Many Students Loosely Joined: Social Software to

Support Learning

EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative Web Seminar

Terry Anderson, Ph.D.

Canada Research Chair in Distance Education

Overview

Setting the Context Affordances of the Web Emerging Pedagogies

Granularity of Social Learning 2.0 Social Learning 2.0 across:

Personal Learning Environments Formal education delivery Institutional learning

Design principles for educational social software

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Athabasca University, Alberta, Canada

* Athabasca University

Fastest growing university in Canada

34,000 students, 700 courses

100% distance education

Graduate and Undergraduate programs

Master & Doctorate – Distance Education

Only USA Regionally Accredited University in

Canada

Athabasca University

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Values

We can (and must) continuously improve the quality, effectiveness, appeal, cost and time efficiency of the learning experience.

Student control and freedom is integral to 21st Century life-long education and learning.

Education for elites is not sufficient for planetary survival

‘...one cannot understand an organization without trying to change it...’ Curt Lewin (http://www.solonline.org/res/wp/10006.html)

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The Net Changes Everything! Affordances of the Net, Net 2.0, e-learning

2.0, Semantic Web and related other acronyms: Content Communication Agents

(Anderson and Whitelaw, 2004)

New pedagogies

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Affordance 1. - Massive Amounts of Content

Any information, any format, anytime, anywhere

Customizable content Interactive content User created content Open access content

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A Tale of 3 books

Open Access

90,000 downloads

4 years after pub. - 6,000/month

350 hardcopies sold @ $50.00

Free at cde.athabascau.ca/online_book

Commercial publisher

934 copies sold at $52.00

Buy at Amazon!!

E-Learning for the 21st CenturyCommercial Pub.1200 sold @ $135.002,000 copies in Arabic Translation @ $8. 7

Content - conclusion

Abundant, cheap or free Need to learn to develop business models and

culture allowing us to share and re-use content Don’t build your value on your content - cost of

copying and distributing dropping to zero Content is necessary, but not sufficient, to create a

quality learning experience

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Affordance #2High Quality, Low Cost Communication Multi mode

Synchronous, asynch Text, audio and video A2A (avatar to avatar)

Stored, indexed and retrievable Reflective, emotive and cognitive Mobile, Embedded & Pervasive Learner, teacher, community and commercially

created

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Affordance #3 Agents

Google Alerts MeetingWizard RSS Athabasca

Freudbot AIML E-Advisor Are you ready for

AU? Agents

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Your Comments or Questions?

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Together create Social Software

Content

Communication

Agents

WIKI Blogs FaceBook

Del.icio.usFlickerFiltering

SecondLife Calendaring Geotracking

Learning

Email, Skype, IM

Learning Objects

Open Access Press

Google Alert

RSS

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www.slideshare.net/ccosmato/conferencing-on-the-cheap-with-web-2

Mashups by Chaz Maloney

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Challenge:Challenge:

To Create To Create Incentives to Incentives to Sustain Sustain Meaningful Meaningful ContributionContribution

The New Yorker September 12, 2005

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Pew/Internet "Teens and Social Media” 2006

Who is Using the Net?

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Choosing the right tool?

http://www.go2web20.net 2082 apps as of Feb. 18, 2008

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Taxonomy of the ‘Many’Dron and Anderson, 2007

GroupConscious membership

Leadership and organizationCohorts and paced

Rules and guidelinesAccess and privacy controls

Focused and often time limitedMay be blended F2F

Metaphor : Virtual classroom

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Group

NetworkShared interest/practice

Fluid membershipFriends of friends

Reputation and altruism drivenEmergent norms, structures

Activity ebbs and flowsRarely F2F

Metaphor: Virtual Community of Practice18

GroupNetwork

Collective‘Aggregated other’

Unconscious ‘wisdom of crowds’Stigmergic aggregationNo membership or rules

Augmentation and annotationthrough useData MiningNever F2F

Metaphor: Wisdom of Crowds

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Group Network

Social Learning 2.0

Dron and Anderson, 2007

Collective

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Social Learning

Each of us participates in Groups, Networks and Collectives.

Learning is enhanced by exploiting the affordances of all three sources of social learning.

Issues, memes, opportunities and learning activities arise at all three levels of granularity.

