The HBC discussed Wikipedia. The main criticism stated was the accuracy and reliability of the contents however, some critics had argued that the co-editing feature of peer production increases the credibility. Fallis (2008) revealed that the reliability of Wikipedia is positively comparable to traditional encyclopedias. The second article, A Natural Experiment at Chinese Wikipedia concluded that there is a relationship between group size and the incentive to contribute, due to social effects. Tang et al. (2012) proposed that exposure is the major incentive for contributors and that exposure is impacted by group size. However, Shun et al (2011) suggested that the knowledge-sharing intention is influenced directly by attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control instead.
The interview with Marten Mickos implied that the key for success is to encourage continuous participation from external programmers. Dahlander and Magnusson (2005) suggested that firms working on open source can influence their community through five main mechanisms of subtle control and MySQL had executed all five denoting an effective approach. Lastly, the “private-collective” innovation model is when the innovator uses his own resources for public goods innovation. The authors assumed that innovators would benefit more than the free-riders therefore innovation would happen only when rewards exceed costs. However, recent research suggested that egoism and altruism are the dominant reason for engaging in private-collective innovations (Benbunan-Fich and Koufaris, 2013).
The use of social media and social networks within the educational field is my subject of interests. Wests (2012) proposed that collaboration tools such as blogs, wikis, social media and video games help to improve education. Firstly, online blogs allow students to share academic-related information and express their own opinions in a more creative manner. Our class is a good example of effectively utilizing blogs for learning. Secondly, the usage of technological devices within classroom activities could foster greater amounts of communication between students, for example online polling. Thirdly, social media networking sites like Facebook encourages broader student participation.
The two mini-case examples are: Twiducate and Edmodo, which are both free microblogging sites designed particularly for educators. Twiducate is a social network platform that allows school educators to create a private social network with their students and Edmodo connects teachers, students and parents all over the world to collaborate on assignments and discover new resources. Twiducate is ‘Twitter-like’ and Edmodo is ‘Facebook-like’ format. I personally prefer Edmodo over Twiducate.
Similarities
- Free of charge
- Teachers have full control over the manipulation of content
- A niche educational focus hence features are tailored for learning purposes
- Requires high levels of commitment, time and effort for successful implementation
Differences
- Twiducate has a higher level of privacy as teachers can establish private networks whilst the online classroom of Edmodo is open to public
- The frequency of collaboration is higher at Twiducate
- Edmodo has over 43 million users whereas Twiducate has only about 8 million users. Therefore the reach and social benefit users can derive is higher at Edmodo
- Twiducate is written ‘by teachers for teachers’ and Edmodo is written by two ‘techies’ meaning that the quality and user experience of the site should be better at Edmodo
Sources
- Benbunan-Fich, R., Koufaris, M., (2013) “Public contributions to private-collective systems: the case of social bookmarking”, Internet Research, 23(2), 2013, pp. 183-203.
- Darrell M. West (2012). How Blogs, Social Media and Video Games improve education. Studies at Brookings.
- Fallis, D. (2008), Toward an epistemology ofWikipedia. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci., 59: 1662–1674.
- Linus Dahlander and Mats G. Magnusson (2005). Relationships between open source software companies and communities: Observations from Nordic firms. Volume 34, Issue 4, May 2005, Pages 481–493.
- Shun-Chuan Ho, Ping-Ho Ting, Dong-Yih Bau, and Chun-Chung Wei (2011). Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. 14(9): 541-545.
- Tang, Q. Gu, B. and Andrew B. Whinston (2012) Content Contribution for Revenue Sharing and Reputation in Social Media: A Dynamic Structural Model. Journal of Management Information Systems, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 41-76, Fall 2012.
