of sharing instant impressions
• near real time communication (in the middle between sync and async)
• Quick and easy way to share ideas and raise issues during the conference.
• Quick, easy backchannel. Means of keeping track of other parallel sessions. Permanent record of thoughts and ideas.
• Rapid up-to-date info. Making contact with other ppl. Some fun (i.e. jokes), giving an informal contact.
• short and immediate exchange of thoughts and remarks
• Spontaneous opinion sharing without disrupting by talking.
• spontaneously expressing opinions, ideas, questions
• telling someone something in a quicker way than email during sessions (such as comments, requests, and so on)

In your opinion, what are disadvantages of using Twitter in conferences?

• Twitter is little bit messy. You have to follow right persons or anyone have to remember use those search tags like #tnc2009.
• Too much typing, too little following the programme.
• There is already so much multi-tasking and so many distractions during a conference that it is hard to listen to what people are saying.  Twitter adds to the noise.
• The need to learn a new tool
• Not enough of the delegates were on twitter.
• Might be distracting on some people.  I personally don’t think I suffer that much.
• It encourages people to make inconsequential remarks of short shelf-life rather than listening to the speaker who is talking.
• May distract attention to presentations
• during sessions pleople keep writing on their laptop. I know of conferences in which the organizers blocked wi-fi in session rooms.
• Could reduce the amount of direct interactions for those who are present in the conference.
• Could distract from potentially more productive means of communication. Although for Twitter, the level of distraction is probably lower than for other media for side conversations.
• anaouthe activity people deal with instead of personal communication

With the survey we try to find out which means of communication are useful in specific situations of the development process, which means of communication are really used and how they support the problem solving in a team.

If you and your team are interested in taking part in the survey please contact me and I will send you a link to the survey together with a token that identifies your team. Of course we will share the results of the survey as soon as we have them here on the blog.

A note on privacy:
The survey will be an anonymous one. The record kept of your survey responses will not contain any identifying information about you unless a specific question in the survey will ask for this.