This document discusses the 'students as learning designers' approach, which empowers students to take control of their learning through the use of social media tools. It outlines findings from two studies where students engaged in creating their own learning designs, demonstrating the potential for deeper engagement and collaboration. The research emphasizes the importance of scaffolding and support from teachers to enable effective student-led learning experiences.

1. In-depth
Students as learning designers:
Using social media to scaffold the experience
Authors The ‘students as learning designers’ approach challenges transmission models of peda-
gogy and requires teachers to relinquish some control to their students so that they
Leanne Cameron
might have the space to experiment and discover how to learn.
Leanne.Cameron@acu.edu.
au
This paper outlines the findings of two studies that allowed students to explore new
Miriam Tanti ways of learning, where they were encouraged to take responsibility for their own
miriam.tanti@acu.edu.au
learning, and outlines what potential social media tools may have in facilitating this
Faculty of Education,
experience. These projects demonstrate that when students are empowered to design
Australian Catholic
University their own learning activities, they can deeply engage in the learning process.
Tags 1. Introduction
students as learning It has been stated that the field of learning design holds the promise of providing teachers
designers, social media, with a framework that will enable them to design high quality, effective and innovative learn-
participatory media ing experiences for their students (Cameron, 2009). By creating the possibility of deconstruct-
ing their existing teaching strategies; aiding reflection on their own practice; documenting
and scaffolding innovative learning activities; and sharing and reusing expert practice, the
field of learning design has the potential to improve the quality of teaching throughout the
higher education sector. Traditionally, the key stakeholder in the learning process, the stu-
dent, is not given a central design role, however, with the advent of web 2.0 tools, it has
never been easier to provide students with the opportunity to contribute to their own learn-
ing. Many students have already chosen to use social media, eg. Facebook, Twitter, for their
own communications and social interaction (November, 2011). In this paper, we report on
what happens when students are empowered to design their own learning, and how best to
scaffold the design process using the social media tools with which they are already familiar.
2. Overview
The paper describes two separate, but related, studies. The “Students as Learning Design-
ers Project” (Cameron & Gotlieb, 2009), involved five teachers and 165 students from five
elementary schools. A key element of the project was that the students were asked to take a
significant amount of responsibility in planning for, and creating, their own learning. During
the project, the students produced 230 learning designs. Research data was collected from
teachers and students via a pre-project survey and video recorded post-project interviews.
Throughout the project, the teachers took a problem-based learning approach and it be-
came quickly apparent that the students required significant scaffolding, particularly in the
early stages of the process.
In the subsequent project, “Scaffolding Student Learning Designers”, the potential of social
media to provide the identified need for scaffolding was explored. The support received by
students designing their learning, both from their teachers and their peers, was analysed.
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2. In-depth
This study involved 206 Masters students at the Australian Several studies indicate that the features of social media tools
Catholic University in their first year of study. Data was collected may be used for educational purposes (Boling, et al., 2008;
from students’ Tweets, blog entries and a post-project online Glass & Spiegelman, 2008; Haramiak, Boulton, & Irwin, 2009;
survey. Kajder & Bull, 2004; Martindale & Wiley, 2005; Quible, 2005;
Ray, 2006; Wassell & Crouch, 2008). Researchers argue that so-
3. Objectives cial media tools, namely blogs and microblogs can be used as
effective instructional tools in which teachers and students can
The initial project, “Students as Learning Designers Project”, communicate with each other and make connections between
was designed to determine the educational impact of students content and pedagogy (Overby, 2009; Ray, 2006). Students can
to creating and sharing their own learning designs. It aimed to: also utilise the technologies to collaborate and share their re-
• Provide an opportunity for students to have ownership sources.
over the design and creation of their learning experiences;
In the learning design environment in the “Scaffolding Student
• Determine the key teaching and learning opportunities af-
Learning Designers” study, students were not merely using the
forded by student authoring projects;
social media tools to receive information: they were engaging in
• Analyse the depth and variety of the designs provided by
a constructive learning design process with both their teachers
students when access to authoring software is provided;
and their peers.
• Evaluate the tools that could provide an efficient means of
involving students in learning.
4. Students as learning designers
In the second project, “Scaffolding Student Learning Designers”,
the same project design was employed, but an additional aim As learning designers, students are given the opportunity to
was included: be creative and pursue their goals actively (Lui & Hsiao, 2002).
