Collaborative learning has a diverse meaning, from group or team-based working, to peer-to-peer interaction on shared tasks. With the rise in dynamic ubiquitous digital technologies has provided another rich layer to collaborative learning as the need to learn how to collaborate now coexists with the need to learn how to use digital technologies.

Digital Mediated Collaborative Learning

Given the growth in digital media and its functionality to support and mediate team-based activities, we are seeing a rise in the interest in the use of digital tools to support and mediate collaborative learning, called digital mediated collaborative learning (hereafter DMCL). This study explores the use of Wiki technology for DMCL.

Commonly termed a Wiki, like Blogs and RSS, Wiki’s have been dubbed ‘social software’ because they facilitate social connections allowing users to develop digital content, collaboratively and open to a public. The term became synonymous with collaborative website design after programmer Ward Cunningham pioneered it in 1995 to discuss software design that enabled community content co-creation. However, wiki use for/in collaborative learning is no easy task. It requires the unlearning of old models socialized in a mindset of ‘I learn’ to the learning of new norms, processes and mindsets of ‘we learn’. Couple this with complex digital tools and the landscape for learning becomes quite complicated for the even the most digitally literate.

Limited past research exists on the use of Wiki’s in the contexts of management higher education or management learning and professional development. In this study we therefore reviewed the literature of two relevant situated contexts for the use of Wiki’s to our research study, the use of Wiki’s in management practice and the use of Wiki’s education.

The dominant discourse in management practice is the use of Wiki technology for productivity gains in the achievement of organizational goals (e.g., reduce cost, time, increase security, access) in project management and information sharing. In contrast in education, the focus is on the people and group learning. In this, the evolving paradigm around Wiki’s in education is focused on ‘learning to write and/or collaborate’, on text and interaction and the promotion of deep learning experiences, both in and outside the classroom, not just on technology and/or productivity’.

Drawing from these studies, we devised A Wiki Way of Learning to curricular design and trialed it’s use in two cohorts of postgraduate management education students.

A Wiki Way of Learning Trial

In the academic year 2008/2009 I introduced Wiki’s into my 8-week MBA Marketing Research class of 52 students to trial their use as the students worked on research projects in groups of 8-10. I designed the entire learning experience to work with the Wiki’s, from the class room activities, the group project, my involvement as module coordinator and the Wiki’s functional design in coexistence. I didn’t just tack on Wiki’s to a group project and tell the students to go off and use it, I designed the learning objectives and the project around weekly Wiki tasks, monitored student progress each week, provided weekly feedback and offered incentives. The Wiki was not just part of the group project, it was part of every class lecture and discussion.

The feedback from the students was very positive receiving the highest student ratings across all modules on the MBA (i.e., 4.7/5), and qualitative student insights into how it contributed to their learning experience. However, what I couldn’t report was insight to two very important questions:

1. Did the use of Wiki’s have a positive or negative impact on their learning of the module content?
2. What role did student levels of digital literacy play in their learning and Wiki experience?

With this first years learning of how to design and integrate Wiki’s into a management class environment, in the 2nd year I empirically explored these questions.

A Wiki Way of Learning Study

In the academic year 2009/2010 I continued the use of Wiki’s in my 8-week MBA Marketing Research class of 62 students, but this year I explored the interplay of student digital literacy, knowledge and Wiki use on domain learning and the quality of the student learning experience.

Findings from this study indicate a significant positive relationship between Wiki use and student domain learning as evidence by student performance in a multiple choice revision quiz (in class) and essay examination. The more pages and lines students edited, the higher their overall performance during revision and examination.

Consistent with the literature on digital literacy and knowledge, the study also revealled significant differences in student digital literacy, knowledge and Wiki use between male and female students. Female MBA students self-reported lower levels of digital literacy and knowledge than their male peers, however from log-file data female report significantly higher levels of Wiki use during the project. So even though the female students might under report or have less confidence in their perception of their skills and knowledge with digital technology, doesn’t necessarily mean they will use them any less than their male peers. This poses an interesting question for how we measure and evaluate digital literacy.

