1. Online communities
and interactions -
reflections on the use
of new social and
participatory media
Gráinne Conole
The Open University, UK
Open Language Forum, 12th Aprl 2011

2. Today’s educational context
• Fast changing
technological environment
• New digital literacy skills
needed for learners,
teacher and the workplace
• The importance of
creativity
• Mechanisms for fostering
creativity

3. Limitless
• Unbounded
intelligence
• Unlocking
potential
• Distributed
cognition (people
and technologies)
Trailer

4. Social and participatory media 4

5. Social and participatory media 4
Media sharing

6. Social and participatory media 4
Media sharing Blogging

7. Social and participatory media 4
Media sharing Blogging
Messaging

8. Social and participatory media 4
Media sharing Blogging
Messaging
Recommender
systems

9. Social and participatory media 4
Media sharing Blogging
Messaging
Recommender
systems
Virtual worlds
and games

10. Social and participatory media 4
Media sharing Blogging
Messaging
Recommender
systems
Virtual worlds
and games
Syndication

11. Social and participatory media 4
Media sharing Blogging
Messaging
Recommender
systems
Virtual worlds
and games
Social
Syndication
bookmarking

12. Social and participatory media 4
Media sharing Blogging
Messaging
Recommender
systems
Social Virtual worlds
networking and games
Social
Syndication
bookmarking

13. Social and participatory media 4
Media sharing Blogging
Messaging
Collaborative Recommender
editing systems
Social Virtual worlds
networking and games
Social
Syndication
bookmarking

14. Social and participatory media 4
Media sharing Blogging
Mash ups
Messaging
Collaborative Recommender
editing systems
Social Virtual worlds
networking and games
Social
Syndication
bookmarking

15. Mash ups 5
http://voicethread.com/

16. Livemocha 6

17. Busuu
7

18. italki 8

19. SecondLife
9

20. Spanish meetup 10

21. Role play 11

22. Social networking 12

23. Harnessing the media
13
 Follow Spanish speakers on Twitter
 Post in Spanish on Twitter and facebook
 Change facebook skin to Spanish
 Join relevant social networking groups of language learners
 e-dictionaries and Google translate (with care!)
 Listen to online podcasts
 Read Spanish newspapers online
 Download Spanish mobile phone apps

24. 14
Effective use of new technologies requires
a radical rethink of the core learning and
teaching processes; a shift from design as
an internalised, implicit and individually
crafted process to one that is externalised
and shareable with others. Change in
practice may indeed involve the use of
revised materials, new teaching strategies
and beliefs - all in relation to educational
innovation.
Conole and Alevizrou, 2010

25. The machine is Us/ing us

26. Peer
critiquing
The machine is Us/ing us

27. Peer
critiquing
User
generated
content
The machine is Us/ing us

28. Peer
critiquing
User
generated
content
Networked
The machine is Us/ing us

29. Peer Open
critiquing
User
generated
content
Networked
The machine is Us/ing us

30. Peer Open
critiquing
User
Collective
generated
aggregation
content
Networked
The machine is Us/ing us

31. Peer Open
critiquing
User
Collective
generated
aggregation
content
Networked Personalised
The machine is Us/ing us

32. Digital literacies
Jenkins et al, 2006

33. Digital literacies
Performance Simulation
Appropriation Judgement
Networking Multitasking
Collective Transmedia
intelligence navigation
Distributed Negotiation
cognition
Jenkins et al, 2006

34. Digital literacies
Performance Simulation
Appropriation Judgement
Networking Multitasking
Collective Transmedia
intelligence navigation
Distributed Negotiation
cognition
Play Jenkins et al, 2006

35. Creativity

36. Definition • Derived from Latin ‘creo’
to create/make
• About creating
something new (physical
artefact or concept) that
is novel and valuable
• Ability to transcend
traditional ideas, rules,
partners, relationships
and create meaningful
new ideas, forms,
methods, interpretations

37. Connecting, new knowledge & creativity 19
Connecting to
new people and
networks gives
you new insights,
and makes you
more creative
http://www.open.ou.nl/rse/Rory_Sie/CoCooN.html

38. Why is it important?
• Essential skill to deal
with today’s
complex, fast and
changing society
• Discourse and
collaboration are
mediated through a
range of social and
participatory media

39. Stages
• Preparation: identifying
the problem
• Incubation: internalisation
of the problem
• Intimation: getting a
feeling for a solution
• Illumination: creativity
bursts forth
• Verification: idea is
consciously verified,
elaborated and applied

40. Technologies
• Can promote creativity in
new and innovative ways
• Enable new forms of
discourse, collaboration
and cooperation
• Access and repurpose
knowledge in different
forms of representation
• Aggregation and scale -
distributed and collective

41. Key questions
• What is the nature of creativity?
• What are its key characteristics?
• What is the relationship between
creativity and general intelligence?
• How can creativity be fostered and
supported?
• What is the nature of collaborative
creative practices?
• How can technologies be used to
promote and support creativity?

