EDMEDIA 2009Social Networking for Student and Staff Learning

A project funded by the Open University Practice Based Professional Learning Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (PBPLCETL)

Mary Thorpe, Andrew Brasher and Philip GreaneyInstitute of Educational TechnologyThe Open University, UK

Thanks to Chetz Colwell, Stuart Brown, Keith Honnor, Mick Jones, Sharan Slade, Non Scantlebury and tutors involved in the project Social Networking for Practice Learning (SNPL)

But it hasn’t always been like that…and

Old habits die hard – new ones can take time and energy to introduce

…and share them with our network

Social Networking for Practice Learning A project aimed at working out practical teaching

and learning scenarios for social bookmarking and RSS feeds

In order to… Get OU teachers to use these tools in their

courses and student support Funded by The Open University Practice Based Professional

Learning Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning: http://www.open.ac.uk/pbpl

4 faculties: Education & Language Studies, Health & Social Care, Business and Educational Technology

A story of practical usage by practising teachers

Using Delicious, Google Reader – Robust tools that offer ‘time well spent’

benefits But still not yet in common usage for

teaching & learning How we set about to change that What happened and where to next

Social Networking for Practice Learning

Delicious - Why use it?

Bookmarks accessible via Web not just own machine, so access anywhere, anytime

Using your own tags (or keywords) helps organise your resources according to your needs

You can harvest the efforts of other users – the more users, the more the benefits

You can set up a network of users whom you follow so targeting people who have shared interests

You can use it to communicate with others you’re working with – sending them resources, building up a shared repository using shared tags

Tagging – who uses it?

A survey posted to weblogs, BBs, newsletters - drew 244 usable responses – ‘tagging experts’ – 48% use tagging at least once a day

Most frequent usage was tagging for personal resource retrieval, not sharing with a network or searching the collective

40% admitted not retrieving saved resources The ‘for’ tag hardly ever used – 22% not aware

you can send a bookmark to another user in this way

Most use because they mainly work online plus use a service that uses tagging e.g.Delicious

Stefanie Panke and Birgit Gaiser (2009) Social Tagging in Knowledge Organisation: Online Survey on the Users’ Perspective

Panke & Gaiser: Social Tagging in Knowledge

Organisation – Online survey on the users’ perspective

For the majority of respondents the personal knowledge management is more important than making content accessible for a broader community.. …Social tagging is rather used as a data-recallfacility or customizable filing system and not as a display for a virtual calling card. It appears that knowledge organization stands in the foreground, whereas the communicative qualities of social tagging appear to be rather an additional value than an end in itself.

What were the key features for a teaching and learning context? The social and communicative possibilities

For Delicious it was◦ Agreeing to use shared tags◦ Agreeing to add notes to identify key points about

each bookmark◦ Setting up a network of the student & tutor group

So that ◦ resources found by students on the same course

would be tagged the same way◦ finding what others have found would be quick and

easy◦ Notes would make clear why a resource was relevant◦ Resources could be sent to specific users using ‘for:’

tag

The very different context of teaching and learning

Students and staff are time poor and task oriented

Where is the cost-benefit trade off for time spent using a new practice-tool?

How does it relate to the core purpose of what a teacher is already doing – e.g. does it contribute to delivering the learning outcomes of courses ?

What does it take to get teachers to use a new technology? We can

Any/all of these tactics alone often do not generate action by teachers – we also need to..

List the affordances of the technology

Provide short demonstrations of how it works, what its advantages are, etc

Develop case studies about how others have used it

… use it ourselves

first consider how you could use it to support your learning. Think about the advantages as well as the challenges it would pose for you, and how it would fit in with your existing practices. Then think how these issues would apply to your students.

Make a conscious effort to use the new tool as a habit.

Observe the changes that occur in your learning processes

http://patternlanguagenetwork.myxwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/

The ‘eat your own dog food’ principle

Advisory Group involves representatives from faculties – vital bridge to tutors and course teams

Tutors from Business and Health and Social Care worked as a distributed group with video and how to guides to enable them to set up and use SN tools

Each set up a personal account on Delicious, Google Reader and Facebook

Communication via◦ A private Facebook group to discuss experiences ◦ Flashmeeting - audio-visual conferencing tool◦ A group wiki to document how they used the tools

& to design activities for OU courses

Structured activities designed for tutors to use, enabled them to get to know each tool and use it to achieve a goal for the project. E.g…….