My Final Thoughts …

This was a great study to conduct with my students, one of great learning for them about using Wiki’s to collaborate to cocreate a project, and for me on how we integrate technology into learning contexts. I think this is important to inspire not just the learning of a domain or module content, but the learning of and about digital technology through the situated practice of ‘doing’, as opposed to telling.

Digital literacy, knowledge and learning is increasingly critical for management students and professionals of today and tomorrow. As management educators in higher education, it is imperative that we explore, study and adopt new and differing methods for digital mediated learning in our curricular, designing the learning experience with digital media as part of it, not separate to it or an add on, to ensure our students have the neccessary knowledge and skills to participate effectively in a world of dynamic ubiquitous digital mediation.

Thanks

Many thanks to Shashank Garg and Jennifer Smith, postgraduate students at Cardiff University for their research assistance in data collection; and the MBA Marketing Research Classes of 2008/2009 and 2009/2010 at Cardiff Business School for their participation. We’d also like to thank Professor Emmanuel Ogbonna, Lisa L’Homme and Neil Wellard who direct and manage the Cardiff MBA for their ongoing support and assistance during these studies.

Smiles

Kelly

p.s. for a copy of the draft manuscript currently under review, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Share and Enjoy

Last night Cardiff Business School hosted, Mr David Roche, President of Hotels.com for an evening lecture about the Internet: Business, not as you know it! David introduced the audience to the data-informed and analytics led business model of Hotels.com.

It was an interesting talk that took us from the business model origins of Yahoo!, Google and Goto.com to the power of digital analytics and the loss of the high street travel retailer. In 1998 Yahoo! dominated the search business. However, by 2001/2002, who would have thought that it was the combination of a citation ranking algorithm, coupled with a pay-per-click business model and data informed decision making that would see Google evolve to who they are today, one of the most powerful multinationals and Internet businesses today.

David, reviewed the power of digital analytics for Hotels.com, wherein the value of the footprint through their and partner sites (e.g., tripadvisor.com) and advancements in industry back end systems (e.g., Sabre), has provided for advanced empirical evidence in managerial decision making in site design, pricing and service offering. Data-informed and analytic led Internet business is the business of the Internet today, and not as many people really know it.

When asked about the impact of the financial crisis for Hotels.com, he revealed that the traffic data at Hotels.com shows evidence of CFO’s cutting corporate travel budgets resulting in less traffic from these segments and a squeeze on hotel ‘price per night’. However such economic conditions are in contrast driving individual consumers online for hotel bookings due to increased choice wherein the average consumer scans a minimum of 3 sites for options at any one time, lower geographic barriers for information access and advanced price competitiveness. All resulting in increased consumer choice.

However one thing that David did touch on during the Q&A, was that, in contrast to the more traditional offline travel agent or the smaller online business, large Internet businesses, such as Hotels.com and Google do have an advantage. Something that is referred to in academic circles as ‘double jeopardy’ when talking about the power of large brands, is they have large data sets of traffic data from which to draw and teams of analysts with whom to work with. For the high street travel retailer or smaller internet business site usage and traffic data is not as reliable or large enough for any advanced statistical analysis, resulting in differing approaches in methods for research insight (e.g., focus groups), and the use of free service tools such as Google Analytics.

During his talk David raised a number of interesting points about data-informed and analytic led managerial decision making for the Internet business, but more importantly he raised a questions about skills and knowledge in digital analytics. How and what are universities and educational providers delivering in terms of skills and knowledge to ensure graduates and wider society have the necessary skills to participate in a data-informed and analytics led model of Internet business?

An enjoyable and very informative talk.

Smiles Kelly

P.S. For tweets from the event, see: #cbslecture

Share and Enjoy

Considering the Social Context!

