Context is king

The main idea of this talk was inspired by my experiences of my former employer FernUniversitaet in Hagen; an experience which can be roughly summarised as follow: Do not only concentrate on high quality content but on the didactical design of the learning environment as well. Content is just a part - I admit: a very important part - of the learning environment.

Even in modern eLearning environment the focus lies primarily on content interelated by hyperlinks. In my talk I addressed the main aspect of the socalled Social Software: not to connect content but to connect people. People following their individual interests meet (virtually) other people who share their interests. In contrast to the top down approach of (traditional) groupware tools, social software work from a bottom up perspective.

In his work in Personal Knowledge Michael Polanyi gives a philosophical underpinning of this different perspective on knowledge. He stresses the importance of knowledge related with the real life of a person and therefore (implcitely) critisizes the stand taken by Karl Popper in his work on Objective Knowledge.

I'm planning more reflection (in German) on this issue in my weblog, especially related to the discussion following my talk and the feedback I've got in the coffee break.