Open social learning communities

Education Sciences , 2023

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY

Rangsit University, 2013

Student-centered learning is the mantra of most, if not all, higher education institutions. Most of these academic settings have experimented with combinations of learning models to provide different formats of participation to ensure that classrooms would still be the central setting of knowledge creation. Attempts are made to balance the clinging attention of students to technologies that serve as comfort zones of personal knowledge acquisition over the passive experience they go through in a classroom. As most student-centered learning moves towards learning motivated by technology and while higher education is still committed to keeping most student interactions within the confines of classroom settings, be they virtual or physical, this paper provides a case for an alternative open teaching course design. This open teaching approach was experimented and tried in a Social Media in Education class for the junior instructional design students. The strategy was deliberately planned and executed so as to provide a rhizomatic structure of interaction with the use of social media technologies, to introduce the Personal Learning Networks (PLN) as learning strategies, and to underscore the importance of inquiry and intellectual exchange through the use of different social platforms. The case identifies two important areas. First is the rhizomatic design of the course employing different channels for online expression and conversation. This explores the open course's potential to facilitate self-regulated participation. Second is the induction of the personal learning networks that embody the way students learn together with the connections, resources and tools that support their learning preferences. The paper also examines the quality of retrospection generated by the concept and practice of personal learning networks in the students through their PLN maps and explanations. This case study has several significant findings. One is that open teaching is an effective model to employ student engagement activities with the support of social technologies and platforms. Two, the open teaching rhizomatic structure is an empowering avenue for authentic reflection and intelligent interactions. Three, the induction of the Personal Learning Network by the students provides an effective retrospection time to set their goals on the onset of the course. The PLN also provided the students with a way to rethink their long term goals in order to turn the course into an enhancement of their professional discipline. Lastly, the social media technologies were able to provide good ways to encourage effective retrospection among the students. This paper also serves as a reference to open course design and delivery.

Student-centered learning is the mantra of most, if not all, higher education institutions. Most of these academic settings have experimented with combinations of learning models to provide different formats of participation to ensure that classrooms would still be the central setting of knowledge creation. Attempts are made to balance the clinging attention of students to technologies that serve as comfort zones of personal knowledge acquisition over the passive experience they go through in a classroom. As most student-centered learning moves towards learning motivated by technology and while higher education is still committed to keeping most student interactions within the confines of classroom settings, be they virtual or physical, this paper provides a case for an alternative open teaching course design. This open teaching approach was experimented and tried in a Social Media in Education class for the junior instructional design students. The strategy was deliberately planned and executed so as to provide a rhizomatic structure of interaction with the use of social media technologies, to introduce the Personal Learning Networks (PLN) as learning strategies, and to underscore the importance of inquiry and intellectual exchange through the use of different social platforms. The case identifies two important areas. First is the rhizomatic design of the course employing different channels for online expression and conversation. This explores the open course's potential to facilitate self-regulated participation. Second is the induction of the personal learning networks that embody the way students learn together with the connections, resources and tools that support their learning preferences. The paper also examines the quality of retrospection generated by the concept and practice of personal learning networks in the students through their PLN maps and explanations. This case study has several significant findings. One is that open teaching is an effective model to employ student engagement activities with the support of social technologies and platforms. Two, the open teaching rhizomatic structure is an empowering avenue for authentic reflection and intelligent interactions. Three, the induction of the Personal Learning Network by the students provides an effective retrospection time to set their goals on the onset of the course. The PLN also provided the students with a way to rethink their long term goals in order to turn the course into an enhancement of their professional discipline. Lastly, the social media technologies were able to provide good ways to encourage effective retrospection among the students. This paper also serves as a reference to open course design and delivery.

Citeseer

2008

Over the past few years there has been a dramatic increase in Online Social Networking, both in terms of the number of web sites that offer this service and the number of users of those sites. A key aspect of Online Social Networks is that the content is user created and edited/commented upon by other users. The benefits of this type of co-operation and collaboration on the learning process have long been recognised and steps have been taken to introduce these aspects into Managed/Virtual Learning Environments. However, the social aspects of these environments are generally restricted to people with an official affiliation with the hosting organisation. This paper discusses the StudyNet MLE developed by the University of Hertfordshire and the drivers behind a project to integrate social networking aspects to the system and widening access beyond the traditional community. The paper concludes with the vision for the new, more social StudyNet and some general implementation details from the early stages of the project. Online Social Networking sites have existed on the web for over a decade, early examples being classmates.com and sixdegrees.com (named after the famous 'six degrees of separation' concept), though some would say that UseNet is a form of social networking that greatly predates the web. However, it is only in the last 5 years that the rise of sites such as MySpace, Friendster, and Facebook has brought the concept into the mainstream.

Collective Intelligence and E-Learning 2.0: Implications of Web-Based Communities and Networking, 2010

International Journal of Web Based Communities, 2013

Proceedings of the First International Conference on Technological Ecosystem for Enhancing Multiculturality - TEEM '13, 2013

This paper considers the interest of traditional high educational institution to bounce into the world of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). This learning approach is defined over the concept of Open Educational Resources (OER) in a basis of a high number of users that interact with the learning materials (mostly multimedia resources). This approach implies some challenges to the software platform that lies behind the learning experience. In this work we are going to evaluate the Open Source Social Networking Engine, ELGG, and how it has strongly evolved to AbiertaUGR.

2010

The possibilities and expansion of the use of Web 2.0 has opened up a world of possibilities in online learning. In spite of the integration of these tools in education major changes are required in the educational design of instructional processes. This paper presents an educational experience conducted by the Open University of Catalonia using the social network Facebook for the purpose of testing a learning model that uses a participation and collaboration methodology among users based on the use of open educational resources.

oer.kmi.open.ac.uk

This chapter introduces the concept of co-Learning as well as discusses how open learning networks can produce, sharing and reuse OER collaboratively through social media. The aim of this investigation is to identify new forms of collaboration, as well as strategies that can be used to make the production and adaptation processes of OER more explicit for anyone in a social network to contribute.