Social Bookmarking

by Susan Codone

Social bookmarking is a Web 2.0 phenomenon that is growing site by site, with explosive growth in the last couple of years.  Most of us began bookmarking by designating sites we liked as "Favorites" in Internet Explorer.  With social bookmarking, instead of saving your favorite web addresses on your computer, you save them at a social bookmarking website, thus giving you access to them from any computer with Internet access.  This allows you to share, organize, search, and manage your web resources and look at those of others.

The key to this is in the word "social".  John Thompson, writing in the June 2008 issue of Phi Delta Kappan, (Technology: Don't Be Afraid to Explore Web 2.0) says that social bookmarking gives you greater capabilities than the original means of bookmarking -- you decide if you want others to have access to your links.  Peter Godwin, in New Review of Information Networking (2007), says that by "tagging", or assigning keywords to your links, you help link ideas and share resources with others (Information Literacy Meets Web 2.0: How the New Tools Affect Our Own Training and Our Teaching).  Thompson also says that the result of shared tagging is a "tag cloud", or a shared group of tags of different sizes representing different topics.  The size of a tag cloud can indicate its topical popularity.  Godwin says that this can strengthen searching power and increase understanding of topics.  In fact, the social bookmarking site http://www.delicious.com (formerly www.del.icio.us.com) tells users to tag bookmarks and "let collections emerge."

Digg

There are many social bookmarking sites, but let's look at the top three as currently positioned by their Alexa rankings (http://www.alexa.org).  Digg, or http://www.digg.com, is a social bookmarking site where people can discover and share content from anywhere on the web.  According to their about us page, Digg allows users to vote on content, letting the best content surface to the top by popularity -- in other words, users collectively determine the value of content.  With ten million users, Digg is "democratizing digital media".

StumbleUpon


The social bookmarking site StumbleUpon offers "stumblers" the chance to discover and share websites, with matches delivered based on personal preferences.  Pages are recommended by users with up/down ratings, and rather than using a traditional search engine, members (or stumblers) are taken directly to websites that match their personal interests and preferences.  StumbleUpon describes themselves as a combination of human opinion and machine learning.  With eight million users, StumbleUpon (http://www.stumbleupon.com) offers current collaborative opinions on website quality for their users.

Squidoo

Squidoo is an interesting website that allows you to gather your perspectives on topics into something they call "lenses" and publish them on the site.  Lenses are pages or overview articles that pull together everything you know about a topic and bring it to the attention to others.  Squidoo calls itself a publishing platform and a community of users and says they help you share your interests, build an online identity, and connect with other readers.  With more than 1,400,000 published lenses,  Squidoo is establishing itself quickly as a major web presence.  You can also make money from lenses; if you create a lens that gets lots of traffic, you can place Google ads on it and earn money.  Some Squidoo users are earning thousands of dollars monthly.

Social bookmarking sites offer many collaborative services for users to not only bookmark web services, but also share and manage their favorite sites with others.  The idea of creating a tag cloud and having popular topics emerge through user input is another factor unique to these sites.  Clearly, they are having an impact on the Internet based on their popularity, and it's certain that they will continue to grow.

Instigators of Academic Student Engagement

By Susan Codone

If you are a typical professor, you probably try different pedagogical techniques to try and activate and maintain student engagement.  Engagement is known by many descriptors.  This article focuses on academic student engagement -- that state of being that students reach when they are fully involved in an  academic task, rather than student engagement outside the classroom, as often talked about by college administrators and measured by the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE).

Let’s be clear; we’ve all seen engagement, and  we know it when we see it.  Anyone who has watched a teenager play videogames or a college student post a new status to Facebook has seen some indicators of engagement – total attention, a suspension of time, an immersion into the event.  For professors, the difficulty lies in getting those students who are so easily engaged in other environments to engage in the classroom.

Some see engagement as the integration of intense pedagogical techniques designed to coach students to lose themselves in a task.  Some writers link student engagement directly to active learning, like Jo Williams and Susan Chinn, writing in 2009 in the Journal of Information Systems Education.  In their article, Using Web 2.0 to Support the Active Learning Experience, these authors say that teachers are paying more attention to the crucial relationship between engagement and active learning in the classroom and are rolling out a variety of pedagogical methods, including technology, to stimulate engagement. 

There are so many definitions and descriptors of student engagement that it would be difficult to catalog them all.  The graphic on the right lists descriptors pulled from multiple sources that describe academic student engagement.

To cut through those descriptors, focus instead on three major instigators of student engagement that appear ubiquitously in the literature:  intense pedagogical techniques, deep learning, and social media and networking technologies.

