Very social software

A veritable feast of articles on social media is appearing in the academic press at the moment.

Two articles that have caught my eye deal with social software in education, and both have landed on my desk in the last few weeks.

If you're interested in the impact blogs, wikis and social networking can have on the social and cultural dimensions of education, then take a read of them. Below are the abstracts, references and links to both full papers.

Social Software: new opportunities for challenging social inequalities in learning? by Gwyneth Hughes

Enthusiasts for new social software do not always acknowledge that belonging to e-learning communities depends upon complex and often unresolved identity issues for learners. Drawing on the author's previous research on belonging in social learning, the paper presents a theory of identity congruence in social learning and brings to the foreground the importance of identities which arise from expressions of gender, class, ethnicity, age, etc. in the social, operational and, in particular, the knowledge-building aspects of learning. These three dimensions of identity congruence are used to evaluate the potential of new social software. While social software might encourage some learners to engage in social and operational identity work, there are disadvantages for others, and learner-generated knowledge and e-assessment practices can be divisive. Inclusive e-learning depends upon pedagogies and assessments which enable learners to shift and transform identities, and not solely on widening the range of technologies available. Such caution should underpin future research.

Keywords: social software; Web 2.0; inclusive; inequality; belonging; identity.

Reference: Hughes, G. (2009) Social software: new opportunities for challenging social inequalities in learning? Learning, Media and Technology, 34 (4), 291-306.

Culture, learning styles and Web 2.0, by Bolanle A. Olaniran

This article explores Web 2.0 in interactive learning environments. Specifically, the article examines Web 2.0 as an interactive learning platform that holds potential, but is also limited by learning styles and cultural value preferences. The article explores the issue of control from both teacher and learner perspectives, and in particular the cultural challenges that impact learner control. From the control perspective, the issue of access to Web 2.0 technologies from both cost affordability and government censorship is also addressed. Finally, the article concludes with implications and recommendations for Web 2.0 learning environments.

Keywords: Web 2.0; interactive learning; cultural preferences; learning styles; learner control.

Reference: Olaniran, B. A. (2009) Cuture, learning styles and Web 2.0, Interactive Learning Environments, 17 (4), 261-272.

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Breaking eggs

One of my recent book chapters starts with the statement 'You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.' It's my opening gambit in a chapter called 'Destructive Creativity on the Social Web' in which I discuss the volatile and contentious nature of wiki content generation. I argue that wiki content generation is both creative and destructive, and you need both to ensure quality. My chapter appears in an edited volume by Stylianos Hatzipanagos and Steven Warburton on Social Software and Developing Community Ontologies. The book is a weighty tome of almost 600 pages, and contains 32 chapters by some of the leading thinkers of educational Web 2.0: Terry Anderson, Grainne Conole, Jon Dron, Marc Eisenstadt, Mark Lee, Andrew Ravenscroft, Martin Weller, Scott Wilson, the list goes on to more than 80 contributors. The list of reviewers is also a 'Who's Who' of the e-learning luminati. Stylianos and Steve really are to be congratulated for putting together such an impressive line-up of chapters, reviewers and editors.

The book covers a lot of ground including the use of blogs and wikis in education, social structures, knowledge media, information literacies, ambient pedagogies, social presence and interactivity. It is a solid reference manual for best practice of social software tools in teaching and learning. There are some good reads within it, but you probably wouldn't want to purchase a copy at £183.95. As is the case with all IGI Reference books it is very overpriced. Now I know you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, but if the price doesn't put you off in this credit crunch economy, you may be unimpressed by the bland and somewhat dour jacket. I received my copy free as a thankyou for sitting on the Editorial Advisory Board, so I am priviledged to get full access. I note with interest that within a few short days of the book being released, it was already available in part on Google Books, so you can at least sample some of the contents. Here's the abstract for my chapter, which discusses wiki cultures and Darwikianism (the survival of the fittest - or most accurate - wiki pages):

The use of group oriented software, or groupware, encourages students to generate their own content and can foster supportive and dynamic communties of learning. One form of open architecture groupware known as the Wiki is freely available online in several versions, and enables tutors to quickly set up online spaces which can be edited by students, at any time and from any location. Online social spaces of this nature can be used to encourage creative writing and to engage students in critical discourse through focused discussion, but Wikis also have disruptive potential and can cause dissent and disharmony within the group. This chapter aims to highlight some uses of the wiki as a social writing tool, reporting on student perceptions of the limitations and benefits. The chapter also focuses on the tension between creative and destructive uses of wikis in mainstream higher education. The use of interview data gathered from a study conducted with a group of student teachers in 2007 is included to support the key messages of this chapter.

