Educative Sensemaking on Social Media: An Empirical Investigation of Informal Learning on YouTube

Educational videos on social media are widely used in informal learning. However, empirical studies hardly look into sensemaking, a key aspect in the construction of meaning and knowledge, of educational videos on social media in informal learning, despite the growing interest and practice in educative sensemaking. This study addresses this research gap. We draw upon sensemaking theories and investigate how the physical properties of educational videos affect sensemaking. Our research shows how information control, anchor, and noise are associated with committed interpretation in the learning communities to understand the scientific inquiry at hand with data from YouTube educational videos. This study makes timely contributions to the literature on the educative sensemaking in informal learning on social media. It also offers insights into the better design of educational videos to facilitate sensemaking and informal learning

What We Know About Wikipedia: A Review of the Literature Analyzing the Project(s).

This article proposes a review of the literature analyzing Wikipedia as a collective system for producing knowledge. JEL Classification: L39, L86, H41, D7

Investigating and Supporting Sensemaking within Online Health Communities

This dissertation focuses on understanding and supporting individual and collective sensemaking within online health communities (OHCs). This major goal was achieved in three aims. In Aim 1, this dissertation contributes a rich descriptive account of collective sensemaking in OHCs forums by describing how it occurs and develops, what triggers it, what elements constitute collective construction of meaning, and what conversational moves positively contribute to this process. Further, it describes how collective sensemaking in OHCs is impacted by the interplay between informational and socio-emotional needs of OHCs members. Moreover, it examines how design of different social computing platforms influences OHCs members’ ability to meet their informational and socio-emotional needs and engage in collective sensemaking. In Aim 2, this dissertation explores the design space of tools for supporting individual sensemaking through optimized information access. Through the design and evaluation of a prototype DisVis it examines the impact of such tools on OHCs members’ ability to understand information within discussion threads. In the final Aim 3, this dissertation proposes a novel approach for meeting the three main needs identified in Aims 1 and 2: promoting individual sensemaking, while at the same time encouraging collective sensemaking, and facilitating development of social awareness and ties among community members. The design and evaluation of the novel solution for visualizing discussion threads that synergistically addresses these three needs—dSense—provides insights for future research and design of interactive solutions for supporting individual and collective sensemaking within OHCs

Teacher Transition into Innovative Learning Environments

This open access book focuses on how the design and use of innovative learning environments can evolve as teaching practices and education policies change. It addresses how these new environments are used, how teachers are adapting their practices, the challenges that these changes pose, and the effective evaluation of these changes. The book reports on emerging research in learning environments, with a particular emphasis on how teachers are transitioning from traditional classrooms to innovative learning environments. It offers a significant evidence-based global assessment of current research in this field by designers, architects, educators and policy makers. It presents twenty-five cutting-edge projects from researchers in fifteen countries. Thanks to the book’s comprehensive international perspective, which combines theory and practice in a single publication, readers will gain a wealth of new insights. ; This open access book focuses on the design of learning environments that change as teaching practices and education policies change. It addresses how these new environments are used, how teachers are adapting their practices, the challenges these changes present and effective evaluation of these changes. The book reports on emerging research in learning environment developments, with a particular emphasis on how teachers are transitioning from traditional classrooms to innovative learning environments and assesses the effectiveness of these learning environments. This book is the first ever evidence-based global assessment of current research in this field. Readers will gain new insight through its comprehensive international perspective that brings practice and theory together in one publication

Social foundations of sense making: four case studies

This thesis addresses the problem of sense making in organisations. It considers how a particular type of knowledge intensive organisation, a creative / interactive agency, tries to make sense of itself in the context of a rapidly evolving and transient external environment, the Internet. The study portrays how creative / interactive agencies are subject to serendipitous events in a vastly complex transient ecology. The study presents a qualitative analysis of four cases that are typical examples of knowledge intensive organisations in the creative industries in the UK’s North West region. The study finds that this type of organisation is fundamentally dependent on expert resources, not just as actual skills, but in the way, those resources represent and connect to social domains of knowledge and practice. This dependency is the source of continuity but also unpredictability. These unstable organisations are subject to the eclectic motifs of employees that have their own agendas. These employees are committed to their own professional objectives and the organisations are the means to those objectives and not to a long-term career. The study makes several important contributions to knowledge. Firstly, how an environment influences and affects an organisation will depend on the organisation itself as a composition of attentions and interests. Secondly, heterogeneous resources individually create meaningful environments when they focus their attentions on elements of experience relevant to their interests. The sense-making problem is bringing those idiosyncratic interests to some collectively meaningful interpretation and a functional coalition whilst preserving the creative incentive that is the key value generator in this type of enterprise. Thirdly, findings emphasise how those resources belong to different social domains that in complex ways influence their interpretation of the environment and perceived action possibilities. These social domains are meritocracies by which social actors measure themselves and their peers against socially ordained criteria of what is creatively and professionally acceptable. These same criteria also determine the reputation and hence the ability of organisations to attract and retain these individuals. The study contains an example of a case that fails in this respect and consequently faces dissolution and bankruptcy. Because of these complex network effects, it becomes difficult to determine the actual span of the organisational system and even harder to define its span of control. The study also illustrates how decision makers make boundedly rational assessments of situations. Those assessments guide strategic decisions, but they do not mean decision makers understand a situation. They have more do with decision makers making sense by drawing on the most salient feature of their experience. In a way, decision makers make sense of themselves and not the situation. This thesis questions the assumption that the leader is the key architect of meaning and purposeful action. Rather, in this type of enterprise, it is more appropriate to conceive the leader’s role as orchestrating expertise and relationships. The leader’s most important role may be to initiate and sustain action as a prerequisite to progress and the creation of value rather than micro managing the production process directly. The organisation is itself a self-reflexive social system of heterogeneous social actors that in action and interaction are continuously creating and modifying the ecology. The thesis identifies the traits and properties of those social actors and considers what factors drive interaction between them and how those affect the organisations for which they work. It introduces the systems concept of requisite variety as an important construct in the study of sense making in organisations The study concludes by outlining theoretical and practical contribution and makes propositions for further research