Matthew Allen

In semester 1 this year Internet Studies staff ran the very successful unit Internet Communities and Social Networks 204/504, through both Curtin and OUA. The centrepiece for this unit was the 3-week online conference which students participated in, by writing conference papers, posting them to our website and then discussing both their own and others’ papers. This very successful conference is now over but you can observe the results at the Debating Communities and Networks site. The unit was, clearly, not your normal ‘teaching and learning experience’ – all assessment, tasks and activities, resources and discussions, were aligned with making the conference work successfully – and ‘learning’ was a secondary (but very successful) outcome.

I am now, in concert with the unit controller Dr Michael Kent, doing some research into the experiences of this unit and what it might tell us about online learning, student motivation, and authentic assessment. I will be sharing some of these thoughts with you elsewhere, including giving a paper called “Going Public with Learning” at a conference in September organised at Murdoch University by Ingrid Richardson. (abstract)

However, something interesting is emerging from the research as it relates to the use and interpretation of the student surveys we use at Curtin (known as Evaluate. Because the unit ran in almost identical fashion for three different cohorts of students, at the same time and with the same teaching staff, curriculum and so on, we are now able to compare and contrast the results from Evaluate based on the differences that might be discerned from the students who respond. The only significant difference is that one cohort was most likely to have also attended a physical classroom for 2 hours a week as well as doing all of the online activity.

This situation is important. As we know, evaluation of teaching at university has become standard now in Australia. Some of the reasons for this situation are good: it is important for academics to treat their teaching as research and to inquire, empirically, into how it is working, both to improve individual units of study and also to become better all-round teachers. But some of the reasons are bad: surveys are often used in crude ways to manage teaching performance (rewards and criticisms both), or they are reported in generalised ways to show how great an area, course or university is for marketing. And, while there may be some contestation over my characterisation of the reasons as good or bad (after all, perhaps t is good to manage performance using surveys), there can be no doubt that the validity of the research or management based on student surveys rests on the quality and sophistication of the instrument: does the survey measure what it purports to measure?

Evaluate, Curtin’s instrument, has its strengths and weaknesses which you can judge for yourself: here are the items in the survey (to which students respond using a classic Strongly Agree/Agree/Disagree/Strongly Disagree/No opinion scale):

1. The learning outcomes in this unit are clearly identified
2. The learning experiences in this unit help me to achieve the learning outcomes
3. The learning resources in this unit help me to achieve the learning outcomes
4. The assessment tasks in this unit evaluate my achievement of the learning outcomes
5. Feedback on my work in this unit helps me to achieve the learning outcomes
6. The workload in this unit is appropriate to the achievement of the learning outcomes
7. The quality of teaching in this unit helps me to achieve the learning outcomes
8. I am motivated to achieve the learning outcomes in this unit
9. I make best use of the learning experiences in this unit
10. I think about how I can learn more effectively in this unit
11. Overall, I am satisfied with this unit

The aim, broadly speaking, is that the survey assess the curriculum and content of the unit and the design of the learning experience, rather than specific teachers. In other words, Evaluate attempts to assess curriculum, abstracted from the specifics of the teaching and learning activities. It also attempts to provide insight into the students’ mindset through items 8-10 though in practice these items are treated at Curtin as they were comments by students also on the quality of the unit or its teachers. Thus, in general terms, Evaluate attempts to use student perceptions as a direct measure of the realities of the quality of the teaching and learning experience, with students positioned as informed and reliable judges of that quality.

In most cases at Curtin there is just one cohort of students for each unit, completing the Evaluate survey. There is no demographic information to enable internal comparisons. But, for NET204, in semester 1 2010, we had a very unusual situation in which the same unit was taught using three different unit codes, for 3 different groups, thus enabling 3 different and differentiated data sets to be generated. One offering was for OUA students (all external); one was for Curtin-based undergraduates (mostly internal); one was for Curtin-based graduate students (e.g. new-to-area coursework students, not higher degree students) – (mostly external). (the samples and populations were: OUA n=21, from 68 possible respondents; Curtin undergrad n=16 from 35 possible respondents; Curtin graduate n=9 from 16 possible respondents)

So what happens when different results achieved in the Evaluate survey for these three different cohorts, remembering that with the exception of the classroom contact for internals, and some separation of students for the first 1/3 of the study period, all were treated to an effectively equivalent experience? What can we learn about Evaluate itself when we compare results from a similar activity but assessed by three different sorts of students – where the main difference in the ‘learning’ comes from the students themselves?

First of all, the immediate obvious finding is that Curtin undergrads were less likely to be satisfied with the unit overall – (item 11). 95% of OUA students, and 100% Curtin graduates ‘agreed’ (either SA or A) that theu were satisfied; only 75% of Curtin undergrads agreed. And, on average, these undergrads scored the unit 10% lower on all 12 items. In other words, even with caveats about sample size, response rate and so on (caveats that rarely matter for internal management in any case), we get a face-value difference that is somewhat troubling.

The only reasonable conclusion I can draw from this is that the STUDENTS, not the curriculum or teaching, explain the difference. Curtin undergrads had a class *as well as* all the online work and thus can be assumed to have had a richer / better teaching experience of the same content. Yet they were less satisfied. I conclude that the most likely reason for this is that, on the whole, Curtin undergrads have a more teacher-centric approach to their studies and thus an authentic, challenging learning experience is not as satisfying for them because it does not fit their expectations.

How do I arrive at this conclusion? Well, digging deeper into the data, Curtin undergraduates were notably more like to agree that they had made best use of the learning experiences (+7% from average) and were more likely to agree they thought about how best to study (slightly more than OUA; a lot more than graduate students). Graduate students and OUA students had lower scores on these self-rating items. I draw the inference that Curtin undergraduates *believe* they are studying well and perceive the difficulties to be the teacher’s fault (they are not taking responsibility for their learning as much as the others); OUA and, especially, graduate students are actually studying well, but take more responsibility for problems, thinking it is their fault. They are therefore more likely to be satisfied with a unit (even if they don’t make as much of it as they could) which challenges them to be responsible for what they are learning.