◦ Each tutor designed an activity for students to use Delicious on a course they knew well

◦ Tutors worked in their faculty group to agree on priority RSS feeds for keeping up to date in their area

Tutors used the project wiki to document their experiences and upload their response to tasks

Use of Delicious, RSS and Twitter now designed into a module in the MA in Online and Distance Education H800 Technology Enhanced Learning: practices and debates

Delicious, RSS & Twitter now used on OU Masters in Online and Distance Education H800 Module: Technology-enhanced Learning: practices and debates

Tutors & students set up own accounts using ‘how to’ guides

Course study activities include setting up your tutor group as a network on your Delicious account

Students, tutors and course team save relevant resources using shared tags:◦ H800_2009 ◦ H800_block1_2009 ◦ H800_block2_2009 ◦ H800_block3_2009 ◦ H800_block4_2009

Students use Delicious and RSS to search for resources addressing key issues in the course

2hrs

1hr

2hrs

1hr

6hrs

Faculty ‘hands on’

Demonstrating independence in learning - going beyond course resources by searching and describing found resources from the Web

Skills in information literacy - Active processing through tagging and description of resources

Collaborative learning - The network makes one student’s work available to all – increases likelihood of finding good material, promotes idea of learning from each other, builds resources from year to year

Link to learning outcomes – important if you’re going to get take up by teachers and learners

Tutors had no difficulty designing activities to deliver learning outcomes such as:

For Health and Social Care ◦ Locate Information relevant to health and social care

issues through reference to a range of sources ◦ Evaluate the reliability of different sources of evidence ◦ Use a wide range of study skills appropriate to degree

level

For OU Business School◦ You should be able to reflect and critically appraise the

human and technological dimensions of developing and implementing strategies for managing knowledge in practice

Using new technologies involves learning new

practices not just picking up a tool

The tool is waiting for you to pick it up and just use it

You’ll find out how to use it for teaching and learning by being told its functionality

Tools that are easy to use can be easily explored - exploration/play are the approach that teachers will use ‘naturally’ – because you COULD just use it without support, you will do and you’ll then see how it can be used for teaching

Think practices/practiceswith tools

This approach usually doesn

’t work

reflections

To use a technology is to make a change to your own practices

Practices with technology take time and Require a positive trade off between time &

benefit The value-added potential of Delicious and

RSS for T&L was identified in advance and made the focus for practical activities

Structured activities based on selecting and using key features of social networking tools enabled teachers to see the possibilities for teaching and learning and commit to using them

http://delicious.com/marythorpe/SNPLMy bookmarks for SNPL project on delicious

http://www.open.ac.uk/pbpl/activities/details/detail.php?itemId=499992885667b&themeId=49887a1373845

Or http://tinyurl.com/ou-sn-pbplWebsite for SNPL project on PBPLCETL websiteSocial networking Learn About Guidehttp://kn.open.ac.uk/workspace.cfm?wpid=8738Social networking in plain English videohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a_KF7TYKVc&eurl=http:/facebooklife.net/blog/facebook-tutorials/

understand-what-is-social-networking/What is social networking?http://www.whatissocialnetworking.com/Map of Web 2.0 apps HQshttp://www.platial.com/map/Web-2-0-HQ-Map/1768List of social networking siteshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites‘Social network services’ definition from Wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_servicesSocial networking bloghttp://www.socialnetworking-weblog.com/

Video of the explanation

The course team sets up defined tags that tutors and students will use for bookmarking on the course

e.g.B823_Technologies, B823_Communication

B823 tutors set up their own Delicious account, search and tag resources using the defined tags so these already on Delicious before students start

Student welcoming letter includes tutor’s Delicious name and links to guide & video on setting up Delicious account

Students set up their own Delicious account and create a network of their tutor group

During the course they search for and tag at least 10 websites using the Delicious notes field to explain what their resource contributes to course understanding

A tutor designed activity for a Business School Course: B823 Managing Knowledge

Email, wiki, explanatory videos, video conferencing software and closed Facebook site used to work together as a group,

Tutors worked on a series of tasks clearly specified in advance, so they built up confidence and skills stage by stage

Key features of the tools that proved their potential:◦ Shared tags, tag subscription and setting up a

network across group members on Delicious

◦ Management of RSS feeds via Google Reader

◦ Working together to establish an agreed set of feeds for tutors in each faculty

Course teams now getting involved

SNPL: A learner generated context