42. Open practices
What are the
implications of
adopting more open
approaches?

43. Social and participatory media 25
Media sharing Blogging
Mash ups
Messaging
How are social and
Collaborative participatory media Recommender
editing systems
being used to enable
open practices?
Social Virtual worlds
networking and games
Social
Syndication
bookmarking

44. Open resources

45. Open resources

46. Open resources

47. Open resources

48. Open courses

49. Open design
Shift from belief-based, implicit
approaches to design-based, explicit
approaches
Learning Design
A design-based approach to
creation and support of courses
Encourages reflective, scholarly practices
Promotes sharing and discussion
Conole, 2010b

50. Open research

51. Open research

52. Open research

53. Open research

55. Open Scholarship 31

56. Open Scholarship 31
Discovery
Integration
Application
Teaching

57. Open Scholarship 31
Discovery
Integration
Application
Teaching
Open
Digital
Networked
Weller: http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/

58. Cloudworks
Cloudworks audio presentation

59. The nature of community
 Complex, distributed, loose
communities are emerging
 Facilitated through different but
connected social networking tools such
as facebook, Twitter, Ning
 Users create their own Personal Digital
Environment
 Mix of synchronous and asynchronous
tools
 Boundary crossing via the power of
retweeting
 Links between interests, rather than
places

60. So what is a community?
[Community does not] imply necessarily co-presence, a well-
defined identifiable group, or socially visible boundaries. It does
imply participation in an activity system about which participants
share understandings concerning what they are doing and what
that means in their lives and for their communities
Lave and Wenger, 1991
Virtual communities are social aggregations that emerge from
the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions
long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of
personal relationships in cyberspace.
Rheingold, 1993

61. Community as a process
 Constantly evolving and
changing
 Shifting groups and depths of
relationships
 Dynamic, evolving and
potentially transformative
 Both directed and
serendipitous interactions

62. Community indicators
Participation Cohesion
Sustained over time Support & tolerance
Commitment from core group Turn taking & response
Emerging roles & hierarchy Humour and playfulness
Identity Creative capability
Group self-awareness Igniting sense of purpose
Shared language & vocab Multiple points of view
Sense of community expressed, contradicted or
challenged
Creation of knowledge links &
patterns
Galley et al., 2010

63. Final thoughts
Open, participatory and social media enable new forms
of communication and collaboration
Communities in these spaces are complex and
distributed
Learners and teachers need to develop new digital
literacy skills to harness their potential
We need to rethink how we design and support learning
Open, participatory and social media can provide
mechanisms for us to share and discuss teaching ideas
in new ways
We are seeing a blurring of boundaries: teachers/
learners, teaching/research, real/virtual spaces, formal/
informal modes of communication and publication

64. The future?
• Limitless potential of
technologies
• Individual, tools and
collective
• Augmented and
gesture technologies
• Blurring the
boundaries of real World Builder
and virtual worlds

65. References
 Conole, G. (forthcoming), Designing for learning in an open world, Springer
 Conole, G. (2010a), Review of pedagogical models and their use in e-learning, http://
cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/2982
 Conole, G. (2010b), Learning design - making practice explicit, ConnectEd conference, Sydney, 28th
June 2010, http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/4001
 Galley, R., Conole, G. and Alevizou, P. (submitted), Community Indicators: A framework for building
and evaluating community activity on Cloudworks, Interactive Learning Environments.
 Conole, G, and Alevizou, P. (2010), A literature review of the use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher
Education, HE Academy commissioned report, http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/EvidenceNet/
Conole_Alevizou_2010.pdf
 Galley, R., Conole, G. and Alevizou, P. (2010), Case study: Using Cloudworks for an Open Literature
Review, An HE Academy commissioned report.
 Alevizou, P., Conole, G. and Galley, R. (2010), Using Cloudworks to support OER activities, An HE
Academy commissioned report.
 Conole, G., Galley, R. and Culver, J. (2010), Frameworks for understanding the nature of
interactions, networking and community in a social networking site for academic practice, The
International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning.
 Conole, G. and Culver, J. (2010) 'The design of Cloudworks: applying social networking practice to
foster the exchange of learning and teaching ideas and designs' Computers and Education, 54(3):
679 - 692.
 Conole and Culver (2009), Cloudworks: social networking for learning design, Australian Journal of
Educational Technology, 25(5), pp. 763–782, http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet25/conole.html.

