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Student voice, intermediary genres,
and social bookmarking
WDHE conference, June 2010Florence Dujardin & Kirstie Edwards
Sheffield Hallam University
Overview
Context: pilot use of social bookmarking in an online Master’s course
Social media and social bookmarking Methodology: action research Findings: cautiously positive Discussion: value of social
bookmarking Action points
Context
MA in Professional Communication Online course Student profile:
mature learners – ‘digital immigrants’ (Prensky 2001)
communication professionals – what counts as knowledge in their practice and how they present it differs from the practices of Communication Studies (notably reading and writing practices)
What is social media?
a tool for augmenting human social and collaborative abilities
a medium for facilitating social connection and information interchange
an ecology for enabling a “system of people, practices, values and technologies in a particular local environment”
(Suter, Alexander, and Kaplan 2005)
And should we care?
What is social bookmarking?
Mason & Rennie (2008): store internet resources online (not your PC) organise them using user-defined tags share them with people (or not) comment on them (or not)
The ‘ecology’ view of social media: practices: reading, note-taking, ‘talk about
texts’ value: ‘criticality’ people: students, tutor (and External
Examiner)
An example: Delicious
Which application?
Many different applications: Delicious, Connotea, CiteULike, Zotero, Diigo, etc.
Why Diigo? It is designed for education: privacy (group accessible by invitation
only) threaded discussion about bookmarks ‘topic’ facility extract entries made by individual
students
Diigo task
Preparing for the end-of-module essay Increase ‘criticality’ (Ridley 2004) towards
readings Drafting ideas and develop a personal stance Share notes and get comments from peers Letting off steam about the literature
Assessed (up to 10% of module mark) Content: minimum of 5 texts (up to 2%) Sociability: minimum of 5 comments on peers’ work
(up to 2%) Quality: Summary and value of each text (up to 6%)
Research questions
Literature Social bookmarking seems to help students
engage with the literature Evidence is mostly about undergraduates
doing campus-based courses – using Delicious
What uses and benefits for an online MA? offer a type of informal learning with peers? support appropriation of disciplinary
knowledge? enable a pedagogy inspired by ‘Academic
Literacies’ (Lea, Street, Lillis, Ivanič, Barton)
Methodology
Case study - loop 1 of a wider action research project on using social media with e-learners 15 Diigo ‘contributors’:
8 women 7 men (incl. 1 late contributor and a non-contributor)
Online methods Questionnaire to find out about social media
skills Interviews to capture experiences Observation / content analysis
Students’ bookmarking skills
“I had not heard of social bookmarking before the diigo task. I had heard of Delicious
but did not know what it was used for.”
Only 3 students out of 12 use social bookmarking.
Summary of Diigo contributions
Summary of Diigo activity
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
T N R J A E K U S P O H C Z Y
Student
No
of
inte
rac
tio
ns
Posts
Comments posted
Responses received
Comparison of men and women contributions
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
posts commentsposted
responsesreceived
Contribution type
No
of
con
trib
uti
on
s
w omen
men
What happened?
Student perspectives on texts
Characteristics of postsPersonal ”“It took a while to stretch my head around the
concepts”
Supportive “You make a good point. I agree that one can easily be misled if they don't evaluate theories…”
Descriptive “This study focused on the analysis of icons used for information retrieval purposes...”
Making connections
“Metzger's article is interesting as it demonstrates... Pettersson (1997) also concludes that...”
Applying ideas “The best part about Gestalt theory is that you can apply it to a range of visuals...”
Evaluative “I feel that this framework does not offer much scope for considering visual/verbal collaboration…”
Short/superficial “I found the approach of combining semiotic and content analysis very interesting.”