Let’s also look at the item on feedback: we know feedback is the most troublesome area in all student evaluations and usally the source of the worst scores on Evaluate. Remember that, in this case, all students – across the 3 groups – received exactly the same extensive feedback (including that they had their main assignment marked, commented, suggestions for improvement and then were able to resubmit it with improvements for a better grade). Even the classroom contact would not have materially changed this situation (and might even have allowed for more feedback). Despite this equivalence, Curtin undergraduates rated feedback 19% lower than the other two groups! My interpretation is that students’ responses to the feedback item are not a reflection of the feedback given, but – rather – students’ interpretation of what feedback should be. In other words, because Curtin undergraduates got extensive and helpful feedback which required them to do more (so as to learn and improve), they actually believed that was ‘poor’ feedback – because it didn’t fit with their inflated expectation first time around or that the teacher ought to have told them how to do a good job before the assessment and therefore poor performance, leading to critical feedback, is not their fault in the first place.

Finally, let’s look at the key question of motivation (the unit was specifically designed to maximise motivation by giving students responsibility for their learning). Curtin undergraduates varied in their agreement with motivation by 12% – in other words, despite identical approaches to motivating students, the Curtin undergraduates felt themselves to be less motivated. What this suggests (again not surprisingly) is that motivation is correlated with the internal dynamics of the student, and not necessarily amenable to control by what teachers do. Of course, teachers must be focused on motivating students (indeed that is the point of authentic assessment in many cases): but surveys must be used cautiously when assessing the degree to which teachers have achieved that goal since it is, in truth, only possible for students to be motivated when a partnership (rather than a relation of domination and control) is at least approximated.

In conclusion, this unusual situation – 3 different cohorts, all responding in significant numbers to the same survey, on the same unit, with all variables pretty much the same except for cohort membership – shows the challenge of Evaluate and similar surveys. They do a good job of assessing student perceptions of teaching and learning. With some fine analysis they can also suggest ways of managing those perceptions for the better. But what they cannot do is substitute student perceptions for measures or evaluations of actual quality.

Disclaimer: This analysis is not a rigorous statistical reading of the data. That task is, in fact, impossible because of the way it is collected and presented and, moreover, would require different items to be asked in the first place. It may not be statistically significant that these variations emerge but, that said, it does on the face of it, make me suspect that there is a major difference between the purported measurement and the actual measurement goals. Furthermore, since the survey results are used for management purposes with little regard to good statistical practice, I am playing by the same rules as those who require the surveys of is

I recently answered an email from a colleague asking for advice about wikis, especially in the face of his university’s (inevitable) suspicion about anything that is not authorised, locked-down, served from the campus and generally (IMO) unusable for agile teaching and learning. I thought I would share an edited version of my views, since it neatly captures some of what I’ve been thinking about as part of my ALTC project on Web 2.0 and online learning.

Agile teaching: responding to needs and concerns in the learning design of students’ experiences, activities and tasks which takes account of current events, new technologies in ways that institutionalised curriculum design and enterprise technology practices can’t cope with because they are too structured, clumsy and slow-moving. Agile teaching implies agility of mind as well as design and technology – it’s being playful, picking up and putting down, making limited and short-term commitments to particular ways of teaching and content, on the basis that it’s more fun, more engaging and ultimately more realistic as an educator and thinker to be moving forward, not circling the bureaucratic wagons

 

---

Yes, we use wikis in our teaching, in two ways. First, some of the students naturally set up wikis to work on collaborative projects or similar without us telling them to – we leave that up to them! They also use other technologies, such as Ning and similar networking sites/services and, of course, simpler forms of communication and collaboration. Wikis perhaps are suited only to some kinds of people for this task?

Second, we run a unit of study in which students are required to author their first assignment in a wiki – but not collaboratively (they look at others, but don’t edit). Then, their second main assignment – a group report – must be online and while we provided an alternative publishing space (openzine.com) they didn’t like it and so all, I think, ended up using a wiki. This year (semester 2) we will require them to use a wiki. Elaine Tay and I have written a paper about this unit and how we use wikis – currently about ready for submission for publication. Briefly, we concluded, it’s not the wiki itself, but the social affordances of groupwork that are the most important learning design consideration: wikis are too open a technology to really constrain or require a form of collaboration unless you create the social context for it. Note that an unexpected outcome was that students benefited from seeing each other’s individual work and, as far as we can tell, there was no great worry about it. Some ideas about this were presented to the Teaching Learning Forum in Perth this year.

I should add – we also used to use a wiki as the place where students doing a whole-of-group collaborative project on virtual communities would create and publish their material. We used a wiki like this in the mid-2000s and it has been a great success though, recently, as numbers have grown (that unit now has 100+ students online), it has not worked as well and we’ve changed our thinking (see below re the online conference). What we loved about this wiki environment is the way it challenged the students to imagine the form and structure of the collaborative presentation, not just the content. It enabled task division – some people did more design work, others more content work. It also promoted a sense of student ownership – what made this task authentic was the students’ own taking of responsibility in the snowfield of the blank wiki!

So, in short, you can and in some cases should use wikis in teaching. I think the most important affordances of wikis are as follows.

• The fact that the process of creating and editing wiki pages is relatively simple, and yet produces a shared resource, makes this software a very powerful tool for managing knowledge work within a group whose abilities and knowledge of the content of the site varies as much as their technical skill.
• Wikis permit (and even promote) collaborative individualism. Traditional cooperative publishing activities tend to require a lot of discussion of what to change and how to do it, before you actually make changes, create content etc. Wikis allow individuals to jump in and work relatively safely and the collaboration – the forming of the group happens in the process of editing and developing the content.
• Plus, at a very simple level, a wiki rapidly allows us to get material online, shared, reading and writing and thinking about audiences – whether all the other students or (preferably) a real audience of web users

If you look at http://www.wikimatrix.org/ you will see a listing of 100s of wiki engines and sites. Some would need to be installed and run from a server (think mediawiki for example), others are hosted (like pbwiki). I’ve not looked at a lot of them in detail recently but have been using http://wikidot.com – this is free, but with ads and some restrictions. It’s cheap to buy a license however. Personally I like it, but my colleagues think I am nuts! They tend to go with pbwiki, now available via http://pbworks.com/ but the cost is an issue. Just had a quick play with wikimatrix and I suspect you will find better free solutions. The key reason to pay money is to get finegrain control over access / publicness etc and/or lose the adverts. I doubt size is an issue that would make you pay money.