Think about how and where you learn about digital technology, say the Web/Internet. Where usually are you – in work, at home? Why were you learning or using it – for work, personal reasons? Where you expected to use the technology by your employer, school or friends? What influence do you think the social context, such as work has on you, your view of the world, and of digital technology?

The evolution in digital technology is not only altering user/consumer expectations of their interaction with the technology in general, but also placing extra demands on our confidence – ‘what we think we know about technology’ – and it’s value to us for effective participation. One thing that requires more exploration is on knowledge of digital technology, is the moderating effect of the social context within which we ‘learn about’ and ‘use’ [are socialised] about a given digital technology.

In a paper under review, my co-authors and I profile the moderating effect of the social context of ‘learning’ and biological context of the ‘user’ on the knowledge-value relationship with digital media. As such, does my confidence in my knowledge of technology X, influence the value I place on using technology X, any differently based on a) the social context within which I learn’t about/user technology X (professional/work vs. personal/non-work) and b) my biological context of being male or female.

The Professional-Personal Social Context

Our interest here, is especially the professional-personal context in how we are socialised to think, feel and use technology. Often in mass survey research about technology usage and literacy this social context is ignored or in the least not captured. But the social context of learning is very important. For example, the difference between mandated [where usage is explicitly expected] and non-mandated [where usage is more about free choice] usage contexts such as education, professional [work] and personal contexts.

Education Context: In educational institutions we often ‘expect’ students to use email, the universities intranet system (or virtual learning environment), the library catalogue, or access journal articles through electronic databases. So if one then conducts a study on knowledge, perceptions and usage of these systems, well the data is inherently biased by this being a mandated context for usage.

Professional Context: Similarly in a work-context, the profession you have and do, might have more or less expectations with technology usage and the types of technology. For example, a web designer has a very different social context of learning and technology usage than say a creative director of an arts organisation or a plumber, school teacher or university professor in Chemistry science.

These social contexts of ‘learning about’ and ‘using’ technology, in my belief are important considerations in our study of technology knowledge, perceptions and usage, and our expectations of them. In short, “I am a factor of the environment within which I live, work and play, as is my environment of me!” … Interdependent, co-evolving and emergent in how we see and are in the world. So we decided to consider it.

The Professional Context of Technical Web Design

For sample of 2077 web users we survey and profile three core things:

1. How confident the users are in their knowledge about how to use the technology and how easy or valuable they find it for specific tasks;
2. The technical/mandated social learning context within which they use or have learn’t to use the technology. We use a ‘web design’ or ‘no web design’ proxy here; and
3. Their biological context, given our belief that men and women are socially conditioned differently from a very young age and throughout their working lives when it comes to digital technology.

The results highlight the importance of the social context of learning and sex in explaining why some knowledgeable users find the web more (or less) easy or useful to use. The results suggest that this ‘professional’ and ‘technical design’ social context within which web usage occurs, be it work-related [mandated] or personal [non-mandated], and how men and women are socialized towards technology over the course of their life has implications for the development of their beliefs about how much they think they know about the web and how this knowledge influences their perceptions of the web’s usefulness. To summarise:

• Confidence in ones knowledge of the technology has a positive impact on perceptions of usability;
• Users with design experience have more self-belief in their knowledge of technology; and their perceptions of usability become more focused on the web’s utility for achieving their goals—how effective it is for the task at hand—and less on how easy it is to use. i.e., how a web designer sees the digital world, is much different to a non-designer of the same channel – this gives increased focus on the importance of talking to non-technical users of a system in digital channel design, especially if designing for less experienced users].
• Past Research has identified that women use the web less, are more focused on social (not instrumental) cues, and report lower levels of confidence and knowledge and take less risks on the web, than male consumers (Garbarino & Strahilevitz, 2004; Rodgers & Harris, 2003). However when they have design experience, this profile is altered with rising levels of technical web knowledge confidence than the average female web consumer. In fact, the effect of confidence on technology perceptions was stronger for female web designers than male designers.