The initial project demonstrated that students are able to make
• Analyse how social media tools were employed to scaffold
decisions (with varying degrees of guidance) about both con-
the learning design process.
tent (what to learn) and pedagogy (how to learn it), (Reigeluth,
In each project, students and teachers were asked to look be- 1996).
yond their current approach to teaching and learning and ana-
Designing learning is a complex task. Caver, Lehrer, Connell &
lyse the attitudes and conceptions that inform that approach.
Erickson (1992) identified five categories of critical thinking
The project-based learning strategy adopted required students
skills they observed students exhibiting when they were design-
to take a more active role in planning and creating their own
ing learning environments and/or tools. These thinking skills
learning. Understanding how they might do this was a complex
were also observed to be taking place in these projects:
and multi-faceted problem.
• Project management;
Students generally understood how to structure a basic learning
• Research;
task, eg. provide some information and then check learner un-
• Organisation and representation;
derstanding using questions. However, they often needed lots
• Presentation; and
of support in understanding the relationship between the learn-
• Reflection.
ing activities and the pedagogy.
When students were given the opportunity participate in a dis-
It was not just a matter of helping the students think up relevant cussion with the researchers in their role as learning design-
and authentic learning tasks, their teacher’s role was to provide ers (with equal status with their teachers), they rose to meet
students with carefully considered scaffolds that enabled them the challenge and provided insightful comments, eg. How can
to achieve beyond what they could as individuals with the re- groups be used to pull together individuals of similar of different
sources before them. In the “Scaffolding Student Learning De- interest?; What constitutes a ‘good’ answer?; how and why we
signers” Project, the potential of social media tools to scaffold provide feedback.
this experience was examined.
The table below most effectively summarises the advantages
of using students as designers of learning and it also outlines
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3. In-depth
a number of disadvantages, some of which that the teachers in 5. The Teacher’s Role
this project also discussed in the post-project interview.
The presence of the teacher was clearly evident throughout the
initial “Students as Learning Designers Project” project. Initially
Instructional the research team set criteria with the students about what
Advantages to Disadvantages to
Design makes a good learning design but the teachers needed to have
Students Students
Considerations
further discussions with students to identify where they hadn’t
Collaboration Can learn from each Only as strong as completely understood the criteria, or didn’t know how to de-
other. the weakest link.
sign to meet the challenge.
Synergy results from Too many chiefs,
2 minds working not enough It was noted that for those students who were not autonomous
together. Indians.
learners, it was really important for the teacher to scaffold the
Can share workload & Difficult for some learning activities so the students were able to achieve and fo-
responsibilities “Many students to deal
hands make small with responsibility cus on learning the meacognitive and communication skills nec-
work” for leadership essary for this type of work. The teachers needed to be able to
Major amounts identify gaps in the students’ skills and knowledge, and provide
of time are scaffolding to help get the students to the next level.
necessary.
In the latter “Scaffolding Student Learning Designers” project,
Relevance Empowers learner If it’s the wrong explicit teacher presence was intentionally withheld from the so-
to connect theory & track, it’s a waste
hypotheses to actual/ of time. cial media environment. The students were aware their tweets
practical context. and blog entries were public so their teachers could read them
Adds realism to at any time, however, the teachers did not make posts them-
learning process. selves. This was a conscious effort on the part of the teachers
Provides pride in to encourage peer support, which was indeed what occurred.
ownership of product
Allows for constructive The value of scaffolding during the design process became
learning evident in the initial project. The concept of scaffolding is de-
rived from cognitive psychological research. It is defined as a
Learner control Encourages diversity. Can produce off-
“social interaction that a knowledgeable participant can create,
Encourages multiple task results.
by means of speech, supportive conditions in which the novice
approaches to Lack of direction
solutions. can occur when can participate in, and extend, current skills and knowledge to
losing sight of higher levels of competence (Greenfield, 1984 as quoted by Do-
Allows for more
sophisticated objectives nato, 1994).
approaches. Procrastination can
result. According to Wood, Bruner & Ross (1976), scaffolded help is
Encourages self-
confidence. characterised by six features:
Allows control of own • Recruiting interest in the task;
pace & time
• Simplifying the task;
Technological Provides advance May intimidate the • Maintaining pursuit of the goal;
preparation notice of content, less well informed • Marking critical features and discrepancies between what
context, and or skilled. has been produced and the ideal solution;
applications to be May get lost & • Controlling frustration during problem-solving, and
used. overwhelmed
• Demonstrating an idealized version of the act to be per-
Increases familiarity & by “information
ease with technology. overload.” formed.
