Participatory Transformations

Learning, in its many forms, from the classroom to independent study, is being transformed by new practices emerging around Internet use. Conversation, participation and community have become watchwords for the processes of learning promised by the Internet and accomplished via technologies such as bulletin boards, wikis, blogs, social software and repositories, devices such as laptops, cell phones and digital cameras, and infrastructures of internet connection, telephone, wireless and broadband. This chapter discusses the impact of emergent, participatory trends on education. In learning and teaching participatory trends harbinge a radical transformation in who learns from whom, where, under what circumstances, and for what and whose purpose. They bring changes in where we find information, who we learn from, how learning progresses, and how we contribute to our learning and the learning of others. These trends indicate a transformation to "ubiquitous learning" ??? a continuous anytime, anywhere, anyone contribution and retrieval of learning materials and advice on and through the Internet and its technologies, niches and social spaces.not peer reviewe

The Analysis of Online Communities using Interactive Content-based Social Networks

published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

An Information Policy Perspective on Learning Analytics

Policy for learning analytics joins a stream of initiatives aimed at understanding the expanding world of information collection, storage, processing and dissemination that is being driven by computing technologies. This paper offers a information policy perspective on learning analytics, joining work by others on ethics and privacy in the management of learning analytics data [8], but extending to consider how issues play out across the information lifecycle and in the formation of policy. Drawing on principles from information policy both informs learning analytics and brings learning analytics into the information policy domain. The resulting combination can help inform policy development for educational institutions as they implement and manage learning analytics policy and practices. The paper begins with a brief summary of the information policy perspective, then addresses learning analytics with attention to various categories of consideration for policy development

Learning with comments: An analysis of comments and community on Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow (SO) has become a primary source for learning how to code, with community features supporting asking and answering questions, upvoting to signify approval of content, and comments to extend questions and answers. While past research has considered the value of posts, often based on upvoting, little has examined the role of comments. Beyond value in explaining code, comments may offer new ways of looking at problems, clarifications of questions or answers, and socially supportive community interactions. To understand the role of comments, a content analysis was conducted to evaluate the key purposes of comments. A coding schema of nine comment categories was developed from open coding on a set of 40 posts and used to classify comments in a larger dataset of 2323 comments from 50 threads over a 6-month period. Results provide insight into the way the comments support learning, knowledge development, and the SO community, and the use and usefulness of the comment feature

Introduction to Social Networking and Communities Minitrack

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Crowdsourcing the Curriculum: Redefining E-Learning Practices Through Peer-Generated Approaches

Inclusion of open resources that employ a peer-generated approach is changing who learns what, from whom, and via what means. With these changes, there is a shift in responsibilities from the course designer to motivated and self-directed learner-participants. While much research on e-learning has addressed challenges of creating and sustaining participatory environments, the development of massive open online courses calls for new approaches that go beyond the existing research on participatory environments in institutionally defined classes. We decenter institutionally defined classes and broaden the discussion to the literature on the creation of open virtual communities and the operation of open online crowds. We draw on literatures on online organizing, learning science, and emerging educational practice to discuss how collaboration and peer production shape learning and enable “crowdsourcing the curriculum.

Crisis, Farming & Community

In 2001, the UK was hit by Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) precipitating one of the biggest crises ever to affect the UK farming system. The crisis unfolded as a series of information and communication problems, from government to farmers and from farmers to farmers, with consequences for action in a time of crisis, social support, and the maintenance of community. What happens to a farming community during such a crisis? When the countryside shuts down, and no one can enter or leave the farm, how can information be disseminated? As methods of dealing with the disease change rapidly, as happened in this crisis, how can information be delivered in a timely and coordinated manner? To explore these questions, data have been gathered from reports and writing about the crisis, and from interviews with Cumbrian farmers. Although we will address throughout the multiple information channels used by farmers, this paper focuses on the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) during the crisis, notably a community networking initiative known as Pentalk. We conclude with a look at the current role of Pentalk in the farming community, and with discussion of how networks such as these can help during crises involving major information and communication management

