Social software: Supporting
peer learning
Robert Fitzgerald
University of Canberra
ACODE 48 - 'Emerging Technologies: implications
for policy and practice’, 18 November 2008
1

The experience of university
• Complexities of balancing
study, work and play
• Time poor, reduced
presence
• Difficulties engaging with
university experience
(Krause, Hartley, James &
McInnis, 2005)
• Loss of sociability and a
related loss of social
production
2
Source: Flickr image by phxpma

Big ideas
3

Big ideas
4

Social Software
5
Source: eboy.com

6

Social Software Survey
(n = 2717)
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Social Software Survey
(n = 2717)
8

Social Software Survey
(n = 2717)
9

Social Software Survey
(n = 2717)
10

Social Software Survey
(n = 2717)
11

Pilot Projects
• Applied Ecology unit used
blogs for lab reports (UC)
• Blogs, wikis, social
bookmarking and social
media (QUT)
• Whole of course approach
using a University-wide
blogging platform (RMIT
University)
• MyToons as a digital learning
community for new media
(UC)
Source: Flickr image by 12 1
eleda

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14

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Network of interrelated del.icio.us bookmark tags, centred around the 'KCB201' tag

Mytoons
“It's the place where people
who really love animation - from
seasoned industry pros to rabid
animation fans - can upload and
share their creations and
animated favorites with the
entire world for free”
• ttp://www.mytoons.com/
h
• ttp://umwebejo.edublogs.org/
h
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0 - Not at all
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3 - Moderate
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or ltu
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as
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5 - Great extent
ss
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To what extent has your use of Mytoons improved…
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Findings
• There’s no [LMS] that does this, it’s five to ten years
away (Stephen Barrass)
• The ongoing success of an online community is
determined by usability and sociability (De Souza &
Preece, 2004)
• Nothing’s private on the internet. Even set to private, it’s not
private. Like a few weeks ago My Space was attacked and every
profile that was set to private with photos on it, all the photos got
leaked on to a BitTorrent site (Female student).
18

Students
• I find it’s a bit safer to learn from your peers because then you
don’t have to deal with the embarrassment of sticking your hand
up and saying, “Oh, I don’t know that” or you could just ask the
person next to you. (Female student)
• Also when you’re speaking to your peers you have a lot of
different opinions, because you’ve got a big group of people’s,
generally not going to be the way everyone’s going to agree with
the same thing. So you sort of get an all-round kind of deal,
which it’s good. (Female student)
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Findings
• University students need to learn new network and
software literacies to become digital citizens, and
learn how to better collaborate with each other and
the wider community
• Social software could provide students with
opportunities to engage with their peers in a discourse
that explores, interrogates and provides a
supplementary social ground for their in-class learning
20

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A big idea: Opening up education
• “Opening Up Education argues that we must develop not only
the technical capability but also the intellectual capacity for
transforming tacit pedagogical knowledge into commonly
usable and visible knowledge: by providing incentives for
faculty to use (and contribute to) open education goods, and by
looking beyond institutional boundaries to connect a variety of
settings and open source entrepreneurs.”
http://connect.educause.edu/taxonomy/term/731/0/feed
• Social Software: Learning about and learning to be
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More information
Dr Robert Fitzgerald, Associate Dean (Research)
Faculty of Education
University of Canberra
robert.fitzgerald@canberra.edu.au
http://mashedlc.edu.au
http://mathetic.info/ 23