Donato (1994) reports that peer collaboration provides the
Table 1: Advantages and Disadvantages to Students as Designers and same opportunity for scaffolded help as does that of the expert/
Teachers (Murphy, Harvell, Sanders & Epps, 1999)
novice relationship. It is often assumed that scaffolding only oc-
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4. In-depth
curs in the presence of an identifiable expert and that this assist- In order for the students to design their own learning activities,
ance is unidirectional, that is from the teacher to the student. the teachers had to relinquish some control. This resulted in
their students being:
In the initial “Students as Learning Designers Project” project
teachers sometimes saw a need to “formalise the informal” to • Given the initiative;
realise the potential benefits of peer learning so that all stu- • Allowed to choose from a diversity of sound methods;
dents could benefit from it, not just those who were already • Work in teams on authentic, real-world tasks;
proficient learners. For example, the teachers provided criteria • Utilise the features of advanced technologies; and
for the learning designs, taught metacognive and communica- • Allowed to persevere until they reached appropriate
tion skills, provided feedback on the learning designs and pro- standards (Reigeluth, 1996).
vided some instruction on the use of the technology. There is no doubt the students were actively engaged, however,
just being allowed to do something that is not a usual part of
Teachers often think that what they do is necessarily more im-
formal learning, and/or being recognised for creating some-
portant for student learning that other activities in which they
thing clever, is enough to keep students motivated and on task
engage. Although the importance of the teacher was clearly
(Prensky, 2007). Hence novelty may have been a factor for the
demonstrated in both projects, teachers had to be careful not
high level of student motivation observed.
to place themselves in the position of mediating all the students
needed to know. This may not only create unrealistic expecta- Additionally, both projects observed similar student behaviour
tions, but teachers can potentially de-skill their students by pre- to that reported by Liu & Rutledge (1997), and that was that
venting them from effectively learning from each other (Boud while students were highly motivated in many respects and
et al, 2001). were on task, the critical design skills of planning and time man-
agement were not easy for them to acquire.
6. Encouraging Student Engagement
Throughout both projects, the teachers and students devel- 7. Learning with Social Media
oped a highly engaging, customised learning environment that These results of the initial “Students as Learning Design-
fostered student independence, initiative, teamwork, thinking ers Project” were impressive but what emerged during the
skills, metacognitive skills and diversity. Within this environ- study was that students required timely and effective support
ment, the students collaborated to design effective learning throughout the learning design process. Hence the search be-
activities. Their design task required them to use higher or- gan for tools to scaffold students’ learning without diminishing
der thinking processes and reflection, not just the lower order the value of peer interaction and support that had been wit-
thinking skills normally used when they are simply required to nessed in the initial study.
reproduce knowledge.
The value of a blog to record work-in-progress and as a reflec-
Kimber & Wyatt-Smith (2006) cite eight strategies to foster deep tion tool is well documented (Dawson, Murray, Parvis & Pater-
learning and encourage active engagement with students. All of son, 2005; JISC, 2008). Blogging often increases student partici-
these were observed: pation in reflective activity, improves student engagement and
• Independent learning, negotiated between student and can change the dynamics of face-to-face sessions.
teacher;
However Twitter emerged as the social media tool of choice
• Personal development;
with which to provide scaffolding advice. Doggett (2009) out-
• Problem-based learning;
lines nine reasons why Twitter might be beneficial in an educa-
• Explicit reflection by students on their learning;
tional setting. Our project confirms that Twitter was an invalu-
• Independent group work;
able tool in our project.
• Learning by doing;
• Developing learning skills; and Using Twitter, students were able to source a wide range of
• Project work. views and resources from their peers anywhere, any time; share
ideas, thoughts, reflections and support and challenge each
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5. In-depth
other. The question was often asked, “What can I do to make design, discover how to learn and to deeply engage in the learn-
this better?” and they frequently got instant feedback. The 140 ing process. Additionally, the paper outlined the potential social
character limit was a challenge for some in this context but it media tools have to facilitate this experience. In our projects
provided a discipline that was beneficial in many cases. students were not merely using the social media tools to receive
information: they were engaging in a constructive learning de-
The students excelled at picking up the new technology in dif-
sign process with both their teachers and their peers.
ferent and interesting ways and the teachers found they learnt
from the students in this area. This also helped create an envi-
ronment where the control of the learning process was more
student-centred.
8. The Findings References
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