edu media salzburg 2008
DESCRIPTION
This was an invited presentation for the Edumedia conference held in Salzburg, Austria, and hosted by Salzburg Research. June 2008.TRANSCRIPT
open content
and self organisation: how do students use social software for collaborative
learning?
steve wheeleruniversity of plymouth
EduMedia Conference, Salzburg: June, 2008
• students should take responsibility for their own learning• collaborative activities create opportunities for deeper learning • social software promotes reflective practice
3 assumptions:
EduMedia Conference, Salzburg: June, 2008
Reflective practice is a form of learning through questioning and feedback. It forces us to question what it is that we know and how we come to know it.
reflective practice
Source: http://www.ukcle.ac.uk/resources/reflection/what.html
EduMedia Conference, Salzburg: June, 2008
reflection and reasoning
Claxton argued that: "learning to learn, or the development of learning power, is getting better at knowing when, how and what to do when you don't know what to do"
EduMedia Conference, Salzburg: June, 2008
Socrates and learningSocratic learning is based on the idea that human beings have faculties that can be awakened through questioning, exploration, and self-examination.
"Anamnesis" in Greek referred to the ability to draw on or recollect, bring to mind, deeper resources within the individual for use in daily life.
Education (from ‘Educare’)
‘To draw out from within’
EduMedia Conference, Salzburg: June, 2008
WikiLit project
MentorBlog project Using Blogger: n=12
Using Wikispaces: n=237
EduMedia Conference, Salzburg: June, 2008
• to connect students and mentors using blogs• to compare blogs with traditional mentoring methods• to ascertain benefits of mentoring using blogs
MentorBlog project aims
EduMedia Conference, Salzburg: June, 2008
• to enable students learn collaboratively in a shared online space• to encourage students to create and share their own knowledge• to create new learning environments
WikiLit project aims
EduMedia Conference, Salzburg: June, 2008
data were collected through:• online discussion group postings• posted questions• questionnaires (WikiLit)• post-experience interview (MentorBlog)
EduMedia Conference, Salzburg: June, 2008
research method
results: MentorBlog
one f2f student preferred to communicate face to face with her mentor. she stated: “the quality of contact is not at all effective in e-mails.”
another f2f student found close proximity to her mentor a problem: she said: “it is difficult to stay composed in such close proximity” and would have preferred to have used an electronic communication method because it would ‘give her space’.
EduMedia Conference, Salzburg: June, 2008
six months into the project, one blog student and his mentor have so far failed to initiate a mentoring relationship, possibly due to unfamiliarity with the system, time limitations, or perhaps due to perceptions that the blog is more impersonal or removed from the face-to-face mentoring experience.
EduMedia Conference, Salzburg: June, 2008
results: MentorBlog
results: MentorBlog
two of the blog students changed the settings, ‘look and feel’ of their blogs early on in their usage to reflect their individual preferences.
one student has used the blog on a regular basis (weekly) with his mentor and said: “I find the blog extremely useful.” he said that he found one of the most valuable features was the ability to revisit his postings as a recorded archive whenever he needed to.
EduMedia Conference, Salzburg: June, 2008
one factor to be considered is that blog mentors need to be proactive in seeking out their student’s posts online, whilst face-to-face mentors must respond to their students’ reflections in the meetings.
overall, the distance group were more mixed in their responses to the use of blogs.
significantly, the majority of comments have been provided by the mentor and most posts by the student.
EduMedia Conference, Salzburg: June, 2008
Results: MentorBlog
Students reported they were more critically aware as a result of using the wiki.
Generally students enjoyed using the wiki and engaged as a group as well as individually
65,000 transactions within first 6 months, including over 3000 page edits and more than 1000 discussion posts.
EduMedia Conference, Salzburg: June, 2008
Results: WikiLit
atudents were very reluctant to edit the content created by other students and agreed in most cases to discuss rather than change the work of others.
the hidden audience effect encouraged students to write more accurately and correctly on the public wiki spaces.
as above, students reported that they took more care to reference the sources of their content.
EduMedia Conference, Salzburg: June, 2008
results: WikiLit
future researchextend project to larger groups next year
extend project to include mobile phones (moblogging) so that nomadic students (e.g. military, health care workers) can participate in mentor blogging.
possible incorporation of micro blogging (e.g. Twitter) into the mentorial tool kit.
EduMedia Conference, Salzburg: June, 2008
future research
reflecting on practice through photos – using an image blog?
...or through a video diary….?
reflecting on practice using audio archives – a voice blog...
use of wikis in other contexts to encourage further collaborative learning for distance students
development of more wiki activities to scaffold learning for groups
EduMedia Conference, Salzburg: June, 2008
www2.plymouth.ac.uk/distancelearning
thank you