Tools are optimized for each level of granularity

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Social Learning Applications in Educational Contexts

Groups Networks Collectives

Personal Learning

Environments

Formal Education

Organizational Learning

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1. Formal Education and Groups:

Classes and cohort Increases:

completion rates achievement satisfaction

Same logistic challenges as for institutional, campus -based learning

Can operate ‘behind the garden wall’ to allow freedom for expression and development - refuge for scholarship

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Formal Learning and Groups

Longest history of research and study Need to optimize:

Social presence Cognitive presence Teaching presence (Communitiesofinquiry.com)

Established sets of tools – LMS Synchronous (video & net conferencing) Email

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Problems with Groups

Confining in time, space pace, & relationship

Often overly confined by teacher expectation and institutional control

Isolated from the world of practice

Do not lead to self directed lifelong learning

Paulsen 1993

Relationships

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Challenges of using informal social software tools for formal tasks

Control Support Privacy Assessment Ownership and perseverance

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Example: The Educational Blog

Structural characteristics: Multimedia Chronological order Web based, easy to edit

Networked Characteristics Linked to other sites Syndicated (RSS, Atom etc) Comments and Trackbacks– spammed

Pedagogical Reflective, personal, archival, communicative, public

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How are Blogs used today in Groups?

“You are required to post at least two messages to your blog and respond to the postings of at least two other enrolled students.

Please use your postings to address the issue discussed on pages 34-38 of your text.

Your post and responses will be assessed for 10% of your final grade

To protect your privacy, your blog is not accessible outside of the LMS and postings will be destroyed at the end of the course.”

Paraphrased from major UK university graduate school requirements28

2. Formal Education and Networks

Provides resources from which students’ extract and contribute information

In school one should learn to build, contribute to and manage one’s networks

Through exposure provides application and validation of information and skills developed in formal learning

Networks last beyond the course - basis for ongoing support and advise from alumni and professional communities

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Formal Learning with Networks

Each of us may belong to many networks Network use creates social capital Networks connect self-paced and independent

learners Network leadership arises in multiple formats

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Network Tools

Most web 2.0 apps including: Profiles: Finding significant others Blogging - outside the garden wall Resource recommendations finding highest quality

content (Slashdot, Diig, Cite-u-like) Scheduling meet-ups for study, debate,

collaboration WIKIs and other open collaboration tools Commercial Social Networking sites- Facebook

etc.31

Network Pedagogy

Connectivism Learning is network formation: adding new nodes,

creating new neural paths “It is not what you know, but who you know to ask.”

Siemens, G. (2007)

Learning as a tool to develop social capital Social capital and social relationships “enlarge the

concept of individualism to include the ability and obligation to work with others when the task demands it.” Edgar H. Schein, 1995

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TextText

Stepanyan, Mather & Payne, 2007

Elgg.org Network Tool Set

Network Pedagogy

Will Richardsonhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mghGV37TeK8

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3. Formal Education and Collectives

Collectives aggregate, then filter, compare, contrast and recommend.

Personal and collaborative search and filter for learning Smart retrieval from the universal library of resources – human

and learning objects Need to develop and practice skills and interest to easily

contribute to the collective (tagging, sharing whenever possible, leaving traces) (only 16% of users are taggers (Pew, 2005)

Allows discovery and validation of academic norms, values and paradigms

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Collective Tools

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Collective Example:Terry’s Store

From Collective, to network, to group 37

Explicit

Explicit recommender systems:

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Blog indices by topic, readers, value

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Digg Monitoring collective recommendations is real time

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Your Comments or Questions?

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Steven Warburton, 2007 42

Design Principles for Many Student Loosely Joined

Principle of Adaptability; Principle of Evolvability; Principle of Stigmergy Principle of Constraint, Principle of Parcellation; Principle of Scale Principle of Sociability Principle of Trust Principle of Connectivity Principle of Context

(Dron, 2007)43

Strategies for Social Software Adoption

Try a new tool every term Use the right tools for the right context Social software applications must:

Radically improve access, enjoyment and effectiveness of learning and teaching.

Must not significantly increase costs, while developing opportunity for new revenues

Must be visible, easy to use and accessible Be viral

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Conclusion: Benefits of Using Social Software tools and concepts

Lifelong learning skill Enhances involvement with and awareness of

learning process Creates legacy and real world artifacts Supports collaborative learning Supports reflective learning Meets expectations and competencies of ‘net

generation’ Increases integration with institution, teacher, other

students & larger communities

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“"He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever."

Chinese Proverb

Terry Anderson terrya@athabascau.ca

Blog: terrya.edubogs.org

Your comments and questions most welcomed!

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