Heli Aramo-Immonen, Jari Jussila and Jukka Huhtamaki.

1. Visualizing Informal Learning
Behavior from Conference
Participants Twitter Data
Heli Aramo-Immonen1, Jari Jussila2, Jukka Huhtamäki3,
Tampere University of Technology,
1 Industrial Management in Pori Unit
2 Department of Information Management and Logistics
3 Intelligent Information Systems Laboratory (IISLab)
This paper was introduced in
TEEM2014 International ACM-conference in Salamanca, Spain

2. Overview of the study
• The aim of this research was to explore the
informal learning behavior in project context
especially by analyzing and visualizing
informal learning behavior from conference
participants Twitter data
• Case study
– Project of organizing the CMAD2014 (Community
Manager Appreciation Day) conference held during
27 January 2014 in Hämeenlinna, Finland
– Tweets from the registered participants two weeks
before the conference
– 225 people participated in CMAD2014 during the
day
cmad.fi
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3. Community of Practice
• A community of practice is a collection of
people who engage on an ongoing basis in
some common endeavor. (Eckert, 2006)
• Organizations are made up of communities of
practice
• If organizational learning is to take place,
then Informal learning in communities needs
to be stimulated. (Ropes, 2010)
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4. Theoretical discussion
• Concepts of informal and formal learning,
• Activity theory based informal expansive
learning,
• Internal and external memory aids,
• Motivation to learn
• Context of communities of practice as
informal learning environments
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5. Informal Learning
• Icinformal learners usually set their own
learning objectives.
• They learn when they feel a need to know.
• The proof of their learning is their ability to do
something they could not do before.
• Informal learning is often a pastiche of small
chunks of observing how others do things,
asking questions, trial and error, sharing
stories with others, and casual conversation.
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According to García-Peñalvo, Colomo-Palacios and Lytras (2012),

6. Activity theory
• According to the socio-cultural historical
activity theory, there has to be a triggering
action, such as a conflictual questioning of
the existing standard practice in the
organization in order to generate expansive
learning
• Expansive learning produces culturally new
patterns of activity.
Engeström, Y, (2000)
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7. Expansive Learning
• In Twitter communities is the freedom to be
critical concerning contemporary ways of
doing things.
• In other words, individuals do tend to criticize
and express their feelings more easily in
social media than in face-to-face contact.
• This could be trigger for a change in
organization.
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8. Motivation to Learn
• An individual moves through a number of
stages in the process of becoming learning-oriented
(Bucler, 1996; Koskinen & Aramo-Immonen 2008)
1. Ignorance
2. Awareness
3. Understanding
4. Commitment
5. Enactment
6. Reflection
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9. Assessment of how does learning motivation stages
differ in online and face-to-face informal learning
environments. Based on our observation during this
study. (online/face to face is marked in the table X=exists
and - =does not exist)
Motivation
stages
Before
conference
During conference After conference
Ignorance x / - - / - x / -
Awareness x / - x / x x / x
Understanding - / - x / x - / x
Commitment x / x x / x - / x
Enactment - / - - / - - / x
Reflection - / - - / - x / x
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10. Top 5 hashtags that CMAD2014 participants used during
two weeks before the conference day. Interactive version
is available: http://bit.ly/chashtags
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11. Hashtag metrics of people tweeting during two weeks
before the CMAD2014 conference day. Interactive
visualization available: http://bit.ly/hcmatrix
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12. Hashtag metrics
• In the matrix the discussions are clustered
based on the choice of sorting parameter:
volume, partition and total number of co-occuring
tweets.
• From the co-occurrence of hashtags matrix,
and sorting by partitions, we identified 7
larger different partitions, representing 7
different subgroups of discussions inside the
community of community managers.
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13. Figure 3. Interactive visualization of people tweeting and
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their hashtags during two weeks before the conference
day. Interactive visualizations is available:
http://bit.ly/cnetwork

14. Interactive Visualization
• The figure 3 can be used by people to find
people with similar interest, to network with
and share knowledge even before the
conference.
• For the organizers the figure 3 gives clues
which people should be e.g. seated at same
tables at lunch to generate fruitful further
discussions
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15. Propositions
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• Proposition 1: Discussions in social media network can
perform as virtual informal collaborative learning
environments.
• Proposition 2: Physical informal learning environments
can be build based on information gained from
interactive visualization of people’s behaviour in social
network before and during the event.
• Proposition 3: Before event virtual discussions can
increase the motivation to learn informally during the
conference.

16. CONTACT
Heli Aramo-Immonen, heli.aramo-immonen@tut.fi
Twitter: @AramoHeli, LinkedIn, Facebook
Blogi: http://heliaramoimmonen.wordpress.com/
Jari J. Jussila, jari.j.jussila@tut.fi
Twitter: @jjussila
Jukka Huhtamäki jukka.huhtamaki@tut.fi
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17. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research is sponsored by Tekes – the Finnish Funding
Agency for Technology and Innovation (Projects “Soila”; Innovative
Value Creation and Business Models of Social Media in B2B Networks,
and “Reino”; Relational Capital for Innovative Growth Companies).
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