Research contents
Learning objects and learning design
Learning interaction and networked communities
Informal eLearning
Funded projects

Social Mobile Network to Enhance Community Building for Adults’ Informal Learning

SoMobNet is a capacity building network (Social Mobile Network to Enhance Community Building for Adults’ Informal Learning). It is a Theme Team proposal that has been selected by the STELLAR Scientific Capacity Committee. Partners include Università degli Studi di Firenze (Italy), Institute of Education (UK), Istituto per le Tecnologie Didattiche, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Italy), Universität Bremen (Germany), Attiko Vocational Training Center (Greece) and LTRI (headed by John Cook).

Summary

A new nomadism characterizes the digital era. It has nothing to do with physical movements in real spaces, but it involves an invisible space, made up of networks and circuits, where skills, knowledge, and media objects are moving quickly between continents, generating new concepts of space, time, and learning. In this context, mobility and networking are two emerging keywords. No matter what their roles, learners, teachers and workers today, especially in developed countries, are continuously involved in ubiquitous relationships with other people on the net, exchanging information and sharing knowledge and skills. However, up today, in the field of mobile learning, a great emphasis has been placed on technologies and content transfer, while underestimating its potential to support community building processes through the integration with other socio-technical mechanisms such as social networks.

Within this general context, the SoMobNet aims at investigating the following research questions:

• How mobile devices may support workers’ community building through social networks? (Issue related to ‘Connecting learners’)
• What models of informal assessment can be functional to new mobile informal learning situations? (Issue related to ‘Orchestrating learning’)
• How mobile devices may support workers’ training between real (e.g., their office, or classroom and so on) and online contexts (e.g., social networks?)? (Issue related to ‘Contextualizing learning’).

To explore these research questions, the Theme Team will promote and organize the different types of initiatives within the team and also involving external experts:

• A one-day seminar with the participation of all the members of the Theme Team;
• An international round table with the participation of all the members of the Theme Team and external experts (between 3-5);
• The publications of proceedings of the international round table.

As regards dissemination, besides the publication, the Theme Team will:

• Implement a website including information on the Theme Team research topics;
• Create and support connections with other mobile informal community.
  

STELLAR (an existing project under FP7) funds this work, see: http://www.itd.cnr.it/page.php?ID=TT_CALL_IIROUND&FlagSelected=en

Contact details

John Cook
Learning Technology Research Institute
London Metropolitan University
35 Kingsland Road, London, E2 8AA
Email:  john.cook@londonmet.ac.uk
Tel :  +44 (0)207 133 4341
Fax:  +44 (0)207 133 4348
WWW: http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/ltri

Last updated 26 September, 2011