The document discusses using social media and microblogging platforms for educational purposes and assessment. It describes Cirip.eu, an educational microblogging platform with 50,000 users. Cirip.eu allows public and private groups, communication via SMS, polls, multimedia embedding, and analytics. Metrics for assessment on Cirip.eu include popularity, influence, network coagulation, exposure index, and geographical distribution. The document argues that traditional assessment does not work for social media work and most universities lack guidance for assessing social media in education.

1. Assessment in microblogging enhanced courses
Carmen Holotescu Mirella Mioc Gabriela Grosseck
University Politehnica/ Timsoft University Politehnica West University
Timisoara, Romania
11th WSEAS International Conference on
DNCOCO12 Data Networks, Communications, Computers
Malta - Sept, 7-9, 2012

2. Social Media and
Microblogging as new trends in
education
Overview of the projects for
Social Media assessment
Cirip.eu – an educational
microblogging platform
Set of microblogging metrics
Conclusions
image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinhoypaco

3. The activity, participation
and interaction of
students on different
social media platforms
during courses cannot be
assessed or marked by
using traditional
assessment strategies.
Also most university
don't offer assessment
procedures guidance
related to identification,
ownership, safety,
privacy and recording-
keeping of such Web 2.0
SOCIAL LEARNING work produced for
assessment.
becomes formal

4. Web2.0 / social networks have great impact
in collaborative / social learning ( eLearning2.0 )
RSS/blogs-2004, podcast–2005, vlog–2006, video–2007
microblogging-2008-2012, augmented reality
location based applications - 2010-2012

5. Challenging factors for assuring quality assessment
strategies and practices
- the content can be
collaboratively created not only
with peers enrolled in the same
course, but also with external
learners and contributors, and can
be distributed on different
platforms too;
- each student' work has to be
identified, also safety, privacy and
recording-keeping have to be
assured;
- issues of copyright and
ownership have to be taken into
account;
- peer and collaborative
Enhancing teaching & learning using Social Media - from
assessment have to be integrated. Handbook of Emerging Technologies in Education
George Siemens, Peter Tittenberg ltc.umanitoba.ca/wikis/etl

6. Overview of the projects for Social Media assessment
1. Gray, K., Thompson, C., Sheard,
J., Clerehan, R., Hamilton, M..,
Students as Web 2.0 authors:
Implications for assessment
design and conduct. Australasian
Journal of Educational
Technology. 26, 2010.
2. Gray, K., Waycott, J., Clerehan,
R., Hamilton, M., Richardson, M.,
Sheard, J., Thompson, C., Web 2.0
authoring tools in HE learning and
teaching: New directions for
assessment and academic
integrity, 2010.
3. Tinoca L., Assessment 2.0,
2011. Presentation at
JESS3 Labs The Geosocial Universe 2.0 http://www.slideshare.net/luistin
Comparison between the total amount of registered users oca/assessment-20-10291238.
with the percentage of people accessing the sites via mobile
http://jess3.com/geosocial-universe-2

7. MICROBLOGGING:
What is it? And why should I care?

8. Microblogging is a new form of blogging, with brief text updates of 140
characters, via Web, SMS, email, IM or 3rd party applications, which allows
real-time interactions between users.

9. Microblogging is a collaborative technology
photo: http://media2.lelombrik.net/13501-14000/13845.jpg

10. Diagrammr at diagrammr.com/edit?key=dy4NKMc8XsZ embedded
in the note at cirip.ro/status/1644841

11. Microblogging platforms used in education
photo: http://www.heikkironkko.com/images/yolehti_jaiku.jpg

12. Overview of the Microsphere Timeline
Mar 2006 Oct 2007 Dec 2007 Jan 2008 Mar 2008 Jul 2008 Sep 2008
4 platforms in Tops 100 Tools for Leaning 2009-2011: Twitter, Cirip, Yammer, Edmodo
Elizabeth Koh, An overview of microblogging, http://www.slideshare.net/elizabethkoh/an-overview-of-microblogging, slide 16

13. From Grosseck,Holotescu “Academic research in 140 characters and more”
http://slideshare.net/ggrosseck

14. Social
twitter networking
in 140
characters
 The most popular microblogging system
 Launched in July, 2006
 Robust, elegant and simple
 More than 500 million users
 Numerous mash-ups
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44124372363@N01/2417123304/sizes/o

