Generating learning through the crowd: the role of social media practices in supporting students as producers at scale

Social media and higher education pedagogy have enjoyed a chequered relationship with significant debates about the efficacy of social media as a site of student centred learning, the manager/host of an individual’s learning trajectory and as a tool of facilitating collaborative learning at scale. This paper presents the findings from the evaluation of Constitution UK, an innovative civic engagement and open learning project run by the London School of Economics and Political Science (UK). This was the lead initiative in an institution-wide shift in pedagogical approach, designed to transform the learning experience through supporting students to be co-producers of knowledge. We argue that some of the behaviours inherent in social media learning (centred on fleeting connections, digital identity and discontinuous engagement) can create the conditions for effective learning through experience and practice, both at scale in open, online modes as well in the face-to-face delivery environment. Challenging the dominant pedagogical approaches of other massive online programmes, Constitution UK brought together a civil community of people engaging in the process of digital citizenship that produced a crowdsourced constitution for the United Kingdom. The learning design of the project successfully engineered both learning and problem solving at scale. The key aspects of the project arising from how social media can facilitate critical thinking, engagement, peer and crowd learning have informed pedagogical change within the mainstream provision of the School for initiatives such as Students as Producers, civic engagement over Brexit and games-based learning

Interaction, feedback, reinforcement and collective identity: the role of zine making in the formation and sustaining of informal communities

This paper will explore the roles played in the formation and operation of zine communities. Utilising data from thirty-two interviews with zine makers in three continents, information sharing roles within informal networks, as discussed by Cross and Prusak (2002), are used to codify the roles within zine communities. The paper identifies that within zine communities there are two additional information sharing roles (emancipator and change agent) suggesting an emerging approach to information interaction. Further, I argue that knowledge transfer and experience sharing processes, which are fundamental to innovation and creativity within a community are potentially compromised within zine communities,leading to a further disaggregation of membership, and ultimately to an increasing and difficult to breach gap between these disparate zine communities

Childrens understanding and use of inversion in arithmetic1

In this presentation, I consider the origins and the extent of children’s understanding of the inverse relation between addition and subtraction. I argue that this understanding might have its origins in children’s informal experiences with physical matter but I also show that it is possible to improve children’s grasp of inversion through teaching. I also show that his teaching has beneficial effects on children’s solutions to sophisticated word problems in which the arithmetical operation that is need for the solution is not immediately obvious

'Don’t have time to drain the swamp; too busy dealing with alligators’: defining the governance skills sets that enhance volunteer retention and recruitment in small arts and cultural organisations

Small arts and cultural organisations are facing a number of significant challenges through the ongoing austerity programmes impacting on their funding and practices. These challenges are made more complex and problematic through the isolation and time poverty they experience as a result of small budgets, less paid staff and through primarily volunteer run governance. There is a contradiction in inherent in the importance of recruiting and retaining volunteers and the on-going capacity of volunteer governance. This paper seeks to identify and explore these tensions and contradictions by identifying governance skills sets that can support the volunteer function, and inform a training process that is practice-based and overcomes the limitations of isolation, funding and time

Understanding risk and uncertainty: the importance of correlations

There is general agreement today that students should leave school with a good grasp of all the basic mathematical ideas about how to deal with uncertainty. As adults, they will have to make important decisions about the probability of certain events and about the risk of a wide range of dangers. The understanding of uncertainty also plays a central role in modern science. Many scientific discoveries of great importance would have been impossible if scientists had only conceived of the world in terms of certainty. In many situations studied by scientists, and most certainly in all situations studied in social sciences, researchers can at best identify and measure imperfect associations between variables. This paper summarises research about understanding correlations, which assess whether, how variables and the degree to which variables show a mutual association. The cognitive demands of understanding these associations are analysed and a brief review of the literature is presented

Children's understanding of fractions

Indisponíve

Transforming research on morphology into teacher practice

Research suggests that the explicit teaching of morphological principles will improve children’s spelling. Despite the fact that reference is made to morphology in English policy documents, teachers make limited use of morphology when teaching spelling, relying more heavily on phonic and visual strategies. After attending a course on role of morphemes in spelling, teachers’ own awareness of morphology increased and this was reflected in their practice. This in turn caused their pupils to make significant gains in spelling, compared to a control group. This reinforces the proposition that explicit instruction about morphemes is helpful to children’s learning. It demonstrates the fact that research can be transformed into teacher practice, but it also illustrates the difficulties. Policy documentation alone is insufficient. Professional development can effect change but this may be hard to sustain. Children’s gains are contingent on teacher’s continuing to dedicate class time to focussed intervention