Situated Digital Technology Knowledge & Learning

Our results reveal the importance of the social context within which men and women learn about and use web technology in professional contexts and what we expect of them. Often the rationalization of conflicting male/female technology usage results focuses on the ‘length of usage experience’ each group has, as opposed to the social context within which their ‘learning’ and ‘usage’ takes place. So lets avoid stereotypes about men and women and digital media – it depends!

Furthermore, when coming from a digital technical design perspective, be it male or female, we need to recognise that we [designers-more technical users] do see the world differently to many other users of technology. As a result, we will learn about and use the technology differently, but we will also design, talk and expect different things of the technology and ourselves [and potentially others].

This study gave rise to my interest in understanding more the ‘situated’ or ‘social contexts’ within which we learn about and use technologies, and the perspective of knowledge and learning about digital technologies, being situated within practices, processes and people … the ‘doing & using’ of digital technology, as opposed to just confidence and technical competencies.

Smiles
Kelly

p.s. This paper entitled: The Social Context of User Web Knowledge and Web Usability, is under review, but am happy to share copies of the draft manuscript, so just DM me on twitter with your email address: @drkellypage

Share and Enjoy

Inclusive, international and participatory is the promise of the first ever digital media learning conference, here in San Diego over the next three days. The 2010 Digital Media Learning Conference (San Diego, USA).

Today finds me at the start of the conference hosted University of California Humanities Research Institute at the UC Irvine campus in San Diego. The next 3 days over 500 digital media delegates form around the world are coming together to deliver, attend and discuss at over 60 panel session about digital media learning and literacy in society, education, and policy. As noted in the conference press release as to why this is so important:

“Global digital media are rapidly becoming a driving force in globalization, scientific advances, and the intersection—and sometimes clash—of cultures,” said David Theo Goldberg, director of the systemwide University of California Humanities Research Institute and co-director of the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub, which designed and organized the conference. “Every day new questions arise about the ability of traditional systems and institutions to prepare both young people and life-long learners for the social, economic, and political demands of a complex and networked new century.” (Quote: Jeff Brazil)

What makes this conference something I’m excited about is that at the outset, the program was about collaboration and conversation within and across the digital media learning community. To participate delegates contributed to a DML Conference Wiki in 2009, collaborating on ideas and areas of research interest. Session proposals were then submitted for peer review, with each session requiring participants originating from differing institutions and/or organisations.

I first came across the conference on twitter. Connecting through the conference Wiki with two Assistant Professors from University of Central Florida, Dr. Robb Lindgren and Dr. Rudy McDaniel about our similar areas of research interest: researching digital media expertise and knowledge, albeit from three differing approaches. After a number of emails and a Skype hook-up we submitted a proposal on Digital Media Expertise: Three Differing Approaches. Where we propose to discuss “Expertise about digital media. Expertise with digital. Expertise through digital media”.

The conference kicks off this afternoon with a conference introduction from the chair, Henry Jenkins from the University of Southern California, and Opening key note from S. Craig Watkins, who has been researching young peopleʼs media behaviors for more than a decade.

Inclusive, international and participatory – like the digital media we research, use and promote. I hope so, this conference is this and more.

For more information:

Press release by Jeff Brazil

DML 2010 Conference

DML Research Hub

Share and Enjoy

Increasingly we are seeing hundreds of uses of the term ‘Social Media Expert’ or ‘Web Expert’ on websites, titles, business cards, job descriptions and blog posts about “10 signs of a social media expert’. This is not a new phenomena, we have been interested in expertise and knowledge for generations, who has it, how do you recognise it, how do you measure it, how do you store or capture it?

This is especially evident as it pertains to technology. From computer expertise, to database expertise, system expertise, web expertise, social web (media) expertise. However technology is changing so rapidly, and our ability to keep up and keep abreast of the increasing tide of information starts to beg the question – can anyone really be a technology expert?

