As students in conventional academic settings extend their learning into participatory, performative networked environments, what benefits and conflicts do they encounter?

1. Learning in the Open:
Networked Student Identities
University of Prince Edward Island
February 2013
Bonnie Stewart

2. What is a networked learner?
h"p://www.flickr.com/photos/rofi/2647699204/

3. Networked Identities
• Engaged within networked publics (boyd, 2011)
and digital sociality (Thompson & Cupples, 2008)
• Participatory (Jenkins, 2006)
• Performative (Butler, 1990)
• Producing & consuming content within networks =
produsage (Bruns, 2007) / prosumption (Ritzer, 2010)
• Partial membership in multiple networks, less
reliance on belonging structures of settled groups
(Wellman, 2011)
• Convergence between online & offline (McEwan &
Mease, 2013)

4. Higher Ed = change on
multiple axes
public funding
knowledge scarcity
closed open
neoliberal corporatism
knowledge abundance

5. Newly emerging species:
open, public learner/scholars

6. We are cyborg
h"p://www.flickr.com/photos/russell-­‐higgs/75598487/

7. Networks & the Academy:
trends in ways of knowing

8. Openness as practice
• No techno-utopia or determinism
• Long-term immersion & work
• Not just broadcasting but engagement
• Vulnerability
• Context collapse
• Blurring of public & private

9. My local cohort
• 2 active students in my year
• 9 active Ph.D students total
• 2 other local friends pursuing
Ph.Ds from other institutions

10. My cohort on Twitter
scale = greater access, diversity, visibility…
also increased noise & time.
learners, teachers,
professors, writers – of
books I love &
research I cite ! –
bloggers, geeks,
friends, parents,
students

11. Benefits as thinker:
just-in-time emergent, choral
conversation

12. Benefits as learner & scholar:
access, engagement, profile

13. Challenges:
Legitimacy Practices
Academic Learning Networked Learning
product-focused process-focused
institutionally-directed self-directed
mastery participation
bounded by time/space always accessible
hierarchical ties peer-to-peer ties
plagiarism crowdsourcing
authority in role authority in reputation
audience = teacher audience = world

14. Thank you.
@bonstewart