1. Online communities
and interactions -
reflections on the use
of new social and
participatory media
Gráinne Conole
The Open University, UK
Open Language Forum, 12th Aprl 2011
2. Today’s educational context
• Fast changing
technological environment
• New digital literacy skills
needed for learners,
teacher and the workplace
• The importance of
creativity
• Mechanisms for fostering
creativity
9. Social and participatory media 4
Media sharing Blogging
Messaging
Recommender
systems
Virtual worlds
and games
10. Social and participatory media 4
Media sharing Blogging
Messaging
Recommender
systems
Virtual worlds
and games
Syndication
11. Social and participatory media 4
Media sharing Blogging
Messaging
Recommender
systems
Virtual worlds
and games
Social
Syndication
bookmarking
12. Social and participatory media 4
Media sharing Blogging
Messaging
Recommender
systems
Social Virtual worlds
networking and games
Social
Syndication
bookmarking
13. Social and participatory media 4
Media sharing Blogging
Messaging
Collaborative Recommender
editing systems
Social Virtual worlds
networking and games
Social
Syndication
bookmarking
14. Social and participatory media 4
Media sharing Blogging
Mash ups
Messaging
Collaborative Recommender
editing systems
Social Virtual worlds
networking and games
Social
Syndication
bookmarking
23. Harnessing the media
13
Follow Spanish speakers on Twitter
Post in Spanish on Twitter and facebook
Change facebook skin to Spanish
Join relevant social networking groups of language learners
e-dictionaries and Google translate (with care!)
Listen to online podcasts
Read Spanish newspapers online
Download Spanish mobile phone apps
24. 14
Effective use of new technologies requires
a radical rethink of the core learning and
teaching processes; a shift from design as
an internalised, implicit and individually
crafted process to one that is externalised
and shareable with others. Change in
practice may indeed involve the use of
revised materials, new teaching strategies
and beliefs - all in relation to educational
innovation.
Conole and Alevizrou, 2010
36. Definition • Derived from Latin ‘creo’
to create/make
• About creating
something new (physical
artefact or concept) that
is novel and valuable
• Ability to transcend
traditional ideas, rules,
partners, relationships
and create meaningful
new ideas, forms,
methods, interpretations
37. Connecting, new knowledge & creativity 19
Connecting to
new people and
networks gives
you new insights,
and makes you
more creative
http://www.open.ou.nl/rse/Rory_Sie/CoCooN.html
38. Why is it important?
• Essential skill to deal
with today’s
complex, fast and
changing society
• Discourse and
collaboration are
mediated through a
range of social and
participatory media
39. Stages
• Preparation: identifying
the problem
• Incubation: internalisation
of the problem
• Intimation: getting a
feeling for a solution
• Illumination: creativity
bursts forth
• Verification: idea is
consciously verified,
elaborated and applied
40. Technologies
• Can promote creativity in
new and innovative ways
• Enable new forms of
discourse, collaboration
and cooperation
• Access and repurpose
knowledge in different
forms of representation
• Aggregation and scale -
distributed and collective
41. Key questions
• What is the nature of creativity?
• What are its key characteristics?
• What is the relationship between
creativity and general intelligence?
• How can creativity be fostered and
supported?
• What is the nature of collaborative
creative practices?
• How can technologies be used to
promote and support creativity?
42. Open practices
What are the
implications of
adopting more open
approaches?
43. Social and participatory media 25
Media sharing Blogging
Mash ups
Messaging
How are social and
Collaborative participatory media Recommender
editing systems
being used to enable
open practices?
Social Virtual worlds
networking and games
Social
Syndication
bookmarking
49. Open design
Shift from belief-based, implicit
approaches to design-based, explicit
approaches
Learning Design
A design-based approach to
creation and support of courses
Encourages reflective, scholarly practices
Promotes sharing and discussion
Conole, 2010b
59. The nature of community
Complex, distributed, loose
communities are emerging
Facilitated through different but
connected social networking tools such
as facebook, Twitter, Ning
Users create their own Personal Digital
Environment
Mix of synchronous and asynchronous
tools
Boundary crossing via the power of
retweeting
Links between interests, rather than
places
60. So what is a community?
[Community does not] imply necessarily co-presence, a well-
defined identifiable group, or socially visible boundaries. It does
imply participation in an activity system about which participants
share understandings concerning what they are doing and what
that means in their lives and for their communities
Lave and Wenger, 1991
Virtual communities are social aggregations that emerge from
the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions
long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of
personal relationships in cyberspace.