A recent interesting development which might work for a small group (since I am unsure how stable it is) would be http://www.springnote.com. The beauty of springnote is that it wraps up a wiki approach in a metaphor (the notebook) and some visual clues. It’s primarily aimed at private (eg not publicly accessible) work by individuals OR groups Or both in the same space. But it can be exported to a public site. I’d caution against using it with more than 10-20 students at first, and you should download / backup regularly. I discussed Springnote recently at the University of NSW:

Part of the problem with wikis is that they are highly unstructured and can be challenging to manage in terms of access / revision etc. You might be interested in http://networkconference.netstudies.org which we just ran. It was a 3-week online conference, students submitting 2000 word papers in 1 of 4 streams (after major assistance with improving the papers). Students then read papers, commented and replied to comments on their own papers. We used WordPress (a blogging engine but which actually is more like a content management system these days) installed on a server I pay for in the US. It worked absolutely fine – 85-90% of students have said they learned more this way than from normal study mode. Most students were external, but not all. The challenge, though, is to design the learning experience – this approach worked because it was a social event, culturally encoded and built into the assessment, teaching and feedback structure of the unit.

So, in short: wikis work. Choosing a wiki is a personal matter and thank goodness for wikimatrix! Making it work, however, remains an exercise in teaching – that often-forgotten aspect of ‘learning technologies’, ‘the student experience’ and so on. Teaching with a wiki involves careful assessment design, strong encouragement and endorsement of its use and, in the end, a realistic and believable purpose for it. Otherwise students will simply dismiss it as ‘technocrap’.

Disclaimer: Live blogging

Networked learning, the Net Generation and Digital Natives
Symposium Organisers: Chris Jones, The Open University, United Kingdom
7th International Networked Learning Conference

5 papers (abstracts)

• Diversity in interactive media use among Dutch youth A van den Beemt, S Akkerman, P. Simons
• Learning and Living Technologies: A Longitudinal Study … Ruslan Ramanau, Anesa Hosein, Chris Jones
• Learning nests and local habitations: Locations for networked learning Chris Jones and Graham Healing
• Digital natives: Everyday life versus academic study Linda Corrin, Sue Bennett, Lori Lockyer
• Supporting the “Digital Natives”: what is the role of schools? Rebecca Eynon
• Born into the Digital Age in the South of Africa: the reconfiguration… Laura Czerniewicz, Cheryl Brown

Introduction (Jones) – key points – moral panics around young people; young people are agents of change, this is not happening ‘to’ them; there is no generational change – yes, there are changes, but not tied to a specific generation. Emphasises that all the papers to come will show there is no evidence for a ‘net generation’.

---

Diversity in interactive media use among Dutch youth

Refers to impact of Oblinger and Prensky on Dutch educational thinking, focusing on interactive multimedia; calls for research to see if there is any actual change; is sceptical.
Emphasises that learning is social, works within social spaces. Distinguishes social (people driven) from cultural (content driven) uses of interactive media. Research presented here is on out of school use (informal learning) – key point is that students can switch and change what they do and find their own preferred technology.
Four activities – interacting (previously browsing); performing; interchanging; authoring. Linked to four categories – traditionalists; gamers; networkers; producers. Producers are seen as ‘authors’ and they might look most like the digital natives we might be seeking. Data shows this group perform all activities.

Very useful point in the discussion – that some people are very heavy users of just one or two applications; that they are not diverse users across technologies.

The emphasis on informal learning and the Internet is an important one; particularly like the way that the activities discovered / analysed are focused on more general tasks than specific software uses. That said, the words are still tied to quite specific expectations of meaning – e.g. performing = gaming; interacting = social software. It also implies that one can categorise and distinguish activities into separate boxes. For example – isn’t gaming a form of social software? Does browsing involve some aspects of content production? The approach here, while interesting, is a little reductive – does it reflect the attempt to form a clear quantitative answer from a very muddy field of research?

 

---

Learning and Living Technologies
Looking at how 1st year university students use ICTS; across several kinds of universities, subjects etc; metehods involved surveys, interviews and cultural probes (“Day experience”). 2008-2010 timeline. Frequency of use of devices, ICTS , skills and attitude etc. Longitudinal surveying after initial descriptive survey.

Survey focuses on two items – use of ICTs for social / leisure vs use of ICTs for study. For some reason they limited the question to ‘on an average week day’. Students expected to use them about equally for these purposes. Reported higher than expected use; place-based universities and courses reported higher than expected as well, and using them higher than distance students. Men used them more highly than women. Critically, place-based students who were ‘not net gen’ were much closer to net get in terms of use (just slightly less); distance-based students not net gen were lower in their usage when compared to distance education net gen students.

Not surprisingly, a key outcome is that ‘net gen’ students see ICTs as both leisure and study tool – older see it as study primarily. Another outcome – students do not come expecting as much ICT use as they end up with (eg computing / Internet not seen as important at university as we might be led to believe?)

