p2pu pm4e seminar

Participatory Media Tools and Learner Engagement

Foundations

Who We Are

•Erin Knight, Research Director

•Nathan Gandomi, Programs Director

•Initial research with participatory media 09-10 school year at UCB; ongoing 10-11 semester

•Interested in how tools are used and what instructors/students think about how they were used

Center for NGTL

• School of Information

• Education technology for student-centered learning and student engagement

• Bridge between academia and industry

• Research-based practice

Participatory Media

• It’s everywhere

• Called many things: “Web 2.0”, “participatory media”, etc.

• Facebook, Twitter, del.icio.us, YouTube, etc.

• Bottom Line: Ability to share and participate online

• Line between creator and consumer blurred, barrier to entry often lowered

Educational Background / Potential

• Shifts towards student or learner-centered environments

• Adaptive, Flexible, Dynamic, Relevant

• Student contribute to the course material

• Roots in Papert’s Constructionism and Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development”

• Emerging Space

• Educators incorporating blogs, wikis, forums, etc. into course environments

• Enable course members to participate, add content, further discuss issues and topics, develop community, an so on...

• Creates a learner-centered, flexible learning environment that can adapt to student needs/interests

Participatory Media for Education

For education

“The power derived from using social media in group learning processes comes not from a more efficient computerized extension of older communication forms—the classroom discussion, texts to be read, essays and theses to be written. The power of social media in education and elsewhere derives from their affordances for forms of communication and social behavior that were previously prohibitively difficult or expensive for more than a tiny elite to benefit.” -Howard Rheingold

It’s about more than the tools themselves.

But...

Tools: Blogs

• Expression of individual voice, opinion pieces

• Tagged, Comments

• Examples: Wordpress

• Need to have an active community

• Can be intimidating

Tools: Forums

• Many-to-many discussions and debates

• Time and space-independent

• Typically threaded so that you can follow the entire discussion

• Examples: Yahoo! Answers, WoW Forums, also built into P2PU.org

• No assurance of response from participants, facilitator must stay engaged in forum

• Can get unwieldy

Tools: Wiki

• Collaborative document or resource building

• Examples: Wikipedia, Google Docs, P2P has existing wiki

• Requires some curation to ensure pages are linked and easy to find

• Vulnerable to inaccuracy, poor revisions, and vandalism because anyone can edit.

• Attribution and original ownership can get lost amongst a large group of collaborators and editors.

Tools: Social Bookmarking

• Collaborative Research

• Link Sharing; Shared course repository

• Tagged; Discoverable

• Examples: delicious.com

• Difficult to assure of quality of bookmarked items

• Does not free buried resources (restricted access, journals, libraries)

Tools: Chat

• Synchronous, informal conversation tool

• Good for creating community or asking questions

• Built into P2PU.org

• Informal nature sometimes a bad thing

• May lead to expectation that the organizer is always available for questions, so guidelines should be set in advance.

Remember, we said it was about more than the tools...

Learning Objectives

• Much of existing literature is tool-focused

• Align certain learning activities with certain tools

• We saw each tool used for wide range of learning activities

• No “one-use-fits-each-tool”

• Convergence of tools OR evidence of student’s adapting tool to their needs

What does this mean for you?

•Identify your key objectives

•Lots of room for creativity

Examples of Learning Objectives

• Express clear, coherent thoughts through writing

• Collaboratively write or build documents

• Analyze or critique existing work

• Connect course topics with current events or personal experience

• Debate and discuss issues in the field topic

• Conduct research, contribute to course content repository

• Synthesize various perspectives about the topic or concept

More Examples of Learning Objectives

• Reflect on learning, metacognition

• Take responsibility for learning; Teach others about course topics

• Review the work of classmates

• Ask a question / get assistance

• Share work / learn by social example

• Create community

• Learn discipline language; Develop information organization skills

Examples of Tool Alignment

LO: Express clear, coherent thoughts through writing

Blogexpress personal ideas and thoughts through a blog post

Wiki

generate a collaborative document (i.e. create a Wikipedia entry for a topic, or develop a summary page)

Forum

debate or discuss a topic or question with examples from readings or other sources as support


LO: Share participant work / learn by social example

Blogpost summary of work with link to file

Wiki

each participant build wiki page for an assignment or other participant work, shared with entire class

Forum

post sample exam questions as forum topics for participants to discuss and build answers


LO: Synthesize various perspectives about the topic

Blogwrite a post to summarize all perspectives; write a post with the voice of one perspective

Wikicreate and/or edit pages that summarize and synthesize varying perspectives

More Examples of Tool Alignment

• http://wiki.p2pu.org/toolbox

Delivery: How to use these tools?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drurydrama/

Icebreakers!

Create CommunityShare parts of the participants lives (images, written response,

video).

Discuss experiences related to the issue of the course


http://www.flickr.com/photos/abchao/

Facilitator != instructor, teacher or lecturer. Participate in your own

activities!

Model Expected UseGive examples of assignments/

activities.

Participants will be different in skills and comfort level with tools


What is the purpose of the post? What kind of comment should

you make?

Give Feedback Frequency and immediacy

Better for learning

Don’t Panic or Feel Like You Have to Over Plan

• Don’t feel like you have to have it all worked out

• Some guidance is good to set the stage / get members used to the tool(s)

• Leave some wiggle room for participants to adapt use of tools

“Once I posted a couple times, it became a

habit.”

“Since it wasn't clear about how we needed to use it or if it was

graded, we used it the way that we wanted to.”

“I think the more that I would go in there and read the posts and try to put in

my own two cents, the more I liked it and the

more I wanted to use it. ”

Now You.

• Questions?

• Specific examples?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/altemark/46732233/