In this special issue of the journal E-Learning and Digital Media, we will examine the multiple ways in which P2P collaboration now undergirds changes in learning and education.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Peer-to-Peer Collaboration and Networked Learning; Editors of a Special Issue: Michael A. Peters, University of Illinois and Daniel Araya, University of Illinois

Developments in information and communications networks not only define globalization but are changing the format and density of the flows of knowledge, research and creativity. Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks have become a particularly important factor in this process. Serving as platforms for collaboration, P2P networks are now an important organizing architecture for economic and cultural innovation. Originating within the domain of computer science, P2P networks form robust informational and computational communities. Social networks like Limewire, Facebook, LinkedIn, flickr, Second Life, World of Warcraft, Wikipedia, Ning and YouTube are generating new models of production and consumption that are changing the rules of commercial industry. Moving beyond the one-to-many production seen in industrialism, P2P introduces many-to-many production.

Interest areas include:

– Learning Communities, Gaming and Digital Media Design – Digital Curriculum and Pedagogy – Creativity, Innovation and the Global Imaginary – Information Systems, P2P Networks and Collective Intelligence – Open Science, Open Learning and Open Innovation – Complexity and Nonlinearity – Educational Policy, Planning and Politics – Instructional Design and Learning Systems – Literacy, Language, and Multiliteracies

This Call for Papers asks contributors to provide papers of no more than 5,000 words (including references) exploring issues and concerns around the notion of ‘Peer-to-Peer’ Collaboration and Networked Learning. This special issue of E-Learning and Digital Media (http://www.wwwords.co.uk/ELEA) will be published in 2011.