WikiSym 2007

Building Collaborative Capacities in Learners:
The M/Cyclopedia Project, Revisited

Axel Bruns and Sal Humphreys

• 22 October 2007 - WikiSym 2007 conference, Montréal, Canada

This paper by Axel Bruns and Sal Humphreys for the International Symposium on Wikis in Montréal, 21-23 Oct. 2007, traces the evolution of a project using a wiki-based learning environment in a tertiary education setting. The project has the pedagogical goal of building learners' capacities to work effectively in the networked, collaborative, creative environments of the knowledge economy. The paper explores the four key characteristics of a 'produsage' environment and identifies four strategic capacities that need to be developed in learners to be effective 'produsers' (user-producers). A case study is presented of our experiences with the subject New Media Technologies, run at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. This progress report updates our observations made at the 2005 WikiSym conference.

ICE3 conference

Beyond Difference: Reconfiguring Education for the User-Led Age

• 23 March 2007 - ICE3 conference, Loch Lomond, Scotland

If produsage is an increasingly significant element of intellectual, economic, legal and political processes within society, then educational institutions must pay more attention to developing produser capabilities in their graduates - focussing on learners' collaborative, creative, critical, and communicative capabilities (or C4C, for short). Indeed, they must lead by example and base more of their teaching and learning frameworks on produsage models. Social constructivist approaches to education already call for a greater role for learners in the educational process, but even pedagogies based on this framework often still retain a strong role for the teacher, and standard tertiary education practices continue to allow for innovation only within the confines of otherwise persistent and immutable institutional structures.

Creativity & Cognition conference

Produsage: Towards a Broader Framework for User-Led Content Creation

• 14 June 2007 - Creativity & Cognition Conference, Washington, DC

This paper outlines the concept of produsage as a model of describing today's emerging user-led content creation environments. Produsage overcomes some of the systemic problems associated with translating industrial-age ideas of content production into an informational-age, social software, Web 2.0 environment. Instead, it offers new ways of understanding the collaborative content creation and development practices found in contemporary informational environments.

PerthDAC conference

The Future Is User-Led: The Path towards Widespread Produsage

• 16 September 2007 - PerthDAC conference, Perth

In the emerging social software, 'Web2.0' environment, the production of ideas takes place in a collaborative, participatory mode which breaks down the boundaries between producers and consumers and instead enables all participants to be users as much as producers of information and knowledge, or what can be described as produsers. These produsers engage not in a traditional form of content production, but are instead involved in produsage - the collaborative and continuous building and extending of existing content in pursuit of further improvement. This paper examines the overall characteristics of produsers and produsage, and identifies key questions for the produsage model.