The survey is difficult to interpret because, I think, there is a significant simplification of the field of research so as to get a usable / doable survey. Yes, there seems to be some kind of a trend (and some interesting further questions to be explored, such as the way place (being on campus) might assist less skilled / interested ICT learners to become ‘net gen’ – type people). But, in the end, it doesn’t seem to me to get past simple ideas of ‘how much do you use it’, whereas net gen is more to do with the cultures of use, the particularity of skills and knowledge of ICTs as an object in themselves

---

Sth African context – there is scepticism about the terminology, the discourse of net generation, especially when it is termed ‘digital native’. Background is also a very significant restructure and expansion of higher education since 1994; lack of resources.
Reports on a Sth African survey in 2009, very detailed at first, then refined for broader use. Results:
Experience with ICT use, not age was a key determinant. Children born into the net generation cannot be assumed to be a particular ‘way’. No homogeneity. The Digital native was an ‘elite’ user – 11% only of the cohort; they have 10+ years experience, learning from others and themselves about how to use. Also identifies the ‘digital stranger’ – lack of experience, lack of opportunity.
Distinguishes between computer use and mobile phone use – the latter is ubiquitous and, for poorer users, mobile = Internet access. Relatively cheap access that way, also lack of infrastructure. So research heavily focused on mobile devices. And in this context, poorer students tended to prioritise mobile phone use for study.
Now moves to theory to explore: Bourdieu
Fields (aims, goals, attempting to achieve); capitals (resources – economic, social, symbolic – eg what matters), cultural Social Capital – embodied, objectified, institutional (eg what you can do, what tools you have, and how your skills are recognised); Habitus – “being in the world” – shifting constructs of relationships between field and capital
Describes two cases – very interesting about the relationship of computing to mobile phones, but also the manner in which expectations, desires and plans for the future create openness to ‘being digital’.

---

Digital Natives: Everyday Life v Academic Study
Starts with Douglas Adams on technologies: “things in world when born are ordinary”; “things invented between 15-35 are new and exciting”; “anything invented after you are 35 is against the order of things”.
Is critical of the underlying assumption that young people naturally adopt and use technology and can apply it to learning; an assumption stemming from Tapscott, Prenksy et al from late 1990s. Initial research was very localised, and focused on the characteristics of students’ internet use. From it came radical calls for change in higher education and thus the emergence of a moral panic around educational change. Around 2005, people started to focus more on skills and less on age as the marker of the ‘digital natives’; similarly, we started to get large-scale surveys.
Reports on a survey of 7 of 9 faculties at University of Wollongong, n=547. Focused on domestic, 1st year on-campus surveys. Focused only on 1980+ students. (n=470). Used term of access, not ownership. PDAs and GPS – very limited or no access. Survey looked at use of tech in ‘everyday life’ vs ‘academic study’. Fairly obvious findings – eg high frequency of mobiles and email for everyday life; high finding information / LMS use – all the ‘web 2.0’ stuff is very low level for academic life. Academic use is always lower than everyday life for things like blogging, video production. For chat and social networking, almost inverse relationship – high social, low academic.
Conclusion – variety of uses and approaches from students. There are no groupings: technologies are highly individuated. Surveys do not tell us the ‘story’ behind the data – eg mobile phone as replacement watch. Surveys are not accurate and reliable. Correlation co-efficient analysis shows very little reliability. Technology use varies widely from week to week.
Further research is looking at difference between self-directed academic study and directed academic study use of technologies.

---

Learning Nests and Local Habitations
Where is networked learning located? It is not anywhere, anyplace, anytime: it is simply relocated and retermporalised. Uses notion of ‘edgeless’ university and classroom, drawn from Bradwell (2009) “edgeless city” – function remains; form alters. Local habitation from Nardi and O’Day – technologies adated to, changed within a local area; linked to Crook (1990s) – the learning nest of the college dorm room – merging of study and personal life. “institutional requirements” matter (so tech work links to assessment, lecture, classes etc).
Research used ‘day experience method’ (Riddle, 2007) – students had cams and had to film themselves based on prompts sent via SMS during the day. Followed up with focus groups at which some videos were shown to all. Shows videos – excellent method.
Clear evidence that students didn’t know that they were using technology as much as they were.

“There was no difference between the location of work and play” (eg student Facebooking in class)

“Applications open at once” – Life on screen Which tab is open = whether you are studying or working

Importance of connections to others – alone, alone but online connection, shared space with others in physical space.

Crook (1990s) claimed that on-screen would be distaction; this research at least identifies how people manage their distractions. So students are quite astute at controlling their technology uses when they need to avopid distraction – critically this shows agency

Extremely interesting results here – what it shows is that rich ethnographic or qualitative approaches are far more useful in understanding the diversity of experience, rather than generic surveys. The ideas about location are beautifully interwoven between where they are using computing, and how they are controlling and creating ‘virtual’ locations within the screen interface

---

Supporting the digital natives

3-year project focusing on schools, more than universities – what is happening before uni. Critical of the populist net gen rhetoric. So ask, how do young people use it, and how can we give equal access and opportunity, especially supporting them in the gaining of skills.

Basic data – note a small dip in Internet use at ages 17-19 (from 95% to 90% or so); very high Internet access for children at home; and even in bedroom. Children negotiate with parents to get access to Internet – perhaps to claim it helps them study – and parents accept this.

Very close links between NON-Internet users (called “lapsed internet users” – nice!) and either getting access at school (and thus first doing it in school context) and then stopping because they don’t have access away from school (which explains, to some extent, the dip in 17-19 year olds).

having now heard so many excellent speakers tell us that net gen is not true, except as a cultural construct, I am wondering whether we are arguing with the past, about an idea which has been and one, or whether we are just failing to make headway against it? Have we any evidence as to the depth and breadth of the purchase that the net gen myth has gained in business? politics? etc? I have heard marketing people talking about “millenials” but these are understood primarily in terms of consumer habits,and tech use is more a premise around which consumer conclusions are drawn within thid discourse. So are we attacking a dead straw argument?

Eynon goes on to discuss the outcomes – how do ppl use the Internet? 8 behaviours, 5 informal learning; 3 formal learning. Eynon asks useful question “what does this use MEAN?” – but as yet no easy answer. The qualitiatve information demonstrates complexity of the motivations and specific meanings of use.

The only kind of informal learning use that school programs helped students to do something different was ‘creativity’ – all other uses could be explained around age, gender, friends, access at home. The formal uses for learning were, however, all correlated with school use / demands.