Agrupamentos e comunidades: modelos de produção colaborativa leve e pesada

Two collaborative forms of organizing dominate discussion of open participation and production on the Internet: a crowdsourcing model based on micro-participation from many, unconnected individuals, and a virtual community model, based on strong connections among a committed set of connected members. This paper argues that dimensions such as task interdependence, authority control, and group focus underpin behaviors associated with participation in such open systems, resulting in contributory behaviors that can be described at one end as ‘lightweight’, functioning by weak-tie attachment to a common purpose, enacted through authority-determined, rule-based contribution, and at the other end as ‘heavyweight’, operating through strong-tie affiliation with community members and community purpose, enacted through internally-negotiated, peer-reviewed contribution. Examination and articulation of these dimensions, and the resulting patterns of contributory behavior they engender, help reconcile peer production and virtual community approaches to online collaboration, explain motivational and structural aspects of new forms of collaborative production, and inform design for building and sustaining collective contributory systems. Key words: contributory systems, virtual communities, social ties.Duas formas de organização para a colaboração dominam o debate sobre a livre participação e produção na internet: um modelo de agrupamento, baseado na microparticipação de muitos indivíduos não-relacionados, e um modelo de comunidade virtual, baseado em conexões fortes entre um grupo dedicado de membros inter-relacionados. Este texto argumenta que dimensões como interdependência de tarefas, controle e autoridade, bem como um foco comum ao grupo subjazem a comportamentos associados à participação em sistemas abertos, originando dois tipos de comportamentos contributivos que, por um lado, podem ser descritos como ‘leves’, e funcionam graças ao vínculo por laços fracos a um propósito comum, o qual é alcançado por meio de contribuição determinada por autoridade, contribuições baseadas em regras, e, no outro extremo, podem ser chamados de ‘pesados’, operando por intermédio das afiliações baseadas nos laços fortes entre os membros da comunidade e com o propósito da comunidade, agindo por contribuições negociadas internamente, controladas pelos pares. O exame e a articulação dessas dimensões e dos padrões de comportamento colaborativo que elas engendram ajudam a reconciliar as duas abordagens, agrupamento e comunidade virtual, à colaboração on-line, e, com isso, a explicar aspectos estruturais e motivacionais das novas formas de produção colaborativa, além de informar projetos para a criação e a manutenção de sistemas de contribuição coletiva. Palavras-chave: sistemas colaborativos, comunidades virtuais, laços sociais

New Metaphors for Networked Learning

As networked learning leaves designed spaces and becomes diffused and re-infused through open, online information sharing and knowledge construction, what metaphors will frame our next steps, our next inquiries? In keeping with the conference theme of ‘Looking Back – Moving Forward’, this presentation will engage with where we are in the sea of change, and how our current understanding of networks, learning and knowledge will take us forward into new areas of inquiry. Elsewhere I have been advocating for a reclamation of the term ‘e-learning’ that takes us beyond the design and use of the closed LMS and VLE systems to grapple with the open conditions of learning on and through the Internet, and the transformative effect this has on roles and relations associated with learning and knowledge practices (Haythornthwaite & Andrews, 2011; Haythornthwaite, 2015). I believe this is a necessary way forward. But, this is a wicked problem, with each change in technology, each advance in teaching practice, and each maturation of networked practice, changing the conditions of inquiry. To maintain our way forward requires keeping an eye on the horizon, and several recent papers make this point with calls for theory driven research on learning in the face of such new conditions (e.g., Rogers, Dawson & Gasevic, 2016; Eynon, Schroeder & Fry, 2016; Wise & Shaffer, 2015). Moving forward requires grappling with perpetual beta, chaordic (chaos+order) processes, emergence and social construction; assemblages, hybrids, cyborgs, post- and transhumanism; the role of the material, geographical, regional; and more. As researchers, teachers and learners, we are learning not just how to learn or effect learning in this fluid space, but rather how to navigate, to sail on the seas of information and knowledge that are beyond our control. We have indeed left the classroom, leaving the safe spaces of ‘specify, build, and use’, and the space of pre-determined questions, into the open, recursive conditions of rapidly accumulating resources, distributed and mobile knowledge, and emergent dynamics. We are leaving the world of uncertainty (in Perrow’s sense of a lack of information) to one of equivocality, where even the questions to be asked must be negotiated. In this talk I aim to stimulate the conversation I know is already ongoing about where networked learning research and practice is going next, and to introduce some play and experimentation with possible metaphors to guide us on the way forward. References •Rogers, T., Dawson, S. & Gašević, D. (2016). Learning analytics and the imperative for theory driven research. In C. Haythornthwaite, R. Andrews, J. Fransman & E. Meyers (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of E-learning Research (pp. 232-250). London: SAGE. •Eynon, R., Schroeder, R. & Fry, J. (2016). The ethics of learning and technology research. In C. Haythornthwaite, R. Andrews, J. Fransman & E. Meyers (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of E-learning Research (pp. 211-231). London: SAGE. •Haythornthwaite, C. (2015). Rethinking learning spaces: Networks, structures and possibilities for learning in the 21st century. Communication, Research and Practice, 1(4), 292-306. DOI: 10.1080/22041451.2015.1105773 •Haythornthwaite, C. & Andrews, R. (2011). E-learning Theory and Practice. London: Sage. •Wise, A.F. & Shaffer, D.W. (2015). Why theory matters more than ever in the age of big data. Journal of Learning Analytics, 2(2), 5-13. http://dx.doi.org/10.18608/jla.2015.22.

Introduction to Learning within Digital and Social Media Minitrack

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