designing social media for learning

Design and Application of Social Media for

Learning

Stella LeeBlended Learning Leader, Global Learning TeamGolder Associates, Inc., Canada

iCore Researcher, SCIS, Athabasca University

CSTD Calgary - June 6, 2012

Photo credit: http://www.arikhanson.com/2011/01/21/social-media-trends-whats-hot-for-2011/

Tonight’s outline

• Social Media Trends and Usage

• Implications for Learning

• Learning Design for Social Media

• Q & A

What is Social Media?Photo credit: http://www.bnettv.com/social-media-marketing/

Wikipedia’s definition

Social media includes web-based and mobile based technologies which are used to turn communication into interactive dialogue among organizations, communities, and individuals.

Two ways of looking at it...

1.systems - e.g. Flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us

2. technological approaches - e.g. collaborative filtering, recommender, shared tagging

Social Media Trends and UsagePhoto credit: http://www.arikhanson.com/2011/01/21/social-media-trends-whats-hot-for-2011/

Social media trends and usage

• Canada has the world’s highest social networking penetration - 49.3% (2011)

• 47% of Canadians use Twitter (18% of all Twitter accounts)

• 58% have blogs

• In 2011, 50% of online Canadians visited a social media site at least once a week

• 35% visited every day

• 18-34 years old heaviest users

• daily access to email declined 28%

source: comscore’s December 2011 report: http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Presentations_Whitepapers/2011/it_is_a_social_world_top_10_need-to-knows_about_social_networking

Implications for Learningphoto credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/heycoach/1197947341/sizes/z/in/photostream/

Formal learning - classes and Formal learning - classes and online workshops and online workshops and events, is the source of only events, is the source of only 10% to 20% of what we learn 10% to 20% of what we learn at workat work

- Jay Cross

Social media is everywhere...

• marketing and communication

• learning and development/teaching and learning

• professional development

• research

PhD Chat

A “DIY” model

• A lot more amateurish effort (Shirky, 2008)

• It is scattered all over, many overlapping effort

• It is organic/self-organizing

• A sub-culture movement (not officially supported by institutions)

Some social media usage at Golder Associates

• Yammer

• Facebook

• Twitter

• Jam

Yammer - private social network

Jam - social learning

Some social media usage at Athabasca University

• Flickr

• Facebook

• Twitter

• the Landing

Facebook

AskAU

The Landing

Group feature in the Landing

Learning Design for Social MediaPhoto credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaronknox/5237937436/

FIVE design principles

1. Balancing LX and UX

2. Scalability/evolvability

3. Allow rooms for both producers and spectators

4. Multiple ways to share/link/connect

5. The power of “undo”

Learner Experience (LX)

• measures learner perception and satisfaction with content/learning activities

• actual learning, measured via tests

User Experience (UX )

• Can be specified and measured:

• 95% of first-time learners locate the course syllabus for COMP201 in Blackboard within two minutes without technical support

• 90% of the users clicked on the Twitter link embedded in the course website

• Students completing Intro to Philosophy course gives the course Facebook website an average of 4.0 rating on a five-point Likert scale for ease of use

Balancing LX and UX

source: David Smuldershttp://elearnmag.acm.org/index.cfm?section=best_practices&article=11-1

Scalability/Evolvability

• v

Multiple ways to share/link/connect

The power of “undo”

The illiterate of the 21st The illiterate of the 21st Century will not be those Century will not be those who cannot read or write, who cannot read or write, but those who cannot but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearnlearn, unlearn and relearn

- Alvin Toffler

Questions? Comments? Ideas?

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wfiupublicradio/5600608701/

Thank you!

Email: stella_lee@golder.com, stellaylee@gmail.com

Twitter: @stellal

Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/StellaLee7/

Academia: http://athabascau.academia.edu/StellaLee

LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/stella-lee/1/588/a32