Normative conclusion – schools should be a more important place at which development of facility with, and motivation to use, technologies for ‘learning’ can occur. Importance of freedom and flexibility within school, because it feels more important and there is support for learning how to do something

Excellent paper which suggests that digital literacy needs to encompass all sorts of affective and motivational factors, as well as actual skills. Perhaps also we should be learning from this for unviersities to play their role in fostering creativity and expression using innovative online technologies

Discussion to come; will probably try and compose some kind of response / provocation / development around net generation in coming days.

Disclaimer: live blogging

Exploring sociotechnical theories of learning technology
7th International Networked Learning Conference
Symposium Organisers: Linda Creanor & Steve Walker Glasgow Caledonian University, The Open University, United Kingdom

4 papers (abstracts)

• Interpreting Complexity: a case for the sociotechnical interaction framework as an analytical lens for learning technology research Linda Creanor & Steve Walker
• Network theories for technology-enabled learning and social change: Connectivism and Actor Network theory
  Frances Bell
• The social construction of educational technology through the use of proprietary software Chris Bissell
• Social presence in online learning communities Karen Kear

Initial reaction: the very existence of this symposium, and its framing, suggests that people in learning technologies research and development may not, in their community of practice, have an explicit and reflexive discourse which understands technologies in society.

Interpreting Complexity
Claims that technological determinism is starting to dominate discussions of education and technology, especially under the guise of Web 2.0 and evangelism for the uses of these new technologies. Intrested in the new contexts of co-created content and knowledge, but have some questions about the emerging trendy theories (such as connectivism). Asks us to “make a problem of what technology is” – outlines the standard four – ANT, SCOT, SST, and social informatics and discusses some similar features (eg they are all relatively negative towards determism; they are attentive to context)

Is it the case that ANT is sometimes too narrowly defined as a theory of technology? While grounded in investigations of technologies, ANT does rather seem to be a broader theory of social structure; the ‘network’ and ‘node’ approach perhaps fits too easily into people’s desires to apply it to technology

The focus for this first paper is on social informatics: Sociotechnological interaction network (STIN) – uses Rob Kling (see the Rob Kling Center for SI). (claims STIN is a simple alternative to the ‘baggage’ of ANT – [hm! see my point above). Gives examples of how users (better termed social actors) interact with and shape the technology; how structures within which technology operates has similar influence. Conclusion? technology is not a thing but a network between people, rules, data, and so on.

---

Network theories for technology-enabled learning and social change

Paper is a story of Bell's attempts to critique Siemens' work) on connectivism; (see also Downes. Starts with context - growth in internet usage; informal v formal learning; social v individual learning; scheduled v responsive. Connectivism, to Bell, looks like ANT, somewhat. Siemens is not the same as Downes, but they are 'connected'.

One of the interesting things about connectivism is that it has become popular, and gained mindshare, principally because of its publication and development through the Internet; one wonders had it been located in more traditional print publishing (or even online, but scholarly journals) whether it would have activated its catchiness? And, synergy! - Bell just presents excellent evidence of how connectivism exists in the blogosphere, not scholarverse

Identifies a key weakness of Connectivism - it is normative, prescribing what is good - (networks) and what is bad (groups) - see Bell's animated visualisation of this normativity. Asks, interestingly - is connectivism itself a knowledge network (will it learn and develop?), perhaps it is more of a personal statement of theory (theory as aspect of practice), not a research agenda. Does point to the fact that connectivism might er-socialise theories of learning technologies.

Excellent critique and analysis; perhaps suggests that, while we need explicit theorisation of technologies as social processes, we cannot cleave to them too strongly or closely: remain agile or sceptical of any determining theory

---

The social construction of educational technology through the use of proprietary software

Begins by listing the many varieties of academic theoretical engagement with technologies and society (scientific knowledge, science, etc). Emphasises the deprecation in these theories of determinism; importance of co-creation of systems between humans and technology, though variations within that. Notes that some of these investigations tended to be too concerned with innovation, and not enough with use.

Gives examples of uses of technology in teaching - first, is a simple example of using spreadsheet to get students exploring digital telecommunications - spreadsheet "becomes a graphic device" -used in a way spreadsheet was not meant to be. Gives other examples of software used in T&L for 'odd' outcomes. Students turn these applications into something from which they can learn. "don't get ed tech people to write software - let students invent their own uses". Now switches to clever web 2.0 uses - e.g. Google translate. Emphasis too on students learning that technology is malleable and they must become 'tinkerers'.

Very cleverly demonstrates the fluid, malleable nature of digital artefacts and how they can be turned against their original purpose, or reused on other ways. Digital media is much more open to reinvention against the cultural expectations of its purpose: like a double game - culture+technology = 1 dominant approach which then, read through culture for alternative technology gives a different approach

---

Social presence in online learning communities
Describes social presence as a concept - basic definition "the degree to which a person is perceived as 'real' in mediated communication" (Gunawardena & Zittle, 1997) - history back into the 1970s (eg telephone research). Claims that online communication can be problematic when people don't seem to act and speak as if they are dealing with real people; it is negative, cold, potentially full of dangers unless there is 'social presence'. Cites Garrison and Anderson (2003) on social presence - social presence as 'supportive and encouraging' of students to communicate genuinely.

immediate concern - sure, this is a good working definition and has definitely dominated our thinking in educational technology for many years - at least since the 1990s - but it first of all assumes there is unmediated conversation (always tricky - language and presence are themselves mediators) and second that 'real' is a definable quality 'absent' from networked communications. The definition is more useful as a marker of where we started thinking about presence in the 1990s and perhaps where we have come from. It probably works well for students outside of the net, coming into online learning channels and spaces without little other online contact or activity.

Cites some of her own research into students' lack of knowledge or sensibility of 'being with other people' when doing online discussion. Also emphasises the value of real-time interaction. (this is research from students using First Class - [dated?]).

