Social Learning 2.0 Eliminating the Loneliness of the Distance Learner(s)

1. Social Learning 2.0Eliminating the Loneliness of the Distance Learner(s) Cambridge Distance Teaching and Learning Conference Terry Anderson terrya@athabascau.ca

2. Presentation Overview • Setting the scene with Robert Frost • Setting the Context • Values • Affordances of the Web • Emerging Pedagogies • Granularity of Social Learning 2.0 • Design principles for educational social software • Adoption context and ways forward • Demonstration of tools in use

3. The Tuft of FlowersRobert Frost (1874–1963).

4. I went to turn the grass once after one   Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.   The dew was gone that made his blade so keen   Before I came to view the leveled scene.   I looked for him behind an isle of trees;     I  listened for his whetstone on the breeze.   But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,And I must be, as he had been, -alone, ‘As all must be,’ I said within my heart,   ‘Whether they work together or apart.’ 

5. But as I said it, swift there passed me by    On noiseless wing a ‘wildered butterfly’,    Seeking with memories grown dim o’er night    Some resting flower of yesterday’s delight.    And once I marked his flight go round and round,       As where some flower lay withering on the ground.    And then he flew as far as eye could see,    And then on tremulous wing came back to me.

6. I thought of questions that have no reply,    And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;        But he turned first, and led my eye to look    At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,    A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared    Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.    I left my place to know them by their name,            Finding them butterfly weed when I came.

7. And fell a sprit kindred to my own; So that henceforth I worked no more alone; But glad with him, I worked as with his aid, And weary, sought at noon with him the shade; And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.    ‘Men work together,’ I told him from the heart, ‘Whether they work together or apart’. Robert Frost (1874–1963).

8. Values • We can (and must) continuously improve the quality, effectiveness, appeal, cost and time efficiency of the learning experience. • Learner control and freedom is integral to 21st Century education and life-long learning. • Education for elites is not sufficient for planetary survival

9. Athabasca University, Alberta, Canada Fastest growing university in Canada 34,000 students, 700 courses 100% distance education Graduate and Undergraduate programs Master & Doctorate – Distance Education Only US Regionally Accredited University in Canada * Athabasca University • Athabasca University

10. The Net Changes Everything! • Affordances of the Net, Social software, Net 2.0 (user-generated knowledge), e-learning 2.0, semantic web and other jargon names • I assume a world of network ubiquity • We construct the real uses and applications of these technologies • 94% of 9-17 Americana teenagers use Social Software- with education being a major topic (National School Board Assoc, 2007) • 81.6% of USA undergrads use social software • ECAR EduCause 2007 • New Net Pedagogies – connectivism (George Siemens)

11. “As digital resources increasingly offer opportunities for networked, collaborative and distributed learning and interaction, we need to challenge the assumption that the easiest and most cost effective approach to organizing learning is within the walls of the school.” – or within formal distance education packages! • Towards new learning networks, Futurlab

12. Two Solitudes of Distance Education Collaborative, Distance education 3rd gen. video, audio and computer conf Type C Communications Technology Independent Study 1st gen. correspondence 2nd gen. telecourses Type I Information Technology From Rumble and Hullsman

13. Convergence on Social Software Collaborative, Distance education 3rd gen. video, audio and computer conf Type C Communications Technology Independent Study 1st gen. correspondence 2nd gen. telecourses Type I Information Technology Socially Enhanced Distance Learning Type S Social Technology

14. Type S – Social Technology • Allows users to find, collaborate (either online or F2F) and share resources, when needed and when desired, for learning • Uses intelligent processing to filter, control and enhance value • Uses Type I and Type C technologies • Uses multiple groups, networks and collectives as resources for learning “We are now engaged in a grand scheme to augment, amplify, enhance, and extend the relationships between all beings and all objects. That is why the Network Economy is a big deal.”(Kelly, 1997, p. 140).

