Explorations in a new business classroom
A look at ways in which social software is able to deliver business benefits
Tuesday 31 July 2007, 11:52 AM
Explorations in a new business classroom
This was a year of social computing like never before. While the number of registered users of Facebook and Myspace has grown rapidly, my own corner of cyberspace has had its own social revolution. One year ago we chose to install Elgg on the University of Brighton intranet. Elgg is an open source framework that gives users of our intranet a number of social tools. When a user logs on she can see who else in logged into the intranet, and who has added to their blog most recently. A tag cloud indicates what subjects are being blogged about most actively. When a user registers an interest in a topic or thread of discussion – alerts indicate any activity since she has last logged on.
None of these features are in themselves new, indeed it is these tools that form the core functions of the currently disputed Facebook, but their impact on a working environment is offering new opportunities for research and collaboration. And to deploy them in an organization of thirty three thousand in still not common. Indeed, shortly after the installation went live, researchers at MIT contacted Stan Stanier, the learning technologies manager, to ask about the impact of being the most socially networked university in the world!
As with much in the world of academia, the answers are slow to emerge, and one year in, the University of Brighton is preparing initial research into what some of the impacts have been. As the research emerges, I will use this space to consider its implications, both for learning environments and also for business.
What value might there be to business in a set of social tools? Indicators across a range of research show that many businesses gain when it is easy for information to be accessed, when expertise can be found and shared and especially where a culture that fosters knowledge sharing can be developed. Over the next few days I will look at academic research that shows ways in which social software is able to deliver these (and other) business benefits. But for now it is time to walk my puppies before they return to a classic genre of social networking – barking at my neighbors.
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None of these features are in themselves new, indeed it is these tools that form the core functions of the currently disputed Facebook, but their impact on a working environment is offering new opportunities for research and collaboration. And to deploy them in an organization of thirty three thousand in still not common. Indeed, shortly after the installation went live, researchers at MIT contacted Stan Stanier, the learning technologies manager, to ask about the impact of being the most socially networked university in the world!
As with much in the world of academia, the answers are slow to emerge, and one year in, the University of Brighton is preparing initial research into what some of the impacts have been. As the research emerges, I will use this space to consider its implications, both for learning environments and also for business.
What value might there be to business in a set of social tools? Indicators across a range of research show that many businesses gain when it is easy for information to be accessed, when expertise can be found and shared and especially where a culture that fosters knowledge sharing can be developed. Over the next few days I will look at academic research that shows ways in which social software is able to deliver these (and other) business benefits. But for now it is time to walk my puppies before they return to a classic genre of social networking – barking at my neighbors.
My Technorati Profile
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