Specifying the dynamics of social technologies as social microworlds

Abstract

This paper explores the affordances of social technologies for supporting the construction of a shareable artefact by a group of learners. A qualitative study that captures the use of five different types of social technologies (Facebook, blogs, wikis, Google Documents and Dropbox) in three different classroom settings sheds light on the potentials and challenges of these tools for supporting material exploration, artefact construction and evaluation. Qualitative content analysis of instructors' field notes, students' and instructors' reflections, interviews and focus groups sheds light on the potential of social technologies to transform the activity of learning across a new culture of computational tools. The affordances of social technologies are discussed as well as design principles that need to be followed in these new arenas.

Assessing enterprise wiki success from the perspective of end-users: an empirical approach

“…Good collaborative features of wikis include easy communication and sharing of information with other users, and ease in updating of editing documents collaboratively. Parmaxi and Zaphiris (2015) established that asynchronous communication supported by wikis help a group in creating a single artefact together. According to a study on wiki use in new product development, efficient collaboration among users via wikis led to higher frequency of usage (Reid et al 2016).…”