This document discusses integrating learning design into social media for higher education. It begins by outlining trends in social media usage in Canada, noting high rates of participation. This raises implications for marketing, teaching and learning, professional development, and research in higher education. The document then discusses balancing user experience and learner experience in design. It proposes five principles for learning design in social media: balancing user and learner experience; ensuring scalability and evolvability; allowing for both producers and spectators; enabling multiple ways to share and connect; and incorporating an "undo" function. Finally, it discusses the importance of digital literacy skills like attention, participation, critical consumption, collaboration, and network awareness.
Design is the New Black - How to integrate thoughtful learning design in social media for higher education and beyond
1. Design is the New Black - How to integrate
thoughtful learning design in social media for higher
education and beyond
Stella Lee
Blended Learning Leader, Global Learning Team
Golder Associates, Inc., Canada
2. Today’s outline
• Social Media Trends and Usage in Canada
• Implications for Higher Education/Workplace Learning
• UX and LX
• Learning Design for Social Media
• Discussions and Sharing
7. Social media trends and usage
• Canada has the world’s highest social networking penetration - 49.3% (2011)
• 47% of Canadians use Twitter (18% of all Twitter accounts)
• 58% have blogs
8. • In 2011, 50% of online Canadians visited a social media site at least once a
week
• 35% visited every day
• 18-34 years old heaviest users
• daily access to email declined 28%
9. source: comscore’s December 2011 report: http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Presentations_Whitepapers/2011/it_is_a_social_world_top_10_need-to-
knows_about_social_networking
16. A “DIY” model
• A lot more amateurish effort (Shirky, 2008)
• It is scattered all over, many overlapping effort
• It is organic/self-organizing
• A sub-culture movement (not officially supported by institutions)
17. Some social media usage at Golder Associates
• Yammer
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Jam
26. UX vs. LX
• What is UX?
• What is LX?
• How can we incorporate the two?
27. UX
• Can be specified and measured:
• 95% of first-time students locate the course syllabus for COMP201 in
Blackboard within two minutes without technical support
• 90% of the students clicked on the Twitter link embedded in the course
website
• Students completing Intro to Philosophy course gives the course
Facebook website an average of 4.0 rating on a five-point Likert scale for
ease of use
28. LX
• measures learner perception and satisfaction with content/learning activities
• actual learning, measured via tests
29. Learners’ Experience Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree
The content allowed for deep reflection
The learning material made me stop and think
The activities provided ways for trial and error
The information provided was open to interpretation, discussion,
and feedback
Learners’ Experience (Smulder, 2002)
Smulders, D. (2003). Designing for Learners, Designing for Users, retrieved Feb 23, 2012 from http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?
section=best_practices&article=11-1
31. FIVE design principles
1. Balancing LX and UX
2. Scalability/evolvability
3. Allow rooms for both producers and spectators
4. Multiple ways to share/link/connect
5. The power of “undo”
32. Balancing LX and UX
source: David Smulders
http://elearnmag.acm.org/index.cfm?
section=best_practices&article=11-1
39. “The most important critical uncertainty
today is how many of us learn to use
digital media and networks effectively,
reasonably, credibly, collaboratively,
civilly, humanely. This difference is a
matter of literacy.”
- Howard Rheingold, 2010
46. References
Coates, T. (2005). An Addendum to a Definition of Social Software. Retrieved April 9, 2012,
from http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2005/01/
an_addendum_to_a_definition_of_social_software/
Rheingold, H. (2009). Collab Tech 2010 Keynote: Social Media, Participative Pedagogy, and
Digital Literacies. Retrieved July 8, 2011, from http://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress.com/
2010/05/17/howard-rheingold-keynote-speech-social-media-participative-pedagogy-and-
digital-literacies/
Shirky, C. (2008). Here Comes Everybody. New York: The Penguin Press
Smulders, D. (2003). Designing for Learners, Designing for Users. Retrieved March 23, 2012
from: http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=best_practices&article=11-1
how many of you use social media in your personal life? How many use for teaching and learning?\n
I can’t help but start every one of my international talk with this slide. \n
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There are over 30 definitions of social media. It scales well, gaining strengths from large numbers, bottom-up control rather than top-down.\nhttp://heidicohen.com/social-media-definition/\n
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In Canada, just about any organizations and companies have some sort of presence on social media. As a nation, we are highly connected and fairly social online.6S Marketing, a Vancouver based internet marketing company, conducted a survey on the use of social media in Canada. \n\n
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The average social media user age is 37 years old. 55+ is the fastest growing group.\n
--Sina Weibbo, a hugely popular social microblogging site, is used by more than 2 million which is 28 percent of the entire Hong Kong population. During one unusually strong week, Sina Weibo picked up 1 million bloggers!\n\n
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How does it help education? Level the playing field, costs nothing (well, almost!) and it has a broader/different reach. We can talk to each other directly - huge for virtual workplace, distance learning.\n\n
yammer is our internal social networking site, a private facebook site if you will. Jam is our social learning site.\n
not a huge uptake - not officially supported, it has grown organically, not fully understand what it is for, people are careful to post only work-related comments.\n
hard to design (need to link it back to specific modules), hard to measure\n
The first three are public tools, the last one is an in-house tools we are developing. The in-house tool is more suited for teaching and learning purposes. \n
Official fanpage. We have admins from across the university who monitor activity, and one staff in recruitment actively answers questions and posts articles. \n
I particularly like this feature. Again, it suits our purpose since we have students from all around the world who are interested in our courses/programs. \n
2189 users. Hard to convince faculty to use it, students are using it more as private study groups. Hard to measure. Not officially connected to actual courses. Hard to link theory with practice. \n
271 groups, 29% grad courses, 16% undergrad, 24% admin. \n
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Most activities are social - the way we currently design e-learning doesn’t take that into consideration\n
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had 160,000 students signed up. Two-thirds from outside the US.\n
multiple ways to produce/lurk\n
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Include members to share/connect, allow self-organization and control (open vs. closed groups)\n
“Impression to create simplicity even in the most complex applications” - Jon Meada\nEncourage experimentation\n
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We need to embed these literacy skills directly into our courses/training material. Teach them within the context they are in. \n
Attention: ADHD, task switching, a skill that needs to be learned, practice and evolved. The whole attention span and the amount of time people are willing to work on some stuff. There are dire consequences for quality of research/study - very shallow, where are the great researchers coming out of this?\n
We need to have a big-picture roadmap to show students where they are going. Participations have their place, but so are classroom lectures. WE need to have that knowledge base and that structure. \n
The ability to triangulate information, filter information, evaluate information. Learn to ask questions about the validity, authenticity of the source. \n\n
Group work is important for distance self-paced, self-study learners. They need to be taught how to work with virtual groups. How to self-organized, how to regulate within the group and understand group dynamics. \n
The need to understand your voice, be responsible for your voice, knowing that your digital footprint will be around forever. Also understanding about your private vs. public space implication. Privacy issue will be huge. \n