strength of cohesive ties
DESCRIPTION
Learning takes place in a social context and this context can offer many resources, including structure, continuity and motivation. Online, two primary learning types of context have been identified, networks and communities. While networks may offer a wealth of people and resources, communities appear to offer richer learning possibilities. It is therefore important to investigate how online learning communities can be formed from online networks, and whether such a shift benefits learners. The study reported here focuses on two groups of teenagers, one a formal learning group from the USA and the other an informal learning group from the UK. The groups were originally only weakly tied in a network, but aimed to create a single learning community through activity in an online forum, wiki and virtual world. Thematic analysis of their forum posts shows the importance of cohesive ties – grammatical devices used to construct coherent narratives – to the development of key elements of community: spirit, authority, trade and art.TRANSCRIPT
The strength of cohesive ties: discursive construction of an
online learning community
Rebecca FergusonJulia Gillen
Anna PeacheyPeter Twining
Social aspects of learning
• Development and supply of resources • People who can guide, model, challenge and teach • Artefacts such as books and computers• Contexts for understanding resources• Frameworks for learning within which we have a role• Opportunities for negotiation of ideas• Continuous threads of knowledge• Affective elements such as motivation and confidence• Language
Online networks are made up of• actors (people & resources) • ties between them
Can offer learners• easy access to large sets of people and resources• wide range of perspectivesMay support cooperation & collaboration(Haythornthwaite & De Laat (2010)
Development of shared understandings, through shared discourses, can lead to learning communities
Online network or learning community?
Learning communities
Four qualities from McMillan (1996):
• spirit
• trust
• trade
• art
Coherence, register and cohesive ties
Importance of language
Establishing coherence
• Register – the set of meanings for language that are appropriate to the event
• Cohesive ties – grammatical devices that bind sentences, utterances and longer passages together. These include paraphrasing, repetition, references, words that are lexically related, and substitution of one word or phrase for another.
What roles do cohesive ties and register play in the construction of online learning communities?
Schome: a new form of educational system designed to overcome the problems associated with current education systems in order to meet the needs of society and individuals in the 21st century
•2007-8 main focus: use of Teen Second Life® to provide a 'lived experience' of radically different models of education•Thirteen-month project in three phases •Majority of participants never met in the physical world•Communications in virtual world, wiki, forum etc.
Phase 3: Jan-June 2008Interface of Schome and school
High school Los Angelescomputing class:
• assessed tasks• structured communications
Schommunity:
•informal•mostly UK•no assessment•shared history & sense of purpose
Analysis of forum thread
• Authored by 28 members of the Schome Park Programme
• Read 12,727 times• Created over three weeks, • Included 166 separate posts• Total word count of 27,871
Spirit
Greetings to all.I will be posting events for various members of our team. They would post themselves, but we are a bit short of time and attendance is not always steady.Being newbies, I hope I am doing the right thing. Please let me know if I need revisions.We would love to have anyone participate in planning the events as well as attending, so feel free to join any group.1USStaff
Reply #6, posted by 3USTeen
Reply #10, posted by 4USTeen
Schome ethosLook, I joined in a bit later than most. What is, in your terms, the Schome ethos, then?
On the schome ethos it basically runs down into some main pointsOne being that you are not forced to learn if you choose not to - If I don't choose to go to an event I'm not forced to, If I do then I mayThe main conflicting element of this for the most part is the school philosophy, school lessons nine times out of ten are very structured, you are told what to learn, when to learn it, how to learn it, attendance is compulsory, Learning is compulsory even if the subject is of no interest (school and homework make sure of it)
Trust
Trade
Art
Oi. I'm the angel with the black wings and the gun, if you've seen me.My building project idea is the Moishe Z. Liebowitz Memorial Cathedral.
Picture by AerodragonX
Conclusions• All four key elements of community
negotiated in this forum thread• Cohesive ties produced coherence within
individual posts• Development of community linked to
sustained and coherent narrative• Different registers used by the two
communities limited communication quality and reduced chance of unification into a single learning community
• Discussion of small disparities often fruitful as members worked to establish coherence
The ‘Hawaiian Shirt’
The shift from networked learning communities to single learning community is difficult to negotiate.
Shared register and cohesive ties:
•have an important generative role in supporting and structuring the dialogue that resources learning and enables the co-construction of knowledge
• support the development not only of understanding but also of shared organisational structure, standards, goals, art and history
Conclusions Japanese Garden