15. Educational Social Software defined: • “Networked tools that support and encourage learning through face-to-face and online social interactions while retaining individual control over time, space, presence, activity, identity, relationship, and community.” (Anderson, 2005)

16. Interaction Models of Learning • Effective interaction between and among learners, content and teachers makes authentic learning happen.

17. Educational Interactions Learner / learner Learner Learner / teacher Learner / content Teacher Content Teacher / content. Teacher / teacher Content / content • Anderson (2002) Equivalency Theorem

18. Group as educational actor Jon Dron, 2007 Educational Interactions Learner / learner Learner Learner / teacher Learner / content Teacher Content Teacher / content. Teacher / teacher Content / content • Anderson (2002) Equivalency Theorem

19. network Group as educational actor Stephen Downes, 2006 Stephen Downes, 2006 Learner / learner Learner Learner / teacher Learner / content Teacher Content Teacher / content. Teacher / teacher Content / content • Anderson (2002) Equivalency Theorem

20. collective Group as educational actor Anderson & Dron, 2007 Dron & Anderson Learner / learner Learner Learner / teacher Learner / content Teacher Content Teacher / content. Teacher / teacher Content / content • Anderson (2002) Equivalency Theorem

21. Taxonomy of the ‘Many’Dron and Anderson, 2007 Group Conscious membership Leadership and organization Cohorts and paced Rules and guidelines Access and privacy controls Focused and often time limited May be blended F2F Metaphor : Virtual classroom

22. Group Network Shared interest/practice Fluid membership Friends of friends Reputation and altruism driven Emergent norms, structures Activity ebbs and flows Rarely F2F Metaphor: Virtual Community of Practice

23. Group Network Collective ‘Aggregated other’ Unconscious ‘wisdom of crowds’ Stigmatic aggregation No membership or rules Augmentation and annotation through use of Data Mining Never F2F Metaphor: Wisdom of Crowds

24. Group Network Social Learning 2.0 Collective Dron and Anderson, 2007

25. D Networks RSS, Atom ELGG Mail Lists WIKI Blogs FaceBook Del.icio.us Flicker Filtering Social Learning 2.0 Meetup Collective SecondLife Calendaring Geotracking Commercial Personalized Services Groups Email, Skype, IM LMS Google Alert

26. Social Learning 2.0 • Each of us participates in Groups, Networks and Collectives. • Learning is enhanced by exploiting the affordances of all three sources of social learning. • Issues, memes, opportunities and learning activities arise at all three levels of granularity. • Certain network tools are optimized for each level of granularity - Can they be appropriated for effective use?

27. Social Learning 2.0 Applications in Educational Contexts

28. 1. Formal Education in Groups: • Comfortable, classes and cohorts • Increases: • completion rates, • achievement • satisfaction (Jung, Choi, Lim, & Leem, 2002) • Same logistic challenges as for institutional, campus -based learning • Can operate ‘behind the garden wall’ to allow freedom for expression and development • Refuge for scholarship

29. Formal Learning and Groups • Long history of research and study • Need to optimize: • Social presence • Cognitive presence • Teaching presence (see Communitiesofinquiry.com) • Established sets of tools – • LMS (VLE) systems • Synchronous (video & net conferencing) • Email and lists

30. Problems with Groups • Confining in time, space pace, & relationship • Often overly controlled by teacher expectation and institutional curriculum control • Foster learner dependencies • Isolated from the world of practice Relationships Paulsen 1993

31. Challenges of using informal social software tools for formal group tasks • Control • Support • Privacy • Assessment • Ownership and perseverance

32. Challenge: Creating Incentives to Sustain Meaningful Contribution The New Yorker September 12, 2005

33. Example: How are Blogs used in Groups? • “You are required to post at least two messages to your blog and respond to the postings of at least two other enrolled students in our class. • Please use your postings to address the issues discussed on pages 34-38 of your text. • Your post and responses will be assessed for 10% of your final grade • To protect your privacy, your blog is not accessible outside of the VLE and postings will be destroyed at the end of the course.” Paraphrased from major UK university graduate course requirements

34. Assessing Reflective writing • If we don’t assess the blog, will students use them?? • Only learners should be able to decide on the audience - no-one; everyone (including Google); teacher; class; program; parents; etc.) • Elgg supports this capacity.

