Raising the level of educational debate:Cloudworks: Social networking for learning and teaching

Gráinne Conole16th June 2009Exeter University

Bridging the gap

Characteristics of good pedagogy

PersonalisedSituativeSocialExperientialReflective

Affordances of new technologies

AdaptiveContextualNetworkedImmersiveCollective

“Open Design”

DebateSharingCommunity-basedCummulative

Changing practices through use of social networking

Many repositories of good practice, but little impact

Blogging

Facebook

Twitter Slideshare

Flckr

Youtube

Commenting

Live commentary

Tagging

RSS feeds

Embedding

Following

Cloudworks: social networking for learning & teaching

The aims of Cloudworks

1. A place for conversation about learning, teaching and technology and discussion about problems

2. A place to share learning designs3. A place to look for inspiration and to

find people 4.A place for existing learning

technology communities to have an online space

Ideas behind Cloudworks

• 6. Link with

communities, rather than replace

• 7. Recognise role of learning technologists and other mediators

• 9. Recognise ownership issues

• 10. Specific to learning technology (not just another Facebook or Ning)

1.Low barrier to entry – imperfect is OK!

2.People-orientated (not a repository!)

3.User-folksonomies, not taxonomies

4.Tool- and process-agnostic

5.All content publicly available

Clouds: Learning and teaching ideasDesign or case studiesTools or resourcesQuestions or problems

Cloudscapes:ConferencesWorkshopsCourse teamStudent cohortResearch themeProject

Examples of useAggregation of student generated course resources and course twitter stream

Conference collective blogging and backroom chat

Workshops: workshop material, live blogs of sessions and plenary discussions, aggregate of group discussions

Features

•Dynamic list of clouds + new comments

•Comments on clouds + cloudscapes•Can “follow” people + cloudscapes•RSS feeds of cloudscapes + people•Embedding: pictures, video,

presentations•Twitter feeds for people +cloudscapes

+Statistics

Since July 2008Increasing use and comments

• No. of clouds: 652• No. of users: 789• No. of cloudscapes: 50• No. of page views: 98, 100

• No. of comments: 879• No. of different tags: 861• No. of unique visits: 19,

202• No. of visitors: 12, 518

Coming soon…Pedagogy schema

• Interactive widgets• Different pedagogy schema• Aim to think differently, take a

fresh perspective• Designed to be fun and easy to

use

Block 1

Block 2

Block 3

Total

Pedagogy profile

Ass

imil

ate

Info

h

an

dli

ng

Com

mu

nic

ati

on

Pro

du

ctiv

e

Exp

eri

en

tial

Ad

ap

tiv

e Ass

ess

men

t

Com

mu

nic

ati

on

Ass

imil

ati

ve

Info

han

dli

ng

Pro

du

ctiv

e

Exp

eri

en

tial

Ad

ap

tive

Ass

ess

men

t

Communication

Assimilative

Info handling

Productive

Experiential

Adaptive

Assessment

Pedagogy profile: Maps types of

student tasks to course structure

Block 1 5 3 4 1 0 0 4

Block 2 6 3 3 3 3 2 4

Block 3 6 3 3 3 4 3 4

Total 17 9 10 7 7 5 12

L140 En rumbo – Unidad 1 Task Matrix Summary

L140 En rumbo Task Profile Review

34.50

2.50 3.25

13.0014.75

0.75 0.000.00

5.00

10.00

15.00

20.00

25.00

30.00

35.00

40.00

Stu

den

t H

ou

rs

Task Type

PM21

Open Design in practice

Design, use, reuse

Designer

OER

Design

Creates

Deposits

Deposits

Learner A

OER

DesignLearner B

Tutor

Chooses

UsesQuiz + beginners route

UsesQuiz + advanced route

Repurposes & deposits

Process designPrior designs & resources New designs

Clouds in Cloudworks

Pedagogical Patterns

OER repositories

New OER & designs

Further information• Papers

▫ Conole and Culver (submitted), Cloudworks: applying social networking practice for the exchange of learning and teaching ideas and designs, special issue of CAL09, Computers and Education, submitted April 09.

▫ Conole and Culver (submitted) Cloudworks: social networking for learning design, Australian Journal of Educational Technology, adaptation of paper presented at Ascilite Dec 08, submitted April 09

▫ Conole, G. and McAndrew, P. (submitted), A new approach to supporting the design and use of OER: Harnessing the power of web 2.0, M. Edner and M. Schiefner (eds), Looking toward the future of technology enhanced education: ubiquitous learning and the digital nature.

• Relevant sites▫ OULDI

http://ouldi.open.ac.uk▫ Olnet

http://olnet.org▫ Cloudworks

http://cloudworks.ac.uk▫ CompendiumLD

http://compendiumld.open.ac.uk