1. The changing landscape of
educational practice
Gráinne Conole, The Open University
NADE annual conference, Horten, Norway
18th November 2010
2. Key questions
How are new open, social and
participatory media changing
educational practice?
What are the implications for
formal and informal learning?
How are learner and teacher
roles changing?
What new digital literacies are
needed?
How can we design learning
interventions and environments
to harness new media?
3. New media
Key characteristics
Peer critiquing
Aggregation of resources
Collaboration
Personalisation
Networking
Open practices
Web 2.0 - the machine is Us/ing Us
4. A typology of new technologies
Technology Examples
Media sharing Flckr, YouTube, Slideshare, Sketchfu
Media manipulation and mash ups Geotagged photos on maps,
Voicethread
Instant messaging, chat, web 2.0
forums
MSN, Paltalk, Arguementum
Online games and virtual worlds WorldofWarcraft, SecondLife
Social networking Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin, Elgg,
Ning
Blogging Wordpress, Edublog, Twitter
Social bookmarking Del.icio.us, Citeulike, Zotero
Recommender systems Digg, LastFm, Stumbleupon
Wikis and collaborative editing tools Wikipedia, GoogleDocs, Bubbl.us
Syndication/RSS feeds Bloglines, Podcast, GoogleReaderConole and Alevizou, 2010
7. A focus on community
New open, social and participatory media enable new
means of communication, collaboration, sharing and
co-construction of knowledge
Want to focus on the nature of community in these new
online spaces
What is it and how can it be fostered, supported?
8. 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
9. 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
10. Depthofrelationship
Extent of boundary crossing
Close friends and
strong relationships
Acquaintances
and associated
Within the
group
Outside the
group
Exploration through
shared enterprise
Exploration
through
synthesis
Innovation through
novel combinations
Gratton, 2007
11. Community as a process
Constantly evolving and changing
Shifting groups and depths of relationships
Dynamic, evolving and potentially transformative
Both directed and serendipitous interactions
12. Participation
Sustained over time
Commitment from core group
Emerging roles & hierarchy
Identity
Group self-awareness
Shared language & vocab
Sense of community
Cohesion
Support & tolerance
Turn taking & response
Humour and playfulness
Creative capability
Igniting sense of purpose
Multiple points of view
expressed, contradicted or
challenged
Creation of knowledge links
& patterns
Community indicators
Galley et al., 2010
13. Participation
Three types of hierarchical roles
Veterans: support and encourage groups and newbies
Trendsetters: make a difference
Posters: need to be incentivised to turn from lurkers to
active contributors
14. Cohesion
Through support, tolerance, reciprocity and trust
Language and tone are critical factors in the
development of an online community
Emotional and peer support
15. Identity
Central to the notion of community are issues of
membership and exclusion. Some people are in, others
are out. Communities range from being open to anyone
who shares particular ideas or interests to communities
accessible only to those who meet certain criteria of
geography, ethnicity, gender, etc.
Erickson (1997)
16. Framework for sociality
System needs to accommodate both evolution of
practices and inclusion of newcomers
Both individual and group identity are important
People more likely to use systems that resemble their
daily routines, languages and practices
Metaphors that mimic real life practices are likely to be
more successful
Bouman et al., 2007
18. Creative capability
Importance of conflict, disagreement and negotiation in
the process of collaborative knowledge creation and
developing understanding
Social discord as a catalyst for knowledge construction
and expansive learning
19. Emerge project
Bounded openness
Heterogeneous homophily
Mutual stability
Sustainable development
Shared personal repertoires
Structured freedom
Mutimodal identity
Serious fun Roberts, 2008
20. Social construction of
knowledge
Sharing/comparing information
Discovery and exploitation of dissonance
Negotiation of meaning/co-construction of knowledge
Testing and modification of proposed synthesis or co-
construction
Agreement statement(s)/applications of newly constructed
meaning
Gunawardena, Lowe & Anderson (1997)
22. Applying the framework
Participation Cohesion Identity Creative
capability
Environment
Welcome
newcomers
Means to share
Reward
contributions
Model expected
behaviours
Language –
clear &
inclusive
Friendly tone
Explicit mutual
& collegiality
Means for both
individual &
group
expression
Refer to group
as group
Clear
purpose
Contradictory
views
Abundance of
resource
Participatory
processes
Assign roles
Actively facilitate
Share things of
interest
High ratio of
social to
informational
interactions
Allow old
practices
Encourage new
practices
Stimulating
questions
Engaging
tasks
Explore
dissonance
23. Cloudworks
Social networking site for
sharing and discussing
learning and teaching
ideas
Boundary crossing
Best of web 2.0
functionality and
practices
24. Quick language guide
Cloud:
Anything to do with
learning and teaching
Cloudscape:
A collection of
clouds
Activity stream:
Latest activities on a
Cloudscape or people Favourites:
Vote for things
your like
RSS feeds:
For Cloudscapes,
Clouds & people
Follow:
Cloudscapes, Clouds
or people
Attend:
Conferences &
workshops
29. Observation
Participation
Shared history
Solidarity
Criticism and conflict
A group’s self-awareness
Roles and heirarchy
Herring, 2004
30. Participation Cohesion Identity Creative
capability
Indicators
Sustained
participation
Commitment
from a core
group
Emerging roles &
hierarchy
Support
Tolerance
Reciprocity
Humour
Group self-
awareness
Membership
Shared language
Sense of
community
Igniting purpose
Multiple points
of view
Contradiction
Creation of
knowledge links
Framework indicators
31. Interviews & surveys
The selection of interviewees should offer insights into a
range of perspectives within a field. It is therefore crucial
to contact interviewees who exemplify different
participation formats, e.g. amateur and professional ones,
as identified by observation.
Androutsopoulos, 2008
33. Reflections
Open, participatory and social media enable new forms of
communication and collaboration
Communities in these spaces are complex and distributed
Teachers and learners need to develop new digital literacy skills to
harness their potential
We need to rethink the design of learning interventions, support
and assessment
Sites like Cloudworks can provide a mechanisms for teachers to
share and discuss learning and teaching ideas
We are seeing a blurring of boundaries: teachers/learners,
teaching/learning, content/activities and real/virtual spaces
34. References
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.
