Deploying social software in learning and teaching environments

deploying social software in learning and teaching environments: the implications for distance education
Dr Steven Warburton
King’s College London
[email_address]

distance learning – social software’s killer ap? (Anderson, T. 2005)
social software – distance learning's killer ap? (Downes, S. 2005)

social tools social bookmarks IRC blogs discussion fora social networks instant messaging wikis collaboration social recommendation Blogs are just one of a number of social tools

why social software and why in education?
social nature of learning
social-constructivism
situated learning
dialogue and negotiated meaning
collaboration, community and creativity
socio-technical and cultural changes
ambient technology, ubiquitous computing
shift from community to networks
web-natives, digital natives, net generation
web 2.0
read/write web -> consumer becomes producer
complexity, emergent behaviour and emergent classifications
the rise of social tools, sharing and syndication

blogs: individual, personal and informal
syntactical form:
chronological: they perform time
brief, frequent posts
open to comments
syndicated (rss)
linked (blogroll and trackback)
semantic content:
multiple classification schemes by content
filter vs. personal types

why blog?
internet blogging
self promotion
opinion
dating
community presence and participation
everyone else is, so why not?
educational blogging
what is the potential for emerging technologies in [distance] education?
how do we understand and negotiate the meaning of these tools?
do they support our underpinning educational values?
inherent tensions:
formal and informal
individual and group
freedom and censorship
autonomy and control
public and private
identity and trust
authentic and inauthentic

versatility of blogs
providing a rich set of writing activities: writing as a process of self discovery
supporting conversational learning
creating or augmenting social presence
encouraging reflective practice (through an inherent reflective, informal tone)
developing a ‘critical voice’
providing a record or portfolio of learning
developing a community of inquiry
creating learning networks, social networks
developing and understanding ones identity as a learner (autonomy and ownership)
tension between self and reader necessitates learning to trust and understand ones own perspectives

a case study a fully online distance learning MA in War Studies that attracts mature professionals from a variety of educational backgrounds

VLE – institutional space
bounded
content based
assessment driven
discussion (structured):
critical discourse -> critical thinking
blogs – personal space
open
dialogue driven
autonomous and reflective
aggregation -> community
journal metaphor -> learner identity
the online learning environment

tutor/course blog student blog student blog personal aggregator: “river of news” external ‘expert’ blogs community network

Questions?
will students blog?
how often will they blog?
how does this compare to internet or free-form blogging ( style and voice )?
can blogs facilitate community formation (through augmenting social presence ) ?
Framework:
Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2000) research instruments: content analysis [blogs], questionnaires and semi-structured interviews.

were blogs successful?
low threshold: easy to use both conceptually and in terms of technical usability
“ easier than falling off a banana boat.”
“ i also thought that the blogging was easy to use and an interesting experience as I never blogged before.”

on first analysis
a range of bloggers from enthusiastic (20%) to occasional (30%) to non existent (50%)
similar to other reported studies: Walker 2003; Brooks, Nichols and Pribe 2005; Kruger 2005; Ramsden 2006.
blogs contained indicators of social presence yet they were often marked by formal (and lengthy) commentaries on the course materials

tensions

finding purpose?
“ i have never blogged before. I knew that there are such a sites and tools, but it was useless for me in my normal life. I don’t have time to write something, what is not needed by anybody.”
the pragmatic student approach
“ i, like many others in the program, have a very busy schedule and tend to prioritize what needs tending as not all of it can be done right away. The blog, in comparison to the reading, discussion, essays and group projects, seems to be the lower priority. "

private and public realms
“ i prefer to use the discussion boards. It's a privacy thing - I'm not comfortable broadcasting my thoughts on the web through my blog.”
“ no, not really, it's just getting over the creapiness [sic] of the entire blog thing”

students struggle with blogs
time and assessment pressures:
drive pragmatic decision making in using blogs. students are strategic in their learning approaches
informality:
authors are uneasy with the confessional and tone of blogs (impression management, see Goffman 1959)
genre:
are they academic notebooks, diaries or a social space for free expression?
[educational] context:
implies assessment, risk, exposure - disrupting the balance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors that appear to drive ‘internet bloggers’

understandings

contextual negotiation and interpretation
blogs (indeed social software) mean different things to different people in different cultural contexts
the utility of blogs (like the internet cf. Hine 2000) is created through a process of negotiation and interpretation in specific contexts of use
blogging evangelists often draw on the rhetoric of the internet – democracy and emancipation
yet we need to understand the specificities or the demands of education i.e. examine technology in use
Hine, C. (2000) Virtual ethnography. Sage London.

learning spaces: institution <-> internet
student appropriation of blogs at Warwick
institutional but they blog about politics and each other -> flame wars, problems with censorship arise
Warwick blogs exist at the intersection of educational and internet space
blurring of formal and informal boundary
within this context how are these tools used?
personal commentaries, shared planning, opinions/critiques/rants, social contact and self identity
finding value in blogging is not straightforward - despite the optimism for their use in education

genre analysis and blogs
“ genres are the intellectual scaffolds on which community-based knowledge is constructed”
misunderstanding blogging as genre
“ i don't quite get the reason behind the Blog. I write my own notes as I go through the course, mostly mind maps of either the course material or ideas.”
“ no. I haven't distilled the point of blogging yet with regard to this course.”
(Berkenkotter and Huckin, 1995)

solutions?
blogging as remediation:
“ the language of cultural interfaces is largely made up from elements of other already familiar cultural forms” (Manovich, 2001)
familiarise students with the genre by relating blogs to antecedents such as (learning) journals, diaries and note-cards
force purpose:
remove the discussion boards (remove VLE?) and dispel confusion over learning spaces (personalised learning approach?)
negotiate purpose:
direct and guide through example (tutor blogs, tone and style)
engage students in articulating and defining use
encourage students to move from lurking -> active participation
uncover the selfish motives for blogging
we need to uncover how students assemble the various technical possibilities that add up to their own internet or educational experience
blogs become portfolios and part of the lifelong learning agenda

Published in The New Yorker September 12 th , 2005 By Alex Gregory the end
Steven Warburton
King’s College London
[email_address]
http://warburton.typepad.com

http://app.lms.unimelb.edu.au	10
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http://moduleblog.nus.edu.sg	1
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Deploying social software in learning and teaching environments

by Steven Warburton

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