Using Blogs and Social Media for Learning and Teaching

Dr Helen Webster

Question: Your experience with Social Media

Do you use social media of any sort?(personally or professionally)

At the end of this session you will:

• Understand the characteristics of blogs, wikis and other social media

• Understand how they clash with or complement the aims and values of academia and education

• Think creatively about how they might be used effectively in teaching and learning

• Identify some of the issues that arise when integrating social media into teaching and learning, and strategies to address these issues

Learning OutcomesAnglia Learning and Teaching

Inspiring Academic Excellence

Webinar: Using Blogs and Social Media for Teaching and LearningDr Helen Webster, Dec 2013

A Clash of Two Cultures

Question:

What annoys/irritates/frustrates you most about your students’ use of Social Media in their Learning?

Clash of Two CulturesAcademia

• Teacher-created, student consumed

• Large scale broadcast• Authority, one-to-many• Final, authoritative version• Closed, determined• Individual lone scholar• Plagiarism, possession of ideas• Academic Text (some images)

Digital, Social Media• User-created and consumed

‘produser’• Small scale narrowcast• Peer, many-to-many• Early release, perpetual beta• Open, emergent• Networked, collaborative• Frictionless creation and

sharing• Multi-media, multi genre

Are we confusing form with function?

Synergy of Two CulturesDigital Social Media• User-created and consumed

‘produser’• Small scale narrowcast• Peer, many-to-many• Early release, perpetual beta• Open, emergent• Networked, collaborative• Frictionless creation and

sharing• Multimedia

Education• Student as active partner in

learning• Tailored, personalised learning• Collaborative, constructivist• Assess process, not product• Dynamic, creative curriculum • Peer learning• Capturing and sharing learning • Multimodal learning

Digital Technology

Are we talking about…

• Using technology to enhance how we teach, learn and assess? (do things differently)

• Reviewing how and what we teach, how and what students learn, in a world which is altered by technology? (do different things, flip the classroom!)

Characteristics of Social Media• Web 2.0 – participatory, intuitive interface• User generated, narrowcast content*• Networked and shared, many to many• Dynamic• Open, emergent use• Mobile

• *Content: – Multimedia (including text)– Metadata and curation– Edits and comments

Digital Openness Think creatively…

Affordances and technological determinismVSEmergent, creative use in tune with digital culture and good pedagogy

Definitions: Blogs

• “Web log” or diary format• Chronological posts, discrete entries• Hosted (often free or fremium) on a platform

such as the VLE, Wordpress.com Blogger, Tumblr

Question:

• Do you read blogs?• Do you write a blog

yourself?

What can a blog do?

• Allows one or more people to post to it (individual blogs, shared blogs)

• Allows different privacy settings (private, specific audience, open)

• Enables others to comment on posts• Allows metadata (tagging, categories, time etc)• Enables you to collate, link to, embed and reblog

material• Allows you to edit and delete posts

(Any questions/observations?)

Blogging genre conventions• A blog is NOT an online journal article or essay; it

is a different genre with different writing conventions:– Snappy title (will also be URL)– Conversational, personal tone– ‘Shorth’ – 600 words (1000 MAX and RARELY)– Hypertext links instead of footnotes and references– Multimedia – embed images, video, sound, slides,

documents…. Could even be a vlog!– Scannable – no large blocks of dense text– Comments generally invited

Types of blog (post) which might be relevant for education

• Reflection• Update• Report on event• Review or critique• Commentary• Curated materials with annotation• Instructions and tips• Listicles

Question:

What uses for a blog can you think of in your teaching and learning?

Using Blogs in Teaching and Learning

• Assessment– Formative – assess the process not product– Summative – a different genre with more

authenticity and situatedness• Reflection

– On professional practice– On academic practice

• What else…?

Definitions: Wikis• A single webpage or website which multiple users can

add, edit, modify or delete openly• No single ‘owner’ or ‘leader’ (administrator manages

the system, not the content)• No structure or conventions – this emerges• Relies on community to moderate, review, correct and

improve• Possible to view the revision history to see who did

what, and revert to earlier versions

Any questions/observations?

Other social media• Making (and sharing) media: video, audio, infographics,

photo, visualisations, text, presentations, screencasts, animations….