15. Twitter educational uses:
Classroom community
Collaboration
Project Management
Assessing opinion
Conference / research
Virtual classroom
Learning experiences
Personal Learning Network
Reference services

16. Cirip.eu - a microblogging platform specially designed for education;
launched in March, 2008, by Timsoft, a Romanian company specialized in
eLearning and mobile applications
- 50000 users
- interface in Romanian, English, German
- Nominated by UNESCO Romania for
"UNESCO King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa
Prize for the Use of ICTs in Education" -
April, 2012
- Finalist at Seedcamp Zagreb, Jan 2010
- In Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009

17. Facilities Cirip.eu (1)
• public and private groups Cirip.eu TUTORIAL
(courses, internal training,
projects, events, internal
communication, service,
family, hobby, etc);
• group communication via SMS
• polls, quizzes – online or via SMS
• feeds monitoring
via SMS / sites / blogs /
social networks / search feeds
• statistics, visualizations, tags.

18. Facilities Cirip.eu (2)
social network around multimedia objects
multimedia objects embedded in messages (part of the communication flow,
created/recreated, openess to (small) OERs - Weller, Martin (2010)):
- livestreaming,
- images (flickr, tinypic),
- audio (eok, trilulilu, deezer, blip.fm, vocaroo, mp3),
- (live) video (youtube, dotsub, vimeo, screencastle, screenjelly, screenr,
220.ro, myvideo),
- presentations/learning design (slideshare, capzles, voicethread, flowgram,
photopeach, picasa,
notaland, prezi, diagrammr, mindomo, mindmeister, spicynodes),
- documents (odf, odt, pdf, doc, xls, txt, ppt, google docs/forms/spreadsheets)

19. Educational uses
information and knowledge management
courses enhancement
delivering entire online courses
learning from the stream
collaborative projects in universities
communities of practice
ePortfolios Social networks
social LMS. Feeds
Users
Personal Learning Environments ( Networks ) - PLE/PLN

20. Learning contexts on Cirip.eu

22. Course elements:
collaborative
announcements exercises
modules -
LOM/SCORM
learning from the
objects
stream
polls/quiz/ multimedia
comments via messages
SMS (f2f)
Cirip as a social
validations - network of
interactions msLMS (mobile
with social Learning
users/experts/ Management
groups Systems)

23. Set of microblogging metrics on cirip.eu
For the formative and summative assessment of students activity and learning
communities coagulation on microblogging platforms:

popularity: relation between the number of followers of a user and the number of messages
sent

influence: based on number of followers and distribution of own messages (referenced or
resent)

coagulation index: the covering / density of the network, the conversational coefficient, the
reciprocity and the relevance

exposure index: set of the discussed elements, taking into consideration the topics approached
by a person on her / his microblog

geographical distibution: analyses and exposes in a graphical form the signs of our online
presence, thus practically drawing up a social map under continuous expansion, showing in
detail the ways in which we interact and expose ourselves in a public space
temporal distribution: messages distribution on time

online social presence: type and quality of messages.


24. The Network section of a
microblog offers
information about the
community developed
around that user:
- the followees;
- the groups followed;
- the users who follow
the current one.

25. The Network section of an
user / group displays
statistics, which facilitate
the analyze on various
research directions:
- the activity
- the relations formed
- the interests
- the means of
participation
- the content of messages.

26. Conclusions
The integration of social media, in particular
microblogging, in academic courses demands a
new pedagogy of the teaching and learning
process and a rethinking of student
assessment.
“It is not only about bringing into education a set
of new tools and technologies; it is about a change
in the learning ethos. And the way in which such
learning is assessed needs to be consistent with
this change in learning philosophy” [Summary report
on the Workshop Assessing Learning in a Digital World. Online
Educa Conference Berlin, 2010]
The microblogging metrics defined for the
Cirip.eu educational microblogging platform
can be applied both for summative and
formative assessment, and can be adapted for
other microblogging applications used in
education. image from
http://www.flickr.com/photos/neilsingapore

27. Thank you!
Carmen Holotescu
cirip.ro/u/cami13
twitter.com/cami13
Mirella Mioc
Cirip.ro/u/mirella
Gabriela Grosseck
cirip.ro/u/gabriela
twitter.com/ggrosseck