From this talk, my intention was to pose to the audience to consider that:

• expetise is about knowledge (type, scope, how acquired) not just usage behaviour, something we often use as a proxy for knowledge.
• different knowledge is acquired in differing contexts so although two things might be similar or related, doesn’t mean you have same knowledge in both.
• think about the terms you use to describe your knowledge, experience and understanding of technology, for what we think we know, doesn’t correlate to what we actually know and terms/labels can be misleading.
• If someone calls themselves a social web (media) expert, chances are they are still learning (and that’s ok!) – its a new young and rapdily changing field. We are all learning. But many of us are not experts.

You can watch my talk below at Ignite Cardiff:

You can also view and download the slides from slideshare or through Issuu:

[issuu viewmode=presentation layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Flight%2Flayout.xml showflipbtn=true documentid=091016150646-90621ec8921e49848f75e475f755025f docname=socialwebexpertise_ignitecardiff_151009 username=caseinsights loadinginfotext=Social%20Web%20Expertise%3A%20Ignite%20Cardiff%20Talk%202009 width=420 height=297 unit=px]

Share and Enjoy

Imagine that you’re on stage in front of an audience of hundreds of people, doing a five-minute presentation using slides that automatically rotate every 15 seconds, whether you’re ready or not. What would you do? What would you say? The entry on Wikipedia provides a more detailed overview of Ignite events around the world.

Well having thought about this scary prospect and being an academic who makes a living out of lecturing and talking, I thought I might just be up for the challenge. Can an academic really only talk for 5 minutes?

So tonight at Wales Millennium Centre, I’ll be joining a list of 15 other speakers to talk for 5 minutes on a topic of my choice. My presentation is entitled: “If I can drive does that make me a mechanic!” and stems from two earlier posts on this blog about “the mechanics of social web expertise” and “measuring social web expertise.” Most importantly though this presentation is about my dad!

This Ignite Cardiff event is being hosted in partnership with Cardiff Design Festival and organised by Cardiff Web Scene and sponsored by Box UK.

Share and Enjoy

Often in the discussion of expertise about technologies, many fall into the trap of associating the length of usage as an indicator of expertise. In the blog entries mentioned in the previous post, many discussed ‘usage’ of social web technologies – how many years used, in what ways, which tools – as an indicator of expertise.

Technology usage as an indicator of expertise is not new or unique to the social web context, but is most certainly fatally flawed.

Usage as a Proxy for Expertise

While researching consumer knowledge of technologies, I found that many research studies about technology, actually use experience (e.g., how long you have been using a technology) as a proxy for how knowledgeable or ‘expert’ you are. In other words, the longer the usage in duration, frequency and past experience than the higher reported expertise.

I found this methodology really flawed as it assumes people learn in the same way, from the same information and at the same rate. But why do they do it? Because it is easier to measure.

This is like saying that two people who have bee driving cars for 20 years, a car mechanic (who fixes cars) and a non-car-mechanic (who drives cars), have the same knowledge about how to drive a car and it’s inner workings.

In essence it ignores the context from which knowledge about a specific domain might be acquired,  the scope of this knowledge (is it specialised or more common knowledge) and assumes we all learn in the same way and at the same rate.

In the doctoral research about web knowledge, a study of over 2,500 web designers and users; and from one of the preliminary studies (see below) that compared the knowledge and usage of web design students and non-web design students, it was found that

• Length of usage experience with the web had a very weak relationship with what a a user actually knew about the web.
• User perceptions of how knowledgeable they were – also an indicator of confidence – had a weak relationship with what was actually stored in their memory.

So if someone says they are web expert, even if they honestly believe it, they are possibly not, as they are not the best judge of what they actually know. That would be like my students marking their own exam papers!

Here is a brief commentary about a research article on the measurement of actually web knowledge (what is stored in memory) that was published in the journal Psychology & Marketing.

