Documents Contributed by ECAR, Web 2.0, and Presentations/Speeches

Presentation at the Sixth Annual ECAR Symposium, December 5-7, 2007, in Boca Raton, Florida. Successful online communities must be able to attract and retain a core of active participants. In this presentation, Robert Kraut will describe how the relationship between communities and new members develops. Because the relationship is especially fragile during newcomers' initial interactions, the success of these interactions is likely to determine whether the relationship survives. Kraut's analysis of over 200,000 messages from almost 25,000 newcomers to 99 Usenet groups shows that newcomers are much more likely to continue participating if their initial posts received replies, especially socially positive ones. Longitudinal studies and three field experiments show that introductions referencing commitment to the group increase the likelihood of getting a reply, while introductions emphasizing connections to the topic of discussion do not. This research both increases our understanding of a new social phenomenon and informs intervention that can improve the integration of newcomers into online communities.

Presentation at the Sixth Annual ECAR Symposium, December 5-7, 2007, in Boca Raton, Florida. This talk reviews scholarship on social networking sites, focusing on the use of Facebook among undergraduate students. Nicole Ellison discusses findings from a recent study examining user practices and the social capital implications of Facebook use, demonstrating evidence of positive outcomes from some kinds of use. Educational applications of related technologies, such as blogging, is briefly discussed.

How to Cite This Work: Ellison, Nicole. "Facebook Use on Campus: A Social Capital Perspective on Social Network Sites." Presentation at the ECAR Symposium, Boca Raton, FL, December 5-7, 2007, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

Presentation at the Sixth Annual ECAR Symposium, December 5-7, 2007, in Boca Raton, Florida. Within the past year, SaaS-based office solutions from Adobe, Cisco, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce.com, and Yahoo! became available or will soon be available. In this session, Burton Group Senior Analyst Guy Creese describes this rapidly evolving market and talks through the pros and cons of SaaS solutions.

How to Cite This Work: Creese, Guy. "Should We Work in the Cloud? The Pros and Cons of Software as a Service." Presentation at the ECAR Symposium, Boca Raton, FL, December 5-7, 2007, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

Presentation at the Sixth Annual ECAR Symposium, December 5-7, 2007, in Boca Raton, Florida. The social web is reflecting a radical change in the nature of publishing: the who, what, why, and how of authoring is changing in ways not imagined even five years ago. In this talk we explore the new terrain of publishing and collaboration by visiting social web sites, and through online videos and even confessionals. We explore three key question areas: (1) Why is this happening? What are the technological and social drivers? (2) What does the social web mean for the future of authoring? Who will be in control? (3) Should information professionals support or resist these changes? How?

How to Cite This Work: Riedl, John. "The Social Web." Presentation at the ECAR Symposium, Boca Raton, FL, December 5-7, 2007, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

Presentation at the Sixth Annual ECAR/HP Summer Symposium for Higher Education IT Executives, June 11-13, 2007, Boulder, Colorado. In January 2007, Michael Wesch released a video on the history of the Web called "The Machine is Us/ing Us." The video quickly tracks the transformations of the Web from its beginnings as a place to retrieve information into a vibrant user-generated and user-organized platform of RSS feeds, blogs, wikis, social networks, and folksonomies that encourage, enhance, and capitalize on collaboration. At the video's end, Wesch suggests that these transformations require us to begin rethinking virtually everything, from authorship and copyright to our sense of identity and selfhood. These new technologies also have profound implications for education. What possibilities and challenges do they bring to our teaching? What should we be teaching to students who are habituated to a new media environment where Google and Wikipedia are always at their fingertips? How are these technologies changing the way students learn and assess information?