Use of Questions to Facilitate Social Learning in a Web 2.0 Environment

Online social learning involves distributed learners interacting through the use of Web 2.0. In many cases, Web 2.0 interactions are limited to information exchange and do not provoke knowledge construction. Studies of concept mapping suggest that engaging with social learning via a question could encourage meaningful interaction, although this would be likely to depend upon affective conditions and the effort involved in asking and responding to these questions. In order to investigate this, the interactions of 1,229 participants on a social learning site were studied over an 11-week period. Data were also collected from a questionnaire distributed to all participants, and from feedback contributed during the project. These were analysed thematically to investigate the ways in which questions can be used to facilitate learning in a Web 2.0 environment. Analysis showed that participants were interested in broad topic areas, themes and issues rather than specific questions about these areas. They did not treat questions related to learning about the community and the website in the same way as questions related to learning about subject areas and content. The social use of questions online was identified as supporting meaningful learning interaction in nine ways

Infusing social emotional learning into the teacher education curriculum

Research supports the importance of policies and interventions to infuse social emotional curricula in schools. The role of teachers in supporting young children’s social and emotional readiness for classroom learning has been recognized, but instruction in children’s well-being and social emotional competence is a low priority in teacher preparation programs. In this study we, used qualitative methods to examine whether we could successfully infuse an undergraduate curriculum and instructional course with social emotional learning content. The article reports on this effort, and considered the following questions: How can courses infused with SEL content impact prospective teachers’ views on the overall role of emotions in the classroom? What is the influence of the course on preservice teachers’ conceptions of SEL and its association with children’s classroom learning and behavior? How can teacher preparation programs encourage prospective teachers to consider children’s social emotional skills once they enter the classroom as teachers? At course end, the 15 enrolled students responded to predetermined questions as part of a self-reflection assignment. Using grounded theory methods, three themes were identified from participants’ reflections, including the connection between SEL and academic learning, shifting from teacher- to student-centered pedagogy, and the desire for continued learning related to SEL. An in-depth examination of these themes revealed that SEL concepts can be successfully infused in an undergraduate course on curriculum and instruction. Implications for teacher training are discussed and future avenues for research are presented.peer-reviewe

Is there a fit between pedagogy and technology in online learning?

The study followed a group of online lecturers from different disciplines who were engaged in different levels of online teaching. The researchers' experiences with e-learning have indicated there are a variety of ways by which teaching staff approach e-learning. As new technologies provide a challenge to make learning an interactive and collaborative experience that is guided by a social constructivist approach to teaching and learning, some academic staff embrace the technology to enhance their pedagogy and others are reluctant to use the technology, although in the pedagogy they promote is a social constructivist learning approach. We conducted a qualitative research project in an attempt to answer the research questions of what pedagogies are used by teaching staff to facilitate e-learning, and how do teachers change their use and understanding of e-learning techniques. The study suggests that there is a continuum in the way the constructivist pedagogy had been implemented by the different university teachers and also a continuum in the way the technology had been embraced by them. From our observations, we categorised the university teachers in relation to their pedagogies (level of social constructivist approach) and to the level at which they used the technology, in order to explore how the relationship between these two elements changed. The study helps us understand how the technology enabled some of the teachers to develop their pedagogies and change their perspectives on social learning online. In addition, for others who used social features of the technology to an optimal level, the technology helped them accommodate and reinforce the notion of a social constructivist approach to teaching and learning. Finally, the interchange between the ability to use the technology and the adoption of social constructivist approach to teaching raised new questions in relation to implementation of online learning

Motivational Social Visualizations for Personalized E-Learning

A large number of educational resources is now available on the Web to support both regular classroom learning and online learning. However, the abundance of available content produces at least two problems: how to help students find the most appropriate resources, and how to engage them into using these resources and benefiting from them. Personalized and social learning have been suggested as potential methods for addressing these problems. Our work presented in this paper attempts to combine the ideas of personalized and social learning. We introduce Progressor + , an innovative Web-based interface that helps students find the most relevant resources in a large collection of self-assessment questions and programming examples. We also present the results of a classroom study of the Progressor +  in an undergraduate class. The data revealed the motivational impact of the personalized social guidance provided by the system in the target context. The interface encouraged students to explore more educational resources and motivated them to do some work ahead of the course schedule. The increase in diversity of explored content resulted in improving students’ problem solving success. A deeper analysis of the social guidance mechanism revealed that it is based on the leading behavior of the strong students, who discovered the most relevant resources and created trails for weaker students to follow. The study results also demonstrate that students were more engaged with the system: they spent more time in working with self-assessment questions and annotated examples, attempted more questions, and achieved higher success rates in answering them

Student engagement with a content-based learning design

While learning is commonly conceptualised as a social, collaborative process in organisations, online courses often provide limited opportunities for communication between people. How do students engage with content-based courses? How do they find answers to their questions? How do they achieve the learning outcomes? This paper aims to answer these questions by focusing on students’ experiences in an online content-based course delivered in a large Mexican organisation. Sales supervisors (n=47) participated as students. Four main data sources were used to evaluate engagement with and learning from the course: surveys (n=40), think-aloud sessions (n=8), activity logs (n=47) and exams (n=43). Findings suggest that: (1) Students engage with a content-based course by following the guidance available and attempting to make the materials relevant to their own context. (2) Students are resourceful when trying to find support. If the materials do not provide the answers to their questions, they search for alternatives such as colleagues to talk to. (3) Content-based online learning designs may be engaging and effective. However, broadening the range of support options available to students may derive in more meaningful, contextualised and rewarding learning experiences

Social Interaction, Observational Learning, and Privacy: the "Do Not Call" Registry

Many empirical studies have inferred contagion in behavior from a correlation between individual behavior and the behavior of others in the same social group, rather than from any direct evidence. The correlation has been variously attributed to social interaction, word of mouth communication, and observational learning. As Manski (1993) famously observed, such correlation might be explained by peer group influence, but also, similar responses to common environmental changes. More generally, correlation in behavior raises two questions – how information is transmitted and why individuals follow the choices of others. We address these questions in the context of subscriptions to the U.S. "do not call" registry in June-August 2003. Using a rich set of data culled from multiple sources, including longitudinal observations of household choice, we are able to separately identify -- Methods by which information is transmitted – social interaction and news media; -- Reasons why households follow the choices of others – observational learning and telemarketing diversion, and the impact of household heterogeneity on such learning and diversion. Among methods of information transmission, social interaction was relatively more important than news media. Among reasons for contagion, telemarketing diversion was relatively more important than observational learning, while the extent of learning decreased with social heterogeneity.

Social media in collaborative learning in higher education : a qualitative case study of teachers’ and students’ views

In this study, it was investigated how social media are used in collaborative learning in higher education and also how it can be better used in teaching and learning according to the students and teachers. The research questions of this study were: 1) How social media are used in collaborative learning by the teachers and students in higher education for educational purposes? 2) How could social media be used in collaborative learning process in higher education, according to the students and teachers? Qualitative interviews were conducted to collect the data from ten students and five teachers from the different faculties of University of Lapland and Lapland University of Applied Sciences. In conclusion it was found that, social media were not much used in collaboration with teachers by the students of both institutions. In case of teachers, it was found that all of them were using social media in their collaborative ways of teaching design and they have found social media as useful tool to deliver their teaching. Most of the students and all the teachers found social media to be useful in their teaching and learning. But there were also some challenges faced and areas of improvements identified by them. Thus the higher educational institutions should understand the importance of using social media in teaching and learning and take initiatives to overcome the current challenges identified by the students and teachers