Student views (end of week 1)
Students felt well prepared Some technical glitches
Can’t link PDF files Problems with password-protected articles
accessed via university library What does it feel to share?
in the beginning I was worried I find it a bit strange I feel fairly comfortable a feeling of pressure as though I am in
competition
Thoughts in reading peers’ posts? Useful to gain other perspectives Comments helped form opinions on what I have
read “I was going to reject Harrison’s model but after
reading peer comments I read it again and thought I could use it”
The level of discusses [sic] stayed superficial It helped me assuage my fears
A useful task? Interesting to get to know a social bookmarking
tool Useful, especially when readings are consistently
tagged It’s prompted me to think deeper about the texts
Student views (exit)
Helpful for writing your essay? (mixed) I didn’t use the comments I or others made Interesting but I had already done a lot of
reading It enable to read in a structured way and also
to record my thoughts It focused my mind and sharing info enriched
the learning process Reassurance that my ideas were on the right
track Links with other pieces of research
Repeat the Diigo task? Yes (phew) Certainly good to repeat the task… better
to have it assessed A good way to expose people to this sort
of facility I must admit, I’m enjoying it. In fact, it’s
sort of addictive It gives me a sense of achievement We didn’t all use Diigo to its full potential
Summary
Reasonably positive feedback about the social bookmarking task and its assessment
An informal learning space (a strong ‘social presence’: supportive, sharing)
Some appropriation of academic texts(some ‘cognitive presence’: connections with practice and evaluation)
Superficial (‘satisficing’: shorter comments, more descriptive – esp. male students)
Impact on marks?
In 2008-9 Range: 39 – 61 % Average: 42 %
In 2009-10 Range: 50 – 94 % Average: 65 %
Action points
Repeat but embed in a core module Start early the module (Webb 2009) Support students before and during the
task not just technical aspects encourage and support criticality more actively
(e.g. through the ‘topic’ facility) Encourage and support social tagging
Link to employability (and widening participation)
To conclude
Interesting experiment with social bookmarking (Diigo) Reasonably positive student feedback Refinements needed Worth revisiting (loop 2)
Potential to help mature e-learners to develop a personal stance towards academic literature
Thank you for listening
References Beaumont, C. (2010) Using Open Online Resources to Enhance Social Learning. Brighton: HEA Art Design
Media Subject Centre. Available at <http://www.adm.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/case-studies/using-open-online-resources-to-enhance-social-learning>. [Last accessed February 2010]
Garrison, D. R. and Anderson, T. (2003) E-learning in the 21st Century: A Framework for Research and Practice. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Hammond, T., Hannay, T., Lund, B. and Scott, J. (2005) 'Social bookmarking tools (I): a general review '. D-Lib Magazine. 11 (4). Available at <http://dlib.org/dlib/april05/hammond/04hammond.html>. [Last accessed January 2010]
Lomas, C. P. (2005) Things You Should Know About Social Bookmarking. Boulder, CO: Educause. Available at <http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7001.pdf>. [Last accessed January 2010]
Lund, B., Hammond, T., Flack, M. and Hannay, T. (2005) 'Social bookmarking tools (II): a case study - Connotea '. D-Lib Magazine. 11 (4). Available at <http://dlib.org/dlib/april05/lund/04lund.html>. [Last accessed January 2010]
Mason, R. and Rennie, F. (2008) E-learning and Social Networking Handbook: Resources for Higher Education. Abingdon: Routledge.
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Higher Education, 29 (1): 92-107. Stolley, K. (2009 ) 'Integrating social media into existing work environments: the case of Delicious'. Journal
of Business and Technical Communication 23 (3): 350-371. Suter, V., Alexander, B. and Kaplan, P. (2005a) 'Social software and the future of conferences - right now'.
Educause Review, 40 (1): 46-59 The New Media Consortium and Educause Learning Initiative (2007) 2007 Horizon Report. Austin, TX: The
New Media Consortium. http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/CSD4781.pdf Tinker, A., Byrne, G. and Cattermole, C. (2009) 'Creating learning communities: three open source tools'.
6th LDHEN Symposium. Bournemouth University, April 2009. Webb, E. (2009) 'Engaging students with engaging tools'. EDUCAUSE Quarterly. 32 (4). Available at
<http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE%2BQuarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/EngagingStudentswithEngagingTo/192954>. [Last accessed February 2010]