[issuu layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Fcolor%2Flayout.xml backgroundcolor=CCCCCC showflipbtn=true documentid=090504173438-a56ebea5b81d4917b3a4196e0b1309ce docname=pm_2004 username=caseinsights loadinginfotext=Consumer%20Knowledge%20of%20the%20Web showhtmllink=true tag=web width=420 height=297 unit=px]

Usage of the Social Web & Expertise

In contrast, in the context of the social web, we are seeing usage as a criteria for expertise being used in a different way. In this context it is not so much how long you have been using the social web, it’s the fact that you are personally using it and the extent of this personal usage!

If you are on the most popular social networks (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Bebo etc), you have a large number of followers or friends, you use RSS feeds and have a blog, than you must be a social web expert! Well, maybe not!

Just because I subscribe to 3 of the most popular cooking magazines, have bookmarked some of the most trafficked recipes sites, watch religiously TV programmes starring Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsey and Nigela Lawson, and dine out with my friends 3 times a week – this doesn’t mean I can call myself a Chef!

As denoted in the last post, social web expertise goes beyond usage experience. It’s about the type, scope and acquisition of specialised knowledge about the social web, and the application of this knowledge – be it for research, client or self.

So perhaps if you think you are an expert, you just might not be! And just because you use the social web alot, this also doesn’t make you a social web expert.

This is where the role of peer and community recognition that you are an expert becomes very important and the use of case studies and case examples to show the application of your knowledge.

« CASE Insights: Exploring Marketing’s Evolution Through Technology »

Share and Enjoy

As the avid researcher I am, I did a little research to see what others had to say on the topic of social web expertise. By searching the phrase ‘social media expert’ on Google it returned  around 306,000 search results (I read the first two pages), on delicious 1027 bookmarks (of which I read 10) and I sat and painfully watched 6 of the 164 videos about it on YouTube.

What about Twitter? Well a Twitter Search showed we are certainly tweeting about it. Twist shows a direct correlation between use of the terms social media and expert.

I also came across a number of really interesting blog posts discussing social media expertise. These are well worth a read.

• Joel Mackey in his post ‘You are not a social media expert, you idiot!’, categorises five types of social media experts using criteria such as knowledge and usage of social web technologies, and the breadth and depth of social network reach
• Jay Fowler talks about ‘What makes you the expert?’ using criteria of how well and how frequently an individual uses social web technologies as key criteria in categorisation.
• Chris Brogen, a once self-confessed social media expert, now espouses ‘What I want a social media expert to know!’, from the strategic to the tactical.
• Dave Fleet offers a number of posts about ‘When can we start to say Expert?‘ given the early days of social web technologies, and in his post ‘Where are the experts?‘, provides a list of people he regards as social media experts given when they write – he reads!
  
• Dan Schawbel provides a list of reasons from inability to command a premium salary, too little bases for differentiation and confusion as to what a social media expert is as to why ‘You shouldn’t brand yourself as a social media expert!
• In response to Dan’s post and annoyed by the growing anti-expert meme, Suw Charman-Anderson in her post ‘Hi, my name is Suw and I’m a social media expert!’, provides a thought provoking read about why we should be calling ourselves social media experts.
  

But these posts still left me feeling that perhaps the simple line of what really is an expert in the digital economy is getting lost in the deluge of social web examples, content, technology and a need to self-promote.

So this post is not so much about social web expertise, as it is about knowledge of technology.

Knowledge of Technology

In the early days of my research career looking at questions of usability I started researching knowledge of technology. More specifically comparing novice and experienced web users in how they differed in Web Knowledge. This later formed the basis for my PhD on Web Knowledge and Web Usability. Warning: It is 350 pages long!

[issuu layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.issuu.com%2Fv%2Fcolor%2Flayout.xml backgroundcolor=CCCCCC showflipbtn=true documentid=090504185218-8e547b82d683431e8e30f8a54c02a1d5 docname=phd_kellypage username=caseinsights loadinginfotext=PhD%3A%20Knowledge%20of%20the%20Web showhtmllink=true tag=usefulness width=420 height=272 unit=px]

A detailed review of the insights from this 350 page research thesis is best left for another blog post. However, from this research a number of core questions came up that provide some interesting food for thought as to how we think about ‘expertise’ in the digital economy – what ever the trend, platform, tool or technology.

