Högskolan i Skövde

Farming is considered as an important area for a sustainable society, and the need for proper information and knowledge exchange among farmers through various forms of social learning processes has been addressed. Beside learning from each other face to face and sharing personal experiences of farming practices, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the form of Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) systems provides another possibility to share and exchange information and knowledge with other farmers. This work demonstrates the necessary functions needed for a future CSCW system for farmers, as a tool for social interaction and communication in agriculture, through which social learning is fostered. The purpose is to stimulate social learning among farmers so they will develop from passive readers to active contributors of information content in the proposed CSCW system, which in the long run may have a positive impact on the overall purpose of farming – increasing harvests. The main aim of this work is to stimulate social learning in agriculture, where farmers’ social online learning processes is stimulated via a CSCW system that has been developed and designed as a high-fi prototype, providing various functions that make it possible to communicate among farmers and other stakeholders. In order to o stimulate so-called reading farmers into actively contributing farmers in the proposed CSCW-system this work also provides some identified lessons learned. These lessons learned provide both design guidelines as well as suggested behavioral changes of farmers and farming organisations in order to foster the use of CSW systems a social interaction and social learning tools in farming practices.

Keywords; Agriculture, social learning, communication, CSCL, CSCW, ICT, contribute to content.