JCAL paper out – finally April 15, 2008

A long while ago, my colleague Thomas Ryberg and I started writing a paper about “strong” and “weak” ties in networked environments. Now, two years later, the paper is finally published in Journal of Computer Assisted Learning.

The paper is entitled “Networked identities: understanding relationships between strong and weak ties in networked environments”. Unfortunately, the paper is not available for free download, but here is a short abstract:

In this paper we take up a critique of the concept of Communities of Practice (CoP) voiced by several authors, who suggest that networks may provide a better metaphor to understand social forms of organization and learning. Through a discussion of the notion of networked learning and the critique of CoPs we shall argue that the metaphor or theory of networked learning is itself confronted with some central tensions and challenges that need to be addressed. We then explore these theoretical and analytic challenges to the network metaphor, through an analysis of a Danish social networking site. We argue that understanding meaning making and ‘networked identities’ may be relevant analytic entry points in navigating the challenges.

Read more about the special section on networked learning here.