35. 2. Formal Learning with Networks • Each of us belongs to many networks • Networks use and create artifacts, that are searchable • Networks can connect self-paced and independent learners • Network leadership arises in multiple formats • Supported by multiple, mostly free communications • Allows connectivism to flourish (Siemens 2006) “It is not what you know, but who you know to ask.”

36. http://www.dailymotion.com/leelefever/video/x2ebea_socialnetworkingplainenglishhttp://www.dailymotion.com/leelefever/video/x2ebea_socialnetworkingplainenglish

37. Formal Education and Networks (cont.) • Provides a ‘commons’ from which students’ extract and contribute information • In school one should learn to build, contribute to and manage one’s networks • Through exposure, provides application and validation of information and skills developed in formal learning • Basis for ongoing support and advise from alumni and professional communities

38. Network Tools • Most web 2.0 apps including: • Profiles: Finding significant others • Blogging - outside the garden wall • Recommendation systems (Slashdot, Diigo, Diig, Cite-u-like) • Scheduling meet-ups for study, debate, collaboration • Connecting people and resources - syndicating

39. Unplanned, unanticipated encounters are central to democracy itself. Such encounters often involve topics and points of view that people have not sought out and perhaps find quite irritating. They are important partly to ensure against fragmentation and extremism, which are predictable outcomes of any situation in which like-minded people speak only with themselves (Sunstein, 2001, P.8)

40. Networks are today’s most widely used public spaces • Public spaces have many purposes in social life • they allow people to make sense of the social norms that regulate society, • they let people learn to express themselves and learn from the reactions of others, and • they let people make certain acts or expressions ‘real’ by having witnesses acknowledge them. • (Arendt 1998) from Danah Boyd 2007 • Group spaces are not public spaces.

41. Network Learning Applications • Examples: • Extract and comment on a themes from last month’s IT Forum – blog results • Create an analysis of the affordances of Second Life for educational purposes – blog results • Search and summarize from Technorati the roll-out problems in OLPC’s $100 laptop program? • Using quotes from Hansard and Members Blogs, define the Conservatives’ position on global warming, and blog your analysis for group and network feedback

42. Networked Learning example:

43. Choosing the right tool? http://www.go2web20.net 1618 apps as of Sept 24, 2007

44. 3. Formal Education and Collectives • Personal and collaborative search and filter to resolve learning tasks • Smart retrieval from the universal libraries of resources – human and learning objects • Requires high skill and literacy skills to effectively exploite • Requires contribution to the collective (tagging, sharing whenever possible, leaving traces) • (only 16% of users are taggers (Pew, 2005) • Allows discovery and validation of academic norms, values and paradigms

45. Collective Application - Amazon

46. Example 2 Aggregation of Crowds

47. How do you design effective activities for Groups, Networks and Collectives ??

48. Design principles for Social Learning 2.0 (Dron, 2007) • Emergence, Evolution and Complexity: • Principle of Adaptability; • Principle of Evolvability; • Principle of Stigmergy • Architecture and Design; • Principle of Constraint, • Principle of Parcellation; • Principle of Scale • Social Psychology & community, • Principle of Sociability • Embedded opportunity for building relationships; • Principle of Trust – • personal control • Networking Theory • Principle of Connectivity

49. Are Social Networking and Collective activities DisruptiveTechnologies? • Disruptive technologies • Start out as not being good enough for the established market • Have scalability, mass production advantages • Appeal to non traditional consumers • Not understood by mainstream organizations Clayton M. ChristensenDisruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave, his 1997 book The Innovator's Dilemma.

50. Should you establish a formal institution presence in FaceBook? • Is it ‘their space’ or ‘our space’ or ‘everyone’s space’?? • Where will Facebook be in 12 months? • We are obliged to explore these contexts as responsible professionals