Designing the Undesignable: Social Software and Control

Abstract

In this presentation, Dr. Jon Dron will discuss his recently published article, “Designing the undesignable: Social Software and Control”. In this article, Dr Dron states that social software, such as blogs, wikis, tagging systems and collaborative filters, treats the group as a first-class object within the system. Drawing from theories of transactional distance and control, he proposes a model of e-learning that extends traditional concepts of learner-teacher-content interactions to include these emergent properties of the group. Some of the dangers and issues that need to be addressed in order for this new model to fulfill its promise will be explored, and a framework of principles to be used by designers of educationally-oriented social software will be discussed.