Asks is social presence a technical or a social phenomenon. Looks at technical features – follows the fairly simplistic media richness theory to claim that (eg) discussion boards are not rich enough to generate social presence. Suggests profiles, IM, etc might be ‘better’ for social presence – these technologies might ‘help’. [Paper doesn't say when, what cohort, what was the cultural relationship with face to face learning - were they imagining online learning as a 'deficit'?']

The paper does present some challenges for me: I wonder if it misses the fact that the lack of social presence in online learning might have a lot more to do with the fact that learning is not something in which it is easy to have social presence, even in a classroom! In other words, the question of ‘presence’ has been assumed; in fact, presence might be something which is found more easily in some social settings than in others. ‘Education’ might not be a very easy place for presence? But, also got a key point from this paper – real-time interaction is more significant than we might think for the affective and sense-making elements of presence. Very useful.

---

Discussion
Discussion came and went; battery died. Brief summary? Lots of positive feedback to panellists – comments re institutionalisation of technologies; value of social thinking for educational designers.

I commented recently on Twitter that Facebook = the new AOL and, not surprisingly, then discovered that many others (e.g. Kottke.org had already had my apparently novel insight! (This effect can either deflate one’s confidence or increase it – I am not the first, but I am as wise as the crowd – some examples from the crowd thanks to googlesearch). And, clearly, Facebook is trying to create an experience of online life / augmented reality / social and cognitive networking that stands apart from, or is potentially isolated from the ‘web’ within which Facebook exists – though it claims to be embedding itself into the web, of becoming a sort of underlying social networking of people, data and places throughout the web, I actually see the plan as one to enable its users to never leave the facebook environment except when prompted to do so by something in facebook, and then be returned to facebook. So, in this model of online behaviour, Facebook users would look out over the low walls of the garden and observe interesting things elsewhere in the jungle of the net; would at times scurry out into that jungle, but otherwise would remain safely inside the habitat of Facebook. As Siliconbeat reports, Google should be worried about this new wave of Facebook’s expansion of the way it will encompass online behaviours into a single space: communities that serve Facebook.

There’s a real sense of imperialism about Facebook. Sure we worry about the approach to privacy (see Raynes-Goldie, First Monday and the casual manner in which Facebook treats its users, by changing rules on them, making them feel (and indeed be) disconnected from their data bodies. But what worries me more, at this stage, is how Facebook is attempting to exploit more and more of the Internet for its marketing purposes (through the ‘like’ function, and by embedding internet affordances into its environment) and to claim that what matters in information acquisition and production is what is liked, or networked, between its users. (note too – Facebook acts as if everyone online is a Facebook user – a lot of them just don’t know it yet). So the challenge we face in responding to Facebook and its extraordinary (and network-effect growing) power is not how Facebook works in its own terms (after all, one can opt out, to some extent, if you don’t like it), but how it acquisitively eyes the Internet as the source of the raw informational material which it needs to sustain itself.

Google has an equally imperial view of information – witness the book digitisation issue, the constant acquisition of individual online behavioural data. What I find interesting to consider, though, is the difference between how these two behemoths of the online world approach their activities. Google achieves its empire (an empire of mind and data) by networking diverse nodes together – there is, really, no one place where Google ‘is’ and can be found / managed or located. Googlemaps tells us that Google is everyone and nowhere all at once. Note how Facebook is absolutely locatable – it’s all about what happens inside that Facebook environment (content brought into that space); Google is all about what happens everywhere else (but monitored by Google). And, while Google ‘profiles’ us when we sign up for its services (and even when we don’t), there is one key component of most online activities which we don’t find through Google – the public profile. Google is, truly, ‘faceless’ book – except that your face is very clear to google, if you choose to embrace its multitude of data services.

Facebook, then, strikes me as the inheritor of Yahoo!’s location in the web-world of the 2000s – a place for ‘us’ to form networks; the networks are a consequence of accepting what we give up when we use Facebook. Google is the service where the network is t he starting point: the network of data, the networking of us within the infoverse of the Internet. While Facebook might be viewed as a force for the enclosure of the net, as a company that seeks control (and market profitability) through a very explicit presence, an overlording curator of those within its domain, Google – equally potent – disperses itself throughout the Internet; invisibility, implicitness and distributed power work for this company.

Since both of them are searching, in the end, for revenue streams from advertising , Facebook and Google compete (though Facebook is far less pervasive, less successful in those terms). But the competition is not just for ‘who wins the most revenue’: like most deep struggles within capitalism, Facebook and Google are engaged in a kind of ideological struggle to define the Internet in ways which (in the minds of users) will constrain and shape the Internet’s future. So, in years to come, will the Internet be – largely – seen and used inside the low walls of Facebook’s crowded gardens? Or will it be itself the garden, and Google a kind of viral thread interwoven with its every use?

Following my presentations on the ‘top 10′ web 2.0 applications for learning which exist in the real world of the Internet, I have started to develop a model of knowledge networking which allows us to understand how the contemporary web (a better description now that Web 2.0?) serves to enable knowledge networks, and how those networks might exist within the complex digital ecology of the Internet. These ideas are still under development.

In 2009, I argued that learning was a special case of knowledge work and, that as all knowledge work becomes, or tends towards, being knowledge networking, so too learning changes in its character (regardless of whether students and teachers actively engage with such a change). In doing so, I claimed that knowledge work is best understood in quite simple terms (at least initially), as involving the classic input – process – output model which has dominated information sciences and systems research for many years. I don’t doubt that knowledge is far more complex than this model at first suggests (see Allen and Long, 2009). But, the complexity cannot be ‘explained’ by making the model appear more sophisticated, for the complexity comes from the social conditions within which knowledge work occurs. Therefore, superficially, we might as well continue to think in terms of knowledge work being done within the input-process-output circuit, and just remember that every output is an input (and vice versa) and processing is also continuous, influencing how information even comes to be considered as inputs and outputs.