Rheingold, 1993
61. Community as a process
Constantly evolving and
changing
Shifting groups and depths of
relationships
Dynamic, evolving and
potentially transformative
Both directed and
serendipitous interactions
62. Community indicators
Participation Cohesion
Sustained over time Support & tolerance
Commitment from core group Turn taking & response
Emerging roles & hierarchy Humour and playfulness
Identity Creative capability
Group self-awareness Igniting sense of purpose
Shared language & vocab Multiple points of view
Sense of community expressed, contradicted or
challenged
Creation of knowledge links &
patterns
Galley et al., 2010
63. Final thoughts
Open, participatory and social media enable new forms
of communication and collaboration
Communities in these spaces are complex and
distributed
Learners and teachers need to develop new digital
literacy skills to harness their potential
We need to rethink how we design and support learning
Open, participatory and social media can provide
mechanisms for us to share and discuss teaching ideas
in new ways
We are seeing a blurring of boundaries: teachers/
learners, teaching/research, real/virtual spaces, formal/
informal modes of communication and publication
64. The future?
• Limitless potential of
technologies
• Individual, tools and
collective
• Augmented and
gesture technologies
• Blurring the
boundaries of real World Builder
and virtual worlds
65. References
Conole, G. (forthcoming), Designing for learning in an open world, Springer
Conole, G. (2010a), Review of pedagogical models and their use in e-learning, http://
cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/2982
Conole, G. (2010b), Learning design - making practice explicit, ConnectEd conference, Sydney, 28th
June 2010, http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/4001
Galley, R., Conole, G. and Alevizou, P. (submitted), Community Indicators: A framework for building
and evaluating community activity on Cloudworks, Interactive Learning Environments.
Conole, G, and Alevizou, P. (2010), A literature review of the use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher
Education, HE Academy commissioned report, http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/EvidenceNet/
Conole_Alevizou_2010.pdf
Galley, R., Conole, G. and Alevizou, P. (2010), Case study: Using Cloudworks for an Open Literature
Review, An HE Academy commissioned report.
Alevizou, P., Conole, G. and Galley, R. (2010), Using Cloudworks to support OER activities, An HE
Academy commissioned report.
Conole, G., Galley, R. and Culver, J. (2010), Frameworks for understanding the nature of
interactions, networking and community in a social networking site for academic practice, The
International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning.
Conole, G. and Culver, J. (2010) 'The design of Cloudworks: applying social networking practice to
foster the exchange of learning and teaching ideas and designs' Computers and Education, 54(3):
679 - 692.
Conole and Culver (2009), Cloudworks: social networking for learning design, Australian Journal of
Educational Technology, 25(5), pp. 763–782, http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet25/conole.html.
66. References
• Jenkins, H., Clinton, K., Purushotma, R., Robison, A.J. and Weigel, M.,
(2006), Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: media education
for the 21st Century, http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/
%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/
JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF
• Weller, M (2011) The Digital Scholar. Bloomsbury Academic
• Language learning in Secondlife http://utsa.edu/registrar/inSL/files/
LanguageTeachingLearning.pdf
• Loveless, A M (2007) Creativity, technology and learning – a review of recent
literature Futurelab, http://archive.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/
lit_reviews/Creativity_Review_update.pdf
• http://robwall.ca/2009/03/10/creativity-is-the-new-technology/
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvIQP-EBPqc
• http://vimeo.com/3365942
• http://blogs.hbr.org/video/2010/05/andrew-klavan-on-how-21st-cent.html
• Questionmark http://www.flickr.com/photos/crystaljingsr/3914729343/