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Edupunk stalks the institution...

There has been much rhetoric over how academics are increasingly disenchanted with institutional VLE provision and are subscribing to a 'doing it yourself' approach. Students are also voting with their feet, with many preferring to use social networking tools such as Facebook to communicate in place of the institutional e-mail system. The adoption of free social software tools has raised questions over corporate branding, security and privacy issues, and legal requirements. The storm is just beginning, and people are now getting worried, for according to this press release from JISC earlier today:

As learners increasingly adopt free third party email providers over their institutional email, further and higher education institutions are faced with whether to follow the crowd by outsourcing their email and data services.

JISC, UCISA and Universities UK recognise this challenge and are today launching two new briefing papers to help institutions understand the implications and opportunities involved in no longer hosting their own email service.

Steve Bailey, Senior Advisor at JISC infoNet, said: "Outsourcing email and data storage facilities is being viewed as an increasingly attractive proposition by many institutions faced with growing user demand for increased storage and functionality.

"However, it is important that institutions enter into such arrangement with their eyes wide open and fully appreciate that outsourcing these services does not also outsource their management responsibilities, liabilities and obligations.

"These papers highlight the experiences of four institutions, the University of Westminster, the University of Oxford, Leeds Metropolitan University and Glasgow Caledonian University on how they considered outsourcing and what solutions worked for them," added Steve.

The opportunities include:

* Enhanced and enriched student learner experience
* Email account with an ac.uk address
* Retain email account beyond leaving education
* Storage of emails in GB rather than MB - greater capacity
* Access calendar and file storage services
* Information sharing.

The implications are:

* Hidden setup costs
* Legal, contractual and procurement processes
* Whether to outsource email services for learners, or learners and staff
* Privacy and confidentiality of data storage
* Compliance with Freedom of Information and Data Protection Acts
* Beta status of services - which are constantly changing.

David Harrison, Chair of UCISA, said, "There are many aspects an institution should consider before opting to outsource. These papers highlight the issues and encourage institutions to take a holistic view when considering outsourcing."

So Edupunk is stalking the institution, and has begun to undermine previously secure and structured provision. Where will it all end? Your views and experiences will be welcomed on this blog - post your comments here.

Hot tools, hot topics

Entitled ‘Technological Culture: Web 2.0 tools and social media’, this was the last parallel paper session before the final plenary event at EDEN – day 3. The session should have been less well attended than previous ones, because traditionally most people begin to leave for the airport around this time. It’s difficult with last day sessions – often known as the ‘graveyard’ slot. Most of the presenters also had to dash away early to catch their flights. Yet there was a very healthy turnout, with an almost full room which is a testament to the fact that Web 2.0 is a red hot topic at this conference.

The first paper with the somewhat impenetrable title ‘Web 2.0 environment with workflow language’ – was presented Pritt Tammets from Tallinn University, Estonia. He talked about visual language and visual thinking which tap into the intuitive and emotional learning. Tammets’ aim was to develop a suite of visual language tools that could integrate into Web 2.0 applications such as wikis. This is a tool for designers, but became a little too complicated, he reported. Results were mixed and the system didn’t work for large scale delivery.

The second paper in the session was also focused on the use of wikis to support the learning of English as a foreign language. Igor Balaban (University of Zagreb, Croatia) borrowed Gilly Salmon’s ‘e-tivities’ concept to characterise student engagement with wiki tools. Wikis are good for interaction, collaboration and to share content with a wider audience he said, but in second language learning they are considered less useful. The EngWiki project aimed to discover how they could be optimised so his team developed a taxonomy of wiki activities (a bit of an anachronism perhaps when the chaotic and folksonomic nature of wikis is considered) to support the learning. Igor presented some very interesting wiki activities such as analogies, vocabulary trees, narratives and role playing. The results were very positive showing that students engaged more actively with the course. I will definitely be in touch to discuss their research.

The third paper, ‘A wiki as an intercultural learning environment’ was the result of collaborative research between Spanish and Australian universities. Presented by Guzman Mancho (Alcala University, Spain) the project highlighted problems with learning English through technology. Making two different semester structures coincide between the Spanish and Australian universities, assimilating the culture of the other university and overcoming lack of funding were all issues addressed. Collaborative editing was required so an ‘institution free’ wiki – MediaWiki – was selected. Students practiced collaborative writing in English which had very useful outcomes, with most producing useful content and completing the course successfully. However, there was lack of interaction between students, difficulty in assessing the degree of intercultural ties and many students lacked experience in wiki use.

