Social Computing in Higher Learning Environments:
How Media, Tools, and Platforms Change Learners' Behavior

Editors
Bebo White, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, USA
Irwin King, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Philip Tsang, Caritas Institute of Higher Education, Hong Kong

You are invited to propose chapters for a book on Social Computing in Education. The book is planned to be published by Springer, Heidelberg, Germany in 2011.

With the advent of Web 2.0 and related technologies, Social Computing has become a new paradigm for the ways we communicate, learn, and educate.  Social Media such as Wikis, blogs, tweets, online groups and forums, podcasts, Web mashups, virtual worlds, social networking Web sites, recommender/evaluation systems, social tagging/bookmarking, knowledge sharing, and other related technologies are enabling novel ways that we are able to acquire, access, manipulate, process, retrieve, present, and visualize information in the teaching and learning space.  The social media for education has become dynamic, ubiquitous, distributed, real-time, collaborative, bottom-up, many-to-many, value-based, and personalized.

This volume seeks original research work on the use of social media and related technologies for education, the emerging applications of Web 2.0 as an educational platform, as well as the privacy, risk, security, and other pertinent policy issues associated in “Social Computing for Education 2.0.”

The proposed book will provide a current snapshot of unique, innovative, and effective uses of Social Media in education for teaching and learning. More specifically, the volume aims to explore in depth about the tools and platforms that are currently being used in a learning environment. Moreover, we intend to highlight upcoming cutting-edge systems to better the learning space.

The book chapters will follow a coherent theme in the use of social media in the teaching/learning context. However, each chapter in the book will explore in greater detail a different approach or methodology within that theme.

The relevant and important questions the book will address include:

• How does social media enrich learning and teaching experiences?
• What can be learned from current case studies of state-of-the-art Social Computing/media systems or platforms being used in the learning/teaching setting?
• What are the necessary policies to balance security, privacy, and risk issues in using social media for education?
• How can learning be integrated in a distributed and ubiquitous Social Computing environment?
• What methods can be used to assess and evaluate learning and teaching using social media?

• Web 2.0 techniques and Social Computing for learning (media sharing, media manipulation, conversational arenas, online games, virtual worlds/spaces, social networking, blogging, micro-blogging, podcasts, social bookmarking, recommender systems, collaborative editing, Wikis, RSS, mash-ups, etc.)
• Theory and modeling of Social Computing in education
• Technology and software of Social Computing for education
• Social educational system design and architectures
• Case studies, best practices, and demonstrations of social media in education
• Assessment and evaluation of Social Computing in education
• Benchmarks and experiments on Social Computing in education
• Quality and reliability of information and resources in social media
• Software for social learning and collaborative learning
• Mobile learning applications for Social Computing
• Semantic Web applications for d-learning, e-learning, and m-learning
• Virtual worlds/spaces for learning communities 
• Ubiquitous, mobile, distributed, and collaborative learning
• Integration of social learning spaces
• Social gaming/human computation for education
• Privacy, risk, security, and policy issues in education using social media

You are invited to submit an extended abstract of no more than 5 pages describing the focus of your chapter. The proposal should include but not limited to: title, abstract, section headings with summaries of your chapter.

Electronic submissions are required. Please email your chapter proposal or questions to Bebo White bebo@slac.stanford.edu with subject Springer-Chapter-Proposal.

Bebo White
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Stanford University
Menlo Park, CA 94025 

TBA