Distributed mentoring: peer interaction and collaborative learning in P2PU

This paper explores how learning design and peer behaviour develops and evolves in a free, open online learning community, the Peer-to-peer university (P2PU). Drawing on ideas relating to 'participatory learning' (Seely-Brown and Adler, 2008), it begins with a theoretical discussion of the ways in which the infrastructural and the social dimensions of peer learning are expressed in terms of the design of three courses, and in relation to mentoring and peer interaction. Evident from the textual interface and social organization of the three courses is that the role of the instructor or course organizer adheres a cooperative model (Burge, 1994), reflected in the aggregation and filtering of materials and the evolution of pedagogical modeling. While the models of participation and engagement vary, depending on socio-technical factors, evident is that the governance model allows both for light models of involvement and the evolution of inquiry towards what we would like to call 'distributed' mentoring. We conclude with an evaluation of the ways in which the courses under study promote a participatory infrastructure, that not only can make the process of learning transparent, but also represent a relationship between teaching and learning in an open fashion

A literature review of the use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher Education

This review focuses on the use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher Education. It provides a synthesis of the research literature in the field and a series of illustrative examples of how these tools are being used in learning and teaching. It draws out the perceived benefits that these new technologies appear to offer, and highlights some of the challenges and issues surrounding their use. The review forms the basis for a HE Academy funded project, ‘Peals in the Cloud’, which is exploring how Web 2.0 tools can be used to support evidence-based practices in learning and teaching. The project has also produced two in-depth case studies, which are reported elsewhere (Galley et al., 2010, Alevizou et al., 2010). The case studies focus on evaluation of a recently developed site for learning and teaching, Cloudworks, which harnesses Web 2.0 functionality to facilitate the sharing and discussion of educational practice. The case studies aim to explore to what extent the Web 2.0 affordances of the site are successfully promoting the sharing of ideas, as well as scholarly reflections, on learning and teaching

Open to interpretation?: productive frameworks for understanding audience engagement with OER

At the core of evolutionary trajectories in the digital networked media and OER landscape, the notions of 'educational and learners' communities' and open 'participatory pedagogy' become more complex. Combining notions of 'mediation' from activity theory and communications studies to analyze a large body of literature and qualitative data offering insights on stakeholders motivations, perceptions, practices or uses, the paper considers the meaning of Open Educational Resources (OERs) as participatory learning media in a global context. It then draws on perceptions and uses of OER and open media by faculty, and structures dimensions of cultural and socio-technical mediation by this particular segment and focusing on two types of users: the teacher as active interpreter and salient user and the teacher as digital publisher. We argue that the socio-technical and pedagogical affordances and OERs, hinder many tensions pertaining: a) the definition of openness; b) quality; and c) moral authority regarding both context and adaptabilit

A method and tool to support the analysis and enhance the understanding of peer-­to-­peer learning experiences

In this paper we look at how a web-based social software can be used to make qualitative data analysis of online peer-to-peer learning experiences. Specifically, we propose to use Cohere, a web-based social sense-making tool, to observe, track, annotate and visualize discussion group activities in online courses. We define a specific methodology for data observation and structuring, and present results of the analysis of peer interactions conducted in discussion forum in a real case study of a P2PU course. Finally we discuss how network visualization and analysis can be used to gather a better understanding of the peer-to-peer learning experience. To do so, we provide preliminary insights on the social, dialogical and conceptual connections that have been generated within one online discussion group

Ritual performances and collective intelligence: theoretical frameworks for analyising activity patterns in Cloudworks

This paper provides an overview of emerging activity patterns on Cloudworks, a specialised site for sharing and debating ideas as well as resources on teaching, learning and scholarship in education. It provides an overview of activities such as 'flash debates', 'blended workshops' and 'open reviews' and seeks to situate dialogic interchanges and structures of involvement within the following theoretical frameworks: a) Goffman's notions of 'face-work' and 'ritual performance�; and b) and secondly, notions of collective intelligence. The paper argues that these perspectives can offer a unique contribution to the study and analysis of sociality (Bouman et al, 2007) bounded in the context of technologically mediated networked learning, with wider implications for understanding matters of participation, self-representation, reflection and expansion in education