Intense Pedagogical Techniques

Chen, Lattuca, and Hamilton (2008) say the apex of engagement is full and unbroken immersion in demanding activities.  What kind of activities cause such immersion?  Many professors rely on active learning and other cognitive techniques to spur students into engaging with course content.  Techniques such as reading, writing, discussing, metacognition, solving problems, systems thinking, constructivist thought, meaning-making, engaging in higher order thinking, and working in Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development all can influence engagement.

But by themselves, not one of these pedagogical techniques instigates engagement automatically.  There must be a mental toggle into a state of immersion, and acceptance on the part of the student to think differently about the content.  Colin Bryson and Len Hand, in their article The Role of Engagement in Inspiring Teaching and Learning (2007) in Innovations in Education and Teaching International, say that the perception of the student regarding the teacher and the content is a precursor to any form of engagement.  They also say that a positive disposition in the teacher makes an enormous difference in students' ability to engage.

Higher order thinking, deep information processing,  active learning,  proximal development, systems thinking, constructivist thought, meaning-making and other cognitive factors are all important in getting students engaged – but ultimately, students must agree to buy into the academic task in order to become engaged.  How else can we get them to do that?


Deep Learning With Technology and Social Media

One way is to use the drawing power of technology to pull students in and make them lose themselves in the learning process.  Van B. Weigel, in his book Deep Learning for a Digital Age: Technology’s Untapped Potential to Enrich Higher Education, makes a push for a radical infusion of technology into the classroom.  Written in 2001, Weigel’s book predates such tools as sophisticated learning management systems (LMS's), easily-created websites, and social knowledge and social media.  His argument, though, is that technology can be used to create communities of inquiry in which conditionalized knowledge and metacognition can develop – which is his definition of deep learning, and thus, engagement.

Building on Weigel, the website Learning and Teaching Info goes further to differentiate deep learning from surface learning, describing deep learning as

•          linking prior knowledge to new knowledge
•          focusing on significance
•      relating information across courses
•          relating theory to everyday experiences
•          organizing and structuring content
•          emphasizing the internal learner

But again, like pedagogical techniques, these deep learning strategies will only encourage “deep learning” or student engagement if the student accepts the task and builds internal motivation to accept it. Is deep learning a precursor to engagement, or a result of engagement?  Or both?  How else can technology be used to engage students?

Social Networking Technologies

The recent phenomenon of social networking is lauded for its universal appeal, ability to draw young people in and allow them to openly display their lives, and its supreme networking service that even reminds you of your friends’ birthdays.  Are college students engaged when on FaceBook?  Miikka Salavuo, writing in the Journal of Music, Technology, and Education (2008), notes that social media is an excellent platform for learning. In Social Media as an Opportunity for Pedagogical Change in Music Education, she recommends that social networking platforms like FaceBook, Elgg, MySpace, and Ning be used as an alternate to LMS's because they offer increased participation, presence, and ownership, as well as the ability for students to use the expertise of others, create lasting connections, and network widely.  For example, Sarah Palin's Facebook page is noted as an example of a social media content repository; using the FaceBook Notes feature, Palin writes political articles and posts them on her page for her Facebook fans.  In the same way, professors could generate written course content and use Facebook Notes to post this content for students to read  and comment on -- while they're already in Facebook perusing other pages.

Then, of course, there is the excellent means of social networking provided by FaceBook and other applications that can allow students and professors to create online communities of practice, with regular dialogue, posted material, and other media such as video and photographs.  While the technology and tools recommended in Weigel's Deep Learning will likely continue to change regularly, the era of social media is on us, and will evolve but probably not be totally replaced. The evidence is in; we know that students can become engaged using technology like social media applications; why not use it in and outside of the classroom?


In a June 14, 2010 email correspondence with Dr. David Jonassen, Distinguished Professor of Education, Director for the Center for the Study of Problem Solving, and eminent cognitive science researcher at the University of Missouri Columbia, he responded to these questions.

"What happens cognitively when students engage in the classroom? What are the indicators? What are the precedents?"

His answer:

"That’s a complex question. Neurologically, the cerebral cortex lights up, especially the caudate nucleus. Motivationally, students engage and persist on task. Why do students engage? Personal relevance, necessity, curiosity, etc. There are no really valid measures. Only behavioral.

While we may indeed need more research on which neurological switch to throw to instigate engagement, in the meantime we know we have tools.  Intense pedagogical techniques, deep learning with technology, and social networking encourage students to engage.  All are complementary tools.  All can be used simultaneously or as single powerful tools.  All require professors to step out of their traditional pedagogical training and teach differently.  All, ultimately, depend on the student's intrinsic motivation for success.  Finally, all can encourage engagement, making it less elusive and much closer to reality in our classrooms.

