What is Mixable?

Kyle Bowen — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 01:19:32 +0000

Nearly every first-year student uses social networking websites as a way to engage and communicate with their friends. Faced with a long-tail of options, students have largely embraced a common set of popular tools – making websites like Facebook the de facto standard. Taking advantage of the tools at hand, students now use these applications as a means to support their own learning by forming study groups or collaborating on class projects.

Because students come to social tools on their own, they are left to find creative ways to bridge the divide between their own personal learning environment and the institution. The widespread adoption and use of social networks creates an opportunity for Purdue to improve student success by establishing an environment that would help students build a support network through connecting with people and sharing content from their courses, learning communities, and friends.

Information Technology at Purdue recently developed a new system named ‘Mixable,’ that would enables students to build and share their personal learning environments using the social tools they are already familiar with. This system offers an aggregate interface living both inside and outside of Facebook; providing features designed to facilitate common tasks such as microblogging, document sharing, file sharing and bookmarking. Mixable uniquely blends the students own enrollment and learning community information to help build social connections within familiar tools – enabling connections between classmates, self-generated content, and courses. This system also serves as new platform for delivering future student technology services.

Impact
Engagement is a key aspect of any student’s academic success. Activities such as discussing coursework outside of class and working with other students on projects have a correlation with the student’s academic performance. Increasingly, students have been turning to social networks as a tool for enabling this discussion. In a 2008 ECAR study, nearly half of the students surveyed indicated that they used social networks as a means to communicate with classmates about course related topics. This illustrates that the same tools students use to manage their social life, they use to administer their own learning experience.

Mixable takes advantage of this trend by offering a simple way to connect people in the same learning community, class, or others who may have taken the same class in the past. By moving the conversation to places where students already live virtually, Purdue can enable out of class collaboration. In addition, Mixable creates an information channel within the channel – moving course related discussion out of the typical Facebook news feed, and placing it in a separate content stream shared by Mixable users. This divergence reduces typical social noise and makes it possible for students to communicate with users who may not already be Facebook friends, or users of Facebook at all.

The Weekend at Bernie’s Principle

Kyle Bowen — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 21:25:09 +0000

The Weekend at Bernie's Principle

Every movie is somebody’s favorite movie. We know this is true because Weekend at Bernies had a sequel – actually, it had two of them. So somebody must have liked it. And if somebody liked Weekend at Bernies, then there is a movie out there for everyone.

Some people might refer to this as the Long Tail Effect – which I always thought was a little too heady.

The Van Halen – Taylor Effect

Kyle Bowen — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 21:13:49 +0000

The Van Halen - Taylor Effect

Everyone is a fan of Van Halen or James Taylor and doesn’t know it. If you ask the average person if they are a fan, they will likely tell you, “no.” But if you play them one of their songs, then the would likely say, “That is James Taylor? That guy’s awesome.”

The Darth Vader Proxy

Kyle Bowen — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 21:09:55 +0000

The Darth Vader Proxy

Darth Vader would make an excellent study buddy. Think about it, the guy lives in his commencement robes – this is the kind of academic optimism that you search for in a study partner. What’s more, he typifies student classroom behaviors with his competitive yet help seeking attitude. Try and tell me that you have never uttered one of these Darth Vader lines with your study group. “Join me, and together we can rule…” or “If you’re not with me, then you’re my enemy” and “There is no escape. Don’t make me destroy you.“

Class Hack

What is Mixable?

The Weekend at Bernie’s Principle

The Van Halen – Taylor Effect

The Darth Vader Proxy