Slides of my talk at YTU ELT Symposium

1. Lurking in the interconnected
world: Turning lurking into
learning opportunities
BEYZA YILMAZ
İstanbul,2012
http://byilmaz.edublogs.org
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0
Unported License.
To view a copy of this
license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.

2. You don’t need to take notes. I have
a present for you :)
http://learningbylurking.blogspot.com

4. OUTLINE
Definition of Lurking
Reasons
Information Overload /Learning Communities
Strategies for Creating Learning Opportunities
Useful Tools and Applications
Conclusions

5. How do you define
lurking?

6. "...reading discussions on board, newsgroup, chatroom,
file sharing, social networking site, listening to people in
VOIP calls such as Skype or other interactive system, but
rarely or never participating actively.
(Nonnecke & Preece, 2000)
"Lurkers make up over 90% of online groups."

7. Participants' lurking definitions

8. Where did this topic come from?

9. Participant 18: I incidentally became a member
4 years ago. I was active during BAW2007
but then for several years Iurked mostly. I
have become a bit more involved this year for
research purposes but I admit that getting
involved in this community ve impacted my
learning and teaching to a great extent that I
always felt like I am learning a great deal
even at the times I lurk. This is the reason
why I chose to stay as a member in this
community.
(Yılmaz, 2012)

10. Beyza the lurker
Why?
What did I miss?
blog posts
online events
webinars
tweets
email exchanges
chances to interact with my pln

11. Lurking = Learning ?

12. Reflection on Your Lurking Experience
1. What makes you feel that you are lurking in an online
community your PLN?
2. Why do you lurk?
3. How do you feel when you lurk?
4. Do you think staying behind is beneficial? If yes, how do
you feel you benefit from lurking? If no, what do you miss
by not participating?
5. What strategies or web 2.0 tools do you use to avoid and
compensate for staying behind in an online community?

13. LEARNING IN THE NETWORKED
WORLD

14. Communities of Practice
Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991)

15. Roles and interactions of members of a
community
downloaded from http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcleesfo/164496007/lightbox/

16. Wonders of the Internet
for Teacher Development
Teacher Development Communities
PLNs
Webinars
Discussion Lists
Others

17. Online Teacher Development
Opportunuties

18. and much more!!!

20. Reasons for Lurking
having
lack of nothing
being busy
confidence interesting to
say
preferred
online lack of
lack of interest learning attention
styles

21. Is it a bad thing to stay behind?

22. Participants' Feelings about
Lurking
POSITIVE FEELINGS NEGATIVE FEELINGS
self conscious not feeling connected
aware
useful
fine
informative
-

23. Lurkers' Opinions
"I don't really feel I miss what because I
think lurking has its place."
"It can be, can always learn from others."

24. " I'm a very sociable person and learn
better when I participate actively.
When i don't i feel I learn less and
enjoy less. But over the last few years
I have benefited a lot from lurking,
some kind of 'how-to' tweet, blog,
comment etc. I still read blogs without
commenting on them and I learn a
lot."

25. "I don't always feel that I am missing
anything by lurking -- especially if I
don't have anything new or valuable
to contribute."

26. "I think online personality is similar to real-life
personality. I'm a little shier and so only
speak if I really feel what I have to say is
valuable. I feel others speak because they
like the sound of their own voice, which
makes for a cluttered conversation with the
own-voice-lover not fully listening or prepared
to listen."

27. Strategies to Turn
Lurking Into Learning
Opportunuties

28. Strategies of the participants
• reading topic lines of messages and saving
the most interesting ones
• going over the information or messages and
having info about them
• making as many questions as they can
• curating
• filtering
• tagging
• using rss feeds
• using social media

29. tagging
recordings
Rss Feeds
filtering

30. What are these strategies related to?
categorizing
filtering
retrieving for further use
interacting

31. Useful Apps & Tools for Lurkers

32. TWITTER & FACEBOOK
POWER

33. Retweet

35. Photo taken from http://www.webadvantage.net/webadblog/wp-content/content-curation-tools.jpg

36. RSS FEEDS

37. Social Bookmarking

38. Digital Curation
pinterest scoopit

39. Google Drive

41. Conclusions
Lurking is not a very bad thing at all and it can
be turned into learning opportunuties by
• interacting with PLN members,
• staying organized for filtering and retrieving
information.

42. There is no need to be
afraid.

43. References
Ridings, C.; Gefen, D.; Arinze, B. (2006), "Psychological Barriers: Lurker and
Poster Motivation and Behavior in Online Communities", Communications of
AIS 18 (16).
Nonnecke, B.; Preece, J. (2000), Lurker demographics: Counting the silent,
Proceedings of CHI 2000. The Hague: ACM.
Lave,Jean.; Wenger Etienne (1991), Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral
Participation, Cambridge University Press.
Yılmaz, Beyza N.(2012). Beliefs of members of an online community of practice
on the effecs of membership on teaching and professional development.
MA Thesis at the Department of Foreign Languages Education Institute of
Social Sciences Middle East Technical University, Ankara.

45. Thank you & happy lurking!:)
Beyza Yılmaz
http://byilmaz.edublogs.org
@beyza