To gain more understanding, however, and to emphasise the way that the Internet promotes distributed and collaborative knowledge work (why it is networking, not just working), I want to now model knowledge networking in the contemporary Internet in slightly different terms, though the relationship to input-process-output should be obvious. I identify four crucial elements which, collectively and interactively, generate the system of knowledge work conducted through and for the web; in doing so, I hope to provide a better way of thinking about the purpose and possible application to elearning of the entire system.

First, we can identify online behaviours and web services that work as information pumps: these pumps draw on the apparently infiinte (though actually limited) reservoirs of information within and around the web and then circulate the information with various degrees of filtering, flavouring, and transformation through many different channels and pipes. Note that information pumping involves both humans and computers. Some examples of the web services that might naturally appear as information pumps can be found at Newsmap, or at Evri; but do not think that it is the ‘sites’ alone that are the pumps. Delicious also serves as an information pump, distributing the work between its users and the systems maintaining the lists of tagged links. Pumps can either be sites that are visited (such as the innovative new instance of Cuil, Cpedia ; or they can be feeds (primarily RSS) from sites, gathered and analysed in various ways and presented to users (see RSS Voyage for an elegant version; and many different variations thereof.

Second, we can observe that many web services entice and require uses to engage in the manipulation, creation, re-expression or other forms of cognition using the service as a partner in these activities. Thus, the second element of knowledge networking online is the existence and use of cognition engines: these engines – fuelled in part by the information pumps – work with users to ‘do’ the knowledge work. There is an incredible variety of cognition engines, from complex and highly structured (Cohere for example), to deceptively open and simple (wikis would serve as these kinds of engines – a current personal favourite is Springnote, with its elegant notebook metaphor). Engines can involve innovative creative activity (making simple movies from text at xtranormal; the delights and frustrations of Prezi) or some traditional cognitive forms – the visualisations that can be made at Manyeyes for example, or mindmapping as at Bubbl.us. Cognition engines can promote reflection, too – like a personal current favourite Betterme

Cognition engines often contain significant affordances for collaboration: yet we can also see that many web services are specifically designed for the kinds of collaborative endeavour, which generates the third key element in the knowledge networking system: social environments. Ranging from loose social networking utilities (Ning), to detailed groupwork systems (Wiggio), but also including real-time interaction channels, such as the simple Tinychat conference room system or more sophisticated systems like Elluminate, these environments establish an array of spaces, mediated by technologies, within which people can act socially in knowledge work.

The fourth and final element discernable within the contemporary web as a knowledge work system is the publication outlet.

In conclusion, then, we can say that the knowledge networking dynamics of the web involve distributed, conjoint action by humans and computers through web services which serve as information pumps, cognition engines, social environments and publication outlets. But, to be clear, it is not the case that each web site we encounter online serves for just one of these dynamic elements. Indeed, most web services include a combination of features which means they serve as all four elements at once, whether closely coupled (as for example in facebook), or more loosely. That said, individual users, as they form and participate in networks of knowledge, traverse several sites, use many services, to carve out from the available opportunities their own particular kinds of knowledge networks. Let me finish by providing two examples: one that is contained largely within a single service; and one that spans several.

Diigo, a bookmarking, collaborative research and web annotation service, is a clear example of how one single website can host services and permit user behaviours that constitute an entire knowledge network. Diigo pumps information (both from the web and within its own system), with a significant degree of filtering and enrichment by users; in the work of organising, analysing and reframing information, it serves as a cognitive engine; yet, since many people are engaged in that task – often in well-defined and purposive groups – it is a social environment as well; finally, the results of this knowledge work can become public, so Diigo serves also as an outlet, with an audience, for publication.

Yet, knowledge work systems can span several services and sites as well. RSS feeds found and managed through Feedmil can push information into a cognition engine involving Listphile: the cognitive work here is to array and manage individual items within a pretermined list form; and, while listphile is itself a social environment, the collaborators using it choose Wiggio as the locus of many of their active collaborative endeavours. Finally, the list – while available in Listphile for public consumption – is pushed to the world as embedded code within a blogging-based website linked to Twitter, using Tumblr. Note that, in this example, the Tumblr site is itself also serving as a cognition engine at times; the listphile service involves collaboration, social action and a degree of publication, but that the specific knowledge network formed emphasises specific uses for these services within the model I am outlining.

Ultimately, the contemporary web demonstrates the fluidity and agility of the so-called Web 2.0 approach – data and human endeavour is no longer necessarily concentrated at specific places and times, in forms that are unique or limited in their re-usability. Within such a web, many forms and examples of knowledge networking, using countless varieties of applications, will occur. But, in general terms, I would argue that all knowledge networking involves the collective activation of the four distinct elements I outline – information pumps, cognition engines, social environments, and publication outlets. Higher education must learn to imagine and build its own knowledge networks that draw on this model, and on the many excellent services for knowledge work available on the web.

One of the consistent themes that has emerged from my ‘roadshow’ of presenting the initial outcomes of my ALTC project on Web 2.0 applications is the need to think through the relationship of learning management systems and Web 2.0 applications, in their thousands, that are freely available. I once described LMS like Blackboard as dead (Teaching and Learning Forum, 2009 presentation) but which I now realise are just moving so slowly it can be hard to tell the difference. I mean by this that there is a lack of agility and responsiveness and innovation in such systems. Now, this view is probably true of Blackboard (despite the promises of change in its latest incarnation); but is it true of Moodle?

Moodle, of course, differs from Blackboard primarily in being an open-source development. Certainly, in its origins, Moodle was meant to embody better a student-centred constructivist approach to learning (side note: Martin Dougiamas was one of the people I worked with in the mid-1990s when first getting into online learning!). By now, however, my sense is that all learning management systems at least aspire to, or have some element of, this approach; we’ve also learned, in 15+ years of web-based online learning, that a constructivist approach probably comes from the teacher’s design of the study program and not the technology itself. So, in thinking about the speed and agility of an LMS, we probably need to focus more on the mode of production for Moodle, and not any inherent features if we are to see it as distinct from, and perhaps better than, Blackboard.

