Beyond Difference: Reconfiguring Education for the UserLed Age

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Beyond DifferenceReconfiguring Education for
the User-Led Age

• Dr Axel Bruns
• Media Communication
• Creative Industries Faculty
• Queensland University of Technology
• Brisbane, Australia
• a.bruns_at_qut.edu.au http//snurb.info/

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Key Questions

• How does education
• prepare graduates to become expert users of the
  information available from user-led content
  creation environments?
• prepare graduates to be expert participants in
  user-led content creation environments?

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Produsage
User-led content creation is emerging in
various domains

• open source software development
• online publishing
• blogs
• open news e.g. Slashdot, Indymedia, OhmyNews
• knowledge management
• wikis e.g. Wikipedia
• social bookmarking e.g. del.icio.us, digg
• geotagging e.g. Google Earth, Frappr

• multi-user gaming
• e.g. The Sims, Everquest, Second Life, Spore
• media sharing and creative practice
• e.g. Flickr, ccMixter, YouTube, Jumpcut,
  Current.tv
• reviews and viral marketing
• e.g. Epinions, IgoUgo
• automatic aggregation
• Google, Amazon, Technorati

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Produsage

• Beyond production
• anyone can edit users become producers of
  content
• content is no longer a distinct product it is a
  temporary artefact of an ongoing process, and is
  continuously evolving
• usage and production are increasingly,
  inextricably intertwined
• strict distinctions between producers,
  distributors, and consumers no longer apply
• a new Generation C of content produsers?
• this is produsage

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Common Characteristics

• Shared across these environments
• Community-Based the community as a whole, if
  sufficiently large and varied, can contribute
  more than a closed team of producers, however
  qualified
• Fluid Roles produsers participate as is
  appropriate to their personal skills, interests,
  and knowledges this changes as the produsage
  project proceeds
• Unfinished Artefacts content artefacts in
  produsage projects are continually under
  development, and therefore always unfinished
  their development follows evolutionary,
  iterative, palimpsestic paths
• Common Property, Individual Merit contributors
  permit (non-commercial) community use and
  adaptation of their intellectual property, and
  are rewarded by the status capital gained through
  this process

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Implications

• Challenges to traditional paradigms
• new business models, new industry sectors
• new sources of information, new repositories of
  knowledge
• new forms, new understanding of content
• new forms of collaborative work (scientific,
  intellectual, artistic)
• new approaches to intellectual property
• new measures of personal standing and success
• Or rediscovery of even older models
• open academic collaboration and sharing of
  knowledge
• reputation and social status as non-monetary
  currency
• commons-based intellectual property models

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Graduates and/as Generation C?

• Generation C (Trendwatching.com)
• Content, Creativity, Casual Collapse, Control,
  Celebrity Cash
• Graduates need to be able to
• understand this environment, and
• be able to be part of it (if they so choose)
• Examples
• software engineers work as open source
  developers
• journalists collaborate with citizen journalism
  produsers
• knowledge workers operate effectively in
  wikified environments
• artists collaborate widely but protect
  reputation and IP

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The C4C

• Four crucial graduate capacities
• Creativeengage in collaborative creative
  produsage work (and understand reasons for
  wanting to do so) economic, social, individual
• Collaborativeevaluate when, where, and with
  whom to collaborate (and when not to do so), and
  understand potential positive and negative
  consequences especially for intellectual
  property and personal reputation

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The C4C

• Four crucial graduate capacities
• Criticalevaluate quality of content and skills
  of collaborators, assess own capabilities,
  identify best sites of / venues for produsage
  and be able to express and share such critique
  constructively
• Communicativeunderstand the communicative
  models of produsage environments, and work
  effectively within them also participate
  successfully in communication about the shared
  collaborative effort metacollaboration

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Implementing the C4C

• The C4C framework is a mission statement
• outlines the core capacities
• describes the underlying motivations for pursuing
  them
• situates this in an overall framework of
  produsage
• How do we implement this framework in everyday
  learning and teaching practice?
• Model produsage environments (safe sandbox)
• Transition education itself from production to
  produsage learners as co-creators of education
• Engage with (educational) produsage communities
  outside of the academy accommodate transient
  learners, partner with Wikiversity and other
  emerging projects?

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The Future?

• Heres where we are
• (Todd Richmond, in Rheingold, 2006)
• but where are we going next?