66. References
• Jenkins, H., Clinton, K., Purushotma, R., Robison, A.J. and Weigel, M.,
(2006), Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: media education
for the 21st Century, http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/
%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/
JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF
• Weller, M (2011) The Digital Scholar. Bloomsbury Academic
• Language learning in Secondlife http://utsa.edu/registrar/inSL/files/
LanguageTeachingLearning.pdf
• Loveless, A M (2007) Creativity, technology and learning – a review of recent
literature Futurelab, http://archive.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/
lit_reviews/Creativity_Review_update.pdf
• http://robwall.ca/2009/03/10/creativity-is-the-new-technology/
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvIQP-EBPqc
• http://vimeo.com/3365942
• http://blogs.hbr.org/video/2010/05/andrew-klavan-on-how-21st-cent.html
• Questionmark http://www.flickr.com/photos/crystaljingsr/3914729343/

67. Acknowledgements
• Snoopy http://www.flickr.com/photos/andertoons-cartoons/2754475964/
• Juggling http://www.flickr.com/photos/r8r/4109502436/
• Social media http://www.flickr.com/photos/intersectionconsulting/
5045734278/
• Creativity http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://
content5.videojug.com/89/89cae62c-c95f-a407-cf09-ff0008ca3c71/how-to-
improve-your-creative-thinking.WidePlayer.jpg%3Fv5&imgrefurl=http://
www.videojug.com/film/how-to-improve-your-creative-
thinking&usg=__bEFuNbKuJOK09BS2c9VJfCgPdo8=&h=360&w=640&sz=3
3&hl=en&start=44&sig2=0ftqDrzlzNjiQdVg2NawBQ&zoom=1&tbnid=-
vw_2HkT2g1nOM:&tbnh=96&tbnw=170&ei=zg-gTeA8iJs6zLiQNQ&prev=/
search%3Fq%3Dcreativity%2Bthinking%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari
%26sa%3DX%26rls%3Den%26biw%3D1293%26bih%3D571%26tbm
%3Disch0%2C1123&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=954&vpy=161&dur=2679&hovh=
168&hovw=300&tx=221&ty=96&oei=yg-
gTdmaENTh4gbxt6j9Ag&page=3&ndsp=23&ved=1t:429,r:22,s:
44&biw=1293&bih=571

68. Acknowledgements
• Ladder http://www.flickr.com/photos/sbluerock/110561528/
• Voicethread http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://
www.elearningclouds.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/
VoiceThread.png&imgrefurl=http://www.elearningclouds.com/
tag/voicethread/
&usg=__7L1fZGuSPbDZZkSyT0m27qHVvFE=&h=356&w=4
90&sz=151&hl=en&start=0&sig2=sNNsNslPKl_Ucq4YaPbiK
A&zoom=1&tbnid=FmSySUW83Pk8aM:&tbnh=120&tbnw=1
66&ei=6hWgTZGmCt2R4gbguNz8Ag&prev=/search%3Fq
%3Dvoicethread%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26sa
%3DX%26rls%3Den%26biw%3D1293%26bih%3D571%26tbm
%3Disch%26prmd
%3Divnsl&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=120&vpy=257&dur=135&hov
h=191&hovw=263&tx=166&ty=72&oei=6hWgTZGmCt2R4g
bguNz8Ag&page=1&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:6,s:0

69. Acknowledgements
• Secondlife http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://3.bp.blogspot.com/
_bsWh9JKbOZ0/SxYN0s1MWJI/AAAAAAAABuk/Pvj5ETXXSRU/s400/MUVErs%2BPatient
%2BRoleplay%2BSimulation%2B2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://muversllc.blogspot.com/2009/12/
medical-roleplays-in-second-
life.html&usg=__OZyvO6Qsvqlprr4cqytvD7JGkUo=&h=312&w=400&sz=33&hl=en&start=
0&sig2=FATQ_VZhDaabBkDTT-5-WA&zoom=1&tbnid=nNPgrT6f_XC-
kM:&tbnh=129&tbnw=165&ei=8hegTciACoeDOqXkkTQ&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dsecond
%2Blife%2Bmedical%2Brole%2Bplay%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DX%26rls
%3Den%26biw%3D1293%26bih%3D571%26tbm%3Disch%26prmd
%3Divns0%2C161&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=476&oei=6RegTZ7oKJWI4Qbhr6z-
Ag&page=1&ndsp=22&ved=1t:429,r:15,s:0&tx=93&ty=36&biw=1293&bih=571
• Pandora’s box http://www.flickr.com/photos/darkwood67/3431956363/
• clouds http://www.flickr.com/photos/torley/2311784203/