Expert participation on Wikipedia: barriers and opportunities

On the occasion of Wikipedia's 10th anniversary, the Chronicle wrote that, nowadays, the project does not represent "the bottom layer of authority, nor the top, but in fact the highest layer without formal vetting" and, as such, it can serve as "an ideal bridge between the validated and unvalidated Web". An increasing number of university students use Wikipedia for "pre-research", as part of their course assignments or research projects. Yet many among academics, scientists and experts turn their noses up at the thought of contributing to Wikipedia, despite a growing number of calls from the expert community to join the project. The Association for Psychological Science launched an initiative to get the scientific psychology community involved in improving the coverage and quality of articles in their field; biomedical experts recently called upon their peers to help make public health information in Wikipedia rigorous and complete; historians have recently started to contribute references to Wikipedia in an effort to make their scholarly work more easily accessible to a broad readership; chemists are curating Wikipedia to include structured metadata in articles on chemical compounds. The Wikimedia Foundation itself is exploring strategies to engage with the expert community and with higher education at large, as part of initiatives such as USPP or the expert review proposal. These calls for participation, however, remain sporadic and most experts-- despite goodwill to contribute--still perceive major barriers to participation, which typically include issues of a technical, social and cultural nature, from the lack of incentives from the perspective of a professional career, to the poor recognition of one’s expertise within Wikipedia to issues of social interaction. In combination with the apparent anomaly of collaborative--and often anonymous--authorship and the resulting fluidity of Wikipedia articles, these factors create an environment that significantly differs from the ones experts are accustomed to. There has been so far only anecdotal evidence on what keeps experts (defined in the broadest possible sense to include academics, but also expert professionals in industry and in the public sector, as well as research students) from contributing to Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Research Committee ran a survey on expert participation between February and April 2011 with over 3K respondents to try and turn anecdotes about expert participation into data. The aim of this talk is to present the results of the survey and tackle questions such as: the different perception of participation in Wikipedia across academic fields; the effects of expertise, gender, discipline, wiki literacy on participation; the gap between shared attitudes and individual drivers of participation; the relation between participation in Wikipedia and attitudes towards open access and open science

Community indicators: a framework for observing and supporting community activity on Cloudworks

Cloudworks (Cloudworks.ac.uk) is a social networking site designed for sharing, finding and discussing learning and teaching ideas and experiences. Design and development of the site has been based on an iterative analysis, development and implementation approach, underpinned by ongoing research and evaluation. To this end, we have been seeking to establish strategies to enable us to systematically position transactions and emerging patterns of activity on the site so that we can more reliably use the empirical evidence we have gathered (Galley, 2009a, Galley 2009b, Alevizou et al., 2010a, Conole et al, 2010). In this paper we will introduce a framework we have developed for observing and supporting community development on the site. In building our framework we have used empirical evidence gathered from the site, then related it to the literature from a range of disciplines concerned with professional and learning communities. We link research relating to distance learning communities with studies into Computer Mediated Communication (CMC), self-organising communities on the web, and wider research about the nature of learning organisations and continuous professional development. We argue that this framework can be used to capture the development of productive communities in the space (i.e. how far cohesive, productive groups can be said to be emerging or not) and also help focus futur

Encyclopaedia or cosmopedia? Collective intelligence for knowledge technospaces

“While the cosmopedia can be interpreted metaphorically as the ideal figure of knowledge …, from a technical point of view, collective intellects are effectively capable of constructing their own cosmopedia” (Lévy, 1998: 216). One of the most influential theorists of Cyberculture, Pierre Lévy offered a metaphorical conceptualization of cyberspace, in terms of encyclopaedia, to argue for a new relationship between technology and knowledge, a relationship that allows the cultivation of a mutually developed and enhanced knowledge space through collective intelligence and interactive cognitive potentialities. This paper is based on Lévy’s posthumanistist theorizing of cyberspace and hypertext to offer an analysis of wikis, and more specifically of wikipedia. It will trace the emergence and evolution of wikipedia in comparison with generic conventions of and ideological assumptions on encyclopaedia, to argue for the need to theorize the material and symbolic specificities, as well as the social and political properties and limits of this cultural form and medium for representing knowledge, emblematic of universally distributed and technologically enabled intelligence. It discusses a set of issues regarding: the aesthetic characteristics of wikipedia; its institutional structures within the contemporary media landscape; and its social, cultural and ideological significance. The paper draws on the theoretical and the empirical temporality of the encyclopaedia genre, its relationship with media technology and the history of cultural formations of knowledge representation to argue for a position that critically situates wikipedia away from the utopian ‘knowledge hive’, that preoccupies Lévy’s conceptualization of cyberspace, and within a more egalitarian actualization of authority and authorship, and of knowledge representation