Open-source products are not, I think, better for being ‘free’ (for they are not; one still must support and host them even if they might be somewhat cheaper). No, they are better because, with distributed, local-needs based development and flexible architecture of plug-ins, open-source applications are flexible and adaptable, to a greater degree. They also, potentially, allow universities who use them to shape the product itself instead of fitting in with the architecture of the standard sofware. Thus, I am struck by how my approach to online learning and Web 2.0 (arguing for the complementary use of an LMS and independent sites and services for specific purposes) is challenged by the possibility that Moodle, plus the extent and array of plug-ins could provide the flexibility I seek.

However I remain confident that, while the plug-ins make Moodle a richer and more extensive application, the LMS remains a distinct, useful but complementary form of Internet use for learning. The key differences between the approach I and others am taking, in layering Web 2.0 services and sites into our teaching, and LMS-oriented development is that real-world tools and applications have:

• publication possibilities: they are part of online communication, can have audiences and work within a paradigm of ‘quality for others’ to enhance motivation
• real-world context: Web 2.0 services operate in the same environment as everyday and some professional knowledge work, thus increasing the likelihood of transferral of skills from learning to practice
• ease of use: the complex a system gets, the harder it is to maintain and plug-ins don’t necessarily all have the same standards and flexibility that real-world systems do
• suitability for blended learning: not all online learning requires an LMS – Web 2.0 approach designed for these situations.

Here is the first of ten application posts I will make in coming weeks – based on my Web 2.0 presentation. I am going to take each of the 10 apps I am presenting and turn them into a single post, with a cut from my slideshow. Of course, you will only really learn to use these apps by playing with them

xtimeline

This application is xtimeline, which is a public timeline generating system. First of all, it’s creative and clever and has many features which make it work as an example of granular, distributed and collaborative knowledge work. See the slideshow below for more information. I can see this being used as a ‘plugin’ to a normal university unit of study – it’s an equivalent of an LMS (thank god!), it’s a short, snappy app which can be used to make student do some private or public collaborative knowledge work.

Two things I love:

• timelines are a really good example of a knowledge form which contains a ‘whole’ made up of many discrete ‘parts’ which are structurally linked to make that whole is a really good genre for collaborative co-creation of knowledge objects. Imagine 100 people writing a report -arghhh! but 100 people can work in parallel and series to make a timeline very easily. Collaboration depends on the type of knowledge work, not just the inbuilt toold
• xtimeline has many features: but I LOVE the upload / download a .csv file – now that is smart.

Beginning today (April 12) at the University of Adelaide, I will be presenting a ‘show and tell’ on Using Web 2.0 in your teaching: ideas, applications and affordances for enhanced educational outcomes.

I am going to look in detail at the following applications:

• xtimeline – great collaborative timeline tool
• listphile – lists and database tool
• slinkset – ‘open’ social news builder
• posterous – blogging flexibly
• mind42 – mindmapping collaboratively
• quizlet – flashcards are more than you think
• reviewbasics – co-annotation of documents
• springnote – wiki for personal and group use
• knol.google – publish your knowledge
• wiggio – great groupware

These and more are summarised in the handout for this presentation.

Formal abstract
The presentation focuses heavily on the way that a wide array of Web 2.0 / social media applications can be used in higher education, whether in distance or on-campus learning. The presentation will demonstrate the ‘top 10’ innovative applications which exemplify the different ways in which Web 2.0 can make a difference for university learning. Designed to provide practical, usable ideas, the presentation emphasises how the technologies which might be chosen must be understood in terms of their relationship to the content, assessment, outcomes of learning, and the particular context provided by students and the subjects they are studying. The presentation will involve detailed visual display of various applications. It moves beyond general discussion of blogs, wikis and social networking into consideration of unusual and valuable online services and sites which are not well known to educators.

Thanks to Elaine Tay, Tama Leaver and all the people at the 14+ universities who have helped organise this; thanks to the generous support of the ALTC

(Comments and ideas from session at Broadband Summit)

The MCEECDYA Program of reporting, National Assessment Program: Information and Communication Technology Literacy, provides evidence about the literacy of students. The 2008 report, not yet available publicly, shows that students in Years 6 and 10 of Australian schooling are not involved in a lot of “creating, analysing, and transforming” of information via online tools (what I would term cognitive uses of the web) and are primarily interested in using the net for chatting and searching for information. It will be interesting to compare this report (which is clearly in the social media period – 2008) with the previous report, from 2005.

Discussion of research infrastructure: main question – what is the interface with NBN given that the emerging Australian research network is already a lot faster and so on than the NBN? I am wondering if this is relevant to NBN – in the same way thet BHP Billiton builds its specialised network, so too would the Australian research community. It perhaps suggests that we need to be thinking about ‘networks’ not just the NBN.

An excellent presentation of problems in school:
Six key points

• Old models + new tech not solution

• No leveraging of open systems
• Risk management needed (not risk aversion)
• Personalised learning
• Costs are increasing
• importance of gatekeeping

See how the problem set is formed at the intersection of multiple domains of control and expertise – technologists, managers, teachers all work at different angles to the central problem and sometimes don’t have sufficient interaction. (Raju Varanasi – good presentation, from NSW Centre for Learning Innovation). And, the solution to this interaction matter is policy. Infrastructure is not the issue – it is policy.

A summary of the ‘reality check’ on digital education. The reality check is: don’t focus on the technology, think policy, professional development, cultures of use, legal matters AND students themselves. Technology gets in the way, if it is made the centrepiece; it should be invisible.

“the problem with students is that their life and learning will be going down a different [digital network] track” – they will choose this path because it is part of themselves and identity, so if schools don’t change students will not be engaged. (Watson, The Learning Federation)

Education is a very contested zone of debate since it involves the attempt to manage the future very directly by creating the people OF the future (our school students). Visions, hopes and fears get played out through the way people characterise the school system. Moreover, education is one of the remaining obvious places where the experts tend to be derided (teachers vs parents, bureaucrats). It is also a place where control strategies get explored and demanded, principally on the basis of the failure of children to be adult enough.