Wetware: Evolving Online Learning

by Susan Codone

Wetware and online learning -- how do those terms relate? Wetware, coined by the science fiction writer Rudy Rucker in his 1998 book by the same name, describes the resources of the mind that are analogous to hardware and software.  These are the thinking and reasoning mechanisms we bring to our studies, and are what online learners rely on to synthesize the hardware and software they must work with and the mental effort they must expend to successfully navigate online learning. Wetware is an apt term for what learners bring to online learning, even if it is a little odd.  Note Wikipedia’s definition:

"The term wetware is used to describe the embodiment of the concepts of the physical construct known as the central nervous system (CNS) and the mental construct known as the human mind. It is a two-part abstraction drawn from the computer-related idea of hardware or software."

Academic resources for both online learning and online teaching are widely available.  In fact, the U.S. Department of Education reports that between 1996 and 2008 over 1,000 empirical studies of online learning were published.  Undoubtedly, more were also published on online teaching.  The population for online learning has been growing, too; the Sloan Consortium reports that as of Fall 2006, 20% of higher education students were enrolled in at least one online course (3.5 million students) – a 9.7% growth rate.  Four years later in 2010, those numbers must be dramatically higher.

Yet one key issue that many studies and reports on online learning overlook is the actual condition of the consumer of online learning – the wetware.  Students are physically counted, surveyed, and evaluated to be sure, but their essential status as a combination information-seeker, risk-taker, and open-minded  learner has not been fully explored.  While we spend much time talking about the hardware and software of online learning, we often forget the significance of the wetware.  

Online learning is changing because the technology and the wetware of online students is changing.  The diagram below shows a delta in four major characteristics of online learning that each confer new conditions on the online learner.

Increased Sophistication of Tools and the Changing Nature of Student Engagement

When I began teaching online courses in 2000, my university used webpages to host written instructor lectures with links to PowerPoint presentations narrated by the professor.  Learning management systems had yet to build a comprehensive presence. We used a free online chat tool for class discussions, but because that was seen as unusual, we didn't require students to attend - relying more on passive threaded discussions for student input.

In 2002 I began working at another university that used early versions of WebCT as a rudimentary course management system, mainly as a content repository.  We also used its text chat feature as a way to hold a weekly class discussion.  Each week, we held a directed chat in which we discussed certain questions and scenarios that we provided to the students in advance.  Students couldn’t see each other, or hear each other talk, but they could read the text threads in the chat discussion.  Elsewhere in WebCT, we usually posted a table with student pictures and bios so that they could visualize each other.

Now, in 2010, we use Blackboard for its content repository feature, but we’ve migrated to Webex, an online conferencing program, for class discussions.  Now students can simultaneously talk to the professor and each other, and they can also see and talk to each other via the transmission of webcam video.  The interactivity of the course has improved significantly, and the opportunity for students to know and recognize each other has also increased.

Shufang Shi, an assistant professor of Childhood and Early Education at the State University of New York Cortland, writes in E-Conferencing for Instructors: What Works (Educause Quarterly, 2006) that professors use online conferencing tools for voice communication, sharing browsers, polling, application sharing, a whiteboard, presentation and document sharing, and recording and archiving meetings.  For these services, subscription prices for universities have stayed affordable, and the only requirements for students are an Internet connection, earphones, a microphone, and a webcam – or sometimes just an Internet connection and a phone.

The question is whether online learning in 2010 is changing because of this technology and the students using it.  Will students, formerly comfortable being less inhibited in more anonymous online environments of text chat and discussion boards, adapt well to Internet communication that demands voice and video?  Will they now become more inhibited since barriers to disclosure have fallen?  Will their wetware change as they adapt to this new interaction?

Jane Cole and Jeffrey Kritzer in Strategies for Success:  Teaching Online Courses (Rural Special Education Quarterly, 2009) suggest that students feel more comfortable participating in electronic discussion boards because they can be more anonymous in their postings.  Kyong Jee-Kim and Curtis J. Bonk, writing in The Future of Online Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (Educause Quarterly, November 2006)  predict that collaboration, case study learning, and problem-based learning will likely become the preferred methods for online teachers – greatly increasing the degree of student interpersonal engagement in online courses.

As technology and teaching style continue to evolve and converge, will the degree of student engagement change?  Will student inhibitions affect their level of involvement and disclosure even though the technology offers more openness?  Will they accept a more demanding interpersonal role that requires increased disclosure and overt collaboration with others?  Will the wetware students bring to online learning evolve along with the technology to make them more active consumers?

Psychology and Active Learning

Psychology applies to wetware, too.  Using well-accepted