• Social and user generated: social networks, discussion forums, blogs, wikis, comments, quizzes and questionnaires…

• Information Curation: cloud filesharing, social bookmarking, content curation and metadata, e-portfolios, push and pull (search engines, RSS feeds, subscriptions)

• Virtual presences and places: virtual worlds and games, video conferencing, Virtual Learning Environments, webinars…

More ways to use Blogs and other Social Media in teaching and learning

• Networked peer learning– What do students create?

• Notes from lectures• Notes from reading• Verbal and other contributions in class• Activities for deepening learning or revising• Assignments and peer feedback…?

Can they share their content or collaborate on creating it? Can they use multimedia rather than text?

And even more ideas….What do you create as teacher?

Curriculum

Assessment design

Presentationmaterials

(Annotated) Reading lists

Guides and Handbooks

Assessment criteria

Handouts

Some ideas….

Bibliograwiki• Discussion forum/Twitter suggest search terms,

likely formats and databases, crowdsource suggestions

• Mendeley/Delicious Collate and curate a reading list, tag with metadata

• Wiki Summarise and annotate reading list• Blog Critique articles/books• Wiki Synthesise debates and trends

Some ideas…Hack the Lecture

• Wiki develop the curriculum and keep it updating throughout• Twitter/Discussion Forum Crowdsource questions and topics to

cover in module/lecture• Powerpoint/Dropbox students research and create a slide each• (Lecture, using student-created slides) Looking things up on

mobile devices• Blog/Twitter/mindmap software Liveblog or livetweet the lecture• Wiki/Storify lecture notes into a collaborative version• Youtube/lecturecapture/Audacity Student-edited clips of the

main points of the lecture (audio/video)

Some ideas…

The social assignment• Wiki/discussion forum Students suggest and discuss

assignments, materials and assessment criteria• Blog: Students select assignment, and blog weekly progress –

reflection and/or drafts: – Question analysis– Essay plan– Search strategies and reading notes– Rough draft – Revised draft– Anticipated feedback– Response to feedback

• Students share exemplars and annotate

The Importance of Lurking(aka Legitimate Peripheral Participation)

Novice

Expert

See Lave and Wenger, (1991) Wenger (1998)

• Analytical consumption before active production – social media as source material

• Limitations of this model in this context

Getting students on board

Access and motivation

Online Socialisation

Information exchange

Knowledge Construction

Development

5-step Model of e-learning Gilly Salmon

“

“Whilst most expressed an interest in using in using online technologies to support familiar school activities, such as presentations or for communication, learners seemed cautious about other activities associated with Web 2.0 tools, such as the shared construction of knowledge in a public format”

“11- 16 years olds… have high levels of access to Web 2.0 technologies…little evidence of ground breaking activities and only embryonic signs of criticality, self management to metacognitive reflection”

Luckin et al 2009

Digital Natives? Or Digital Divide?

Faces

social

professional

academic student

Spaces

• VLE?

Ethics and Legality

Graduate attributes, academic literacies, employability

Digital Literacies defines those who exhibit a critical understanding and capability for

living, learning and working in the digital society JISC 2013 JISC 2013

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/guides/developing-students-digital-literacy

Further help

Further reading:

• Robin Mason and Frank Rennie (2008). E-learning and Social Networking Handbook: Resources for Higher Education. New York and Abingdon, Routledge.

• Karen Kear (2011). Online and Social Networking Communities: A Best Practice Guide for Educators. New York and Abindon, Routledge.

Anglia Learning and TeachingInspiring Academic Excellence

Webinar: Using Blogs and Social Media for Learning and Teaching Dr Helen Webster, Dec 2013

Contact Anglia Learning and Teaching

Call: 0845 271 2639Email: lta@anglia.ac.ukWeb: www.anglia.ac.uk/lta

Author(s): Dr Helen Webster

Version: 0213

Anglia Ruskin University, 2013

 Any part of this presentation may be reproduced without permission but with attribution to Anglia Learning and Teaching and the author(s) CC-BY-SA (share alike with attribution)http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0 

Webinar: Using Blogs and Social Media for Teaching and Learning Dr Helen Webster, Dec 2013

Anglia Learning and TeachingInspiring Academic Excellence