The final paper, entitled ‘Disrupting the technological culture’, was presented by Stella Porto of the University of Maryland, USA. She focused on staff support (the majority are part-time professors) to train their online tutors. Social software tools are overwhelming in number and scope, but applications are becoming friendlier and can be used to build communities. Scalability was an issue – providing training and support for 2500 teaching staff was difficult. Many teachers had no technical background and some were technophobic (not recommended for online tutors). The university is now trying to bring the open social tools under their control (happening in many other universities probably because they are scared of being left behind in the technological flow) which challenges the question of ownership of content (e.g. e-portfolios) access to materials (e.g. e-portolios), and interoperability across platforms (e.g. e-portfolios!). When we are using social software, who needs protection?

Hot tools and hot topics, yes. But so many questions yet unanswered...

Emerging Mondays

I'm taking part in a live podcast on Monday evening for Pontydysgu using Skype direct from my new wireless laptop, if I can get the blasted software to download.

I'm going to be talking about social software and open content for e-learning, and will be in conversation with the show's host, Graham Attwell. This was a session I agreed to do with Graham earlier this week whilst attending the Edumedia conference in Salzburg. Graham has already posted an invitation on his JISC Emerge site and I see the show will also feature Jay Cross from Internet Times who will be talking about informal learning, Hank Horkoff from Chinese Pod in Shanghai on personal Learning Environments and language teaching and learning and a 'culture spot' with the Last Poet in Oxford (I suspect it's George Roberts, but one can never be certain).

Just one thing though, Graham. I'm not from Plymouth College (it doesn't exist anymore and I left there over 12 years ago). I'm now working for the University of Plymouth.... Oh, it doesn't bode well at all.....

Keen as mustard?

I'm back safely on British soil again, courtesy of British Airways, who always get you there in the end... I'm worried about National Express though. They seem to be incapable of joined-up-thinking. They got me from Gatwick to Heathrow OK, but then I sat waiting for an eternity at Heathrow central bus station for the 500 service to Plymouth. It was delayed by over two hours due to 'traffic congestion' in London. (So much for Ken Livingston's congestion charge, which makes craploads of money for the council, and no improvement in traffic flow). The bus behind it actually arrived first and there was pandemonium as both sets of passengers tried to board simultaneously. The driver had to fight them off with his clipboard, and he might even have used a rude word, but I can't be certain as someone's elbow was in my ear.

Eventually, my bus set off amidst squally showers and very un-July weather. Such a constrast from the 37 degrees I left behind in Heraklion. What a summer - British weather is not good for the soul. We stopped for a 15 minute break at the Gordano service station just outside Bristol. Would you believe it... inside they were playing Cliff Richard singing 'O Little Town of Bethlehem!' No, I am not making it up - but I thought, how very appropriate, given the wintry torrents of rain outside.

I am in the middle of reading Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur - in which he pours mustard all over Web 2.0, and suggests that it's a conspiracy to destroy our culture and assault our economy. Well I never... Keen seems more concerned about making sure that shareholders don't lose their money than he is about democracy, where everyone has equal access to the Internet as readers and writers. Keen is of course a share holder himself and a prominent capitalist. He's a few index points short of a dividend too if you ask me. He admits to trying to cash in on the Internet boom of the 90s, so how very appropriate for him to talk about bloggers behaving like monkeys with typewriters. It's the same as playing Christmas carols in the middle of summer... but not half as amusing. Check out Andrew Keen's own blog (well fancy that) and you'll see what I mean.

Greek Odd(ICT)y

I'm attending the first day of the 7th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies in Education in Crete this week. The first day has gone well, with an excellent keynote speech from Professor Rob Koper (Open University of the Netherlands) and a series of short papers and workshops on e-Learning and computer mediated learning. Star billing must go to Dr Gorg Mallia (University of Malta) who gave us a dynamic paper entitled: 'A tolling bell for institutions?' in which he challenged us all to consider the ways in which we are currently teaching students. With the digital generation upon us, are our methods adequate? Are we providing relevant experiences and contexts, given that 'digital natives' speak with a different accent to 'digital immigrants'? This is of course a real (Mal)teaser of a question, and we all had a lot to say about it.

I spoke to Gorg for a long time afterwards and we discovered we have a lot in common. We are the same age, both artistic (he produces a regular satirical cartoon for his national newspaper) and we both have similar ideas about social software and its importance for the future of education. We have a lot more to talk about, so will be keeping in touch...