So What Really is an Expert in the Digital Economy?

Before we really can use a term, be it to label ourselves or someone else, we need to know what it is and the appropriate context for it’s usage. Increasingly in digital or technological arena’s we use the terms expert, novice and experienced users alot, but often inconsistently.

The preliminary secondary research of academic studies and industry reports we did about knowledge, expertise, and usage (be it of technology or other complex products) revealed that very few could agree on what knowledge is and how it differed from experience, expertise or the process of learning. There was also limited agreement on the differing types, scope, levels of knowledge and how it could be measured.

So we did some primary research of users with differing experiences with technology (be it designers, users or project managers) and spoke to industry recognised leaders to help develop some standard considerations around the notion of expertise, especially as it relates to technology.

The research identified that an expert in digital technology actually denotes someone as:

1. having differing types of knowledge about technology stored in their memory,
2. differing breadth and depth of knowledge (scope) about the technology, and
3. having acquired this knowledge by differing means than an average consumer, user or member of the general population.

To be more specific:

• The main types of knowledge we store in our memory are declarative (e.g., definitive knowledge about what Twitter is and why use it) and procedural (e.g., process knowledge about how Twitter works or could be used for marketing).
• These types of knowledge can differ on a continuum in scope from being more specialised and technical knowledge (e.g., design, development and socio-cultural impact of Twitter) to more common, generally known principles (e.g., it’s domain twitter.com and tools such as Tweetdeck to manage it’s usage)
• We acquire knowledge through different experiences or episodes (also called episodic knowledge). These can include formal education (e.g., masterclass about Twitter), informal learning (e.g., reading a blog post or report about Twitter), direct usage (e.g., Frequency and length of use, Tweeting for oneself or designing/implementing strategy for client) or vicariously through our social networks (e.g., friends, colleagues) and media networks (e.g., BBC, CNN). These episodes provide a contextual reference for the learning, usage and application of the knowledge acquired.

Note: The example given would relate to the scope of expertise about Twitter, not the wider social web.

As you can see, the extent of expertise someone poses is about the knowledge stored in their memory: its type, it’s scope and it’s acquisition and the use of this knowledge, it’s application. It is not just that they think they are an expert.

Recognising a Social Media Expert

So how do you recognise someone or a team as possessing social web expertise? When faced with the opportunity for partnering on a CASE Insights project I consider the following questions?

• What is their past experience with technology, not just the social web?
• What is their current usage experience with the social web, and not just Facebook and Twitter – think bigger picture?
• How long have they been consulting or advising? To whom? About What?
• What is the contextual application of their experience – which clients, which industries – I look for case studies?
• Do they talk beyond the technological implications of the social web to the social-cultural implications?
• What is their strategic springboard – marketing, PR, communications, sales? Do they have one?
• What is their tactical focus – design, management, measurement, monetisation?
• What is their tone of relationship? Do they sound like they want to sell me something, advise on something, share or create something?
• Are they industry or community regarded – be it from past clients, colleagues, followers and case examples – as possessing specialised knowledge.

In summary, subject to what some might think I believe given I don’t like using the term expertise to promote my own work or self, it’s not that I think the term expert shouldn’t be used. I just think we should be judicious about who uses it, how and when we use it (context) and conscious of what it is we are indicating someone has with this label.

Expertise is about possessing differing types and scope of knowledge and how we use this knowledge, not just the usage of digital technologies.

In essence, I wouldn’t call myself a mechanic if I just changed a tyre or a chef if I made a bowl of pasta. Just like the culinary expertise of Executive Chef Mark Eskew at the Gordon Ramsay Three-Michelin Star restaurant in London would greatly differ to that of a service-cook at the Moto road-side cafe at Reading on the M4.

« CASE Insights: Exploring Marketing’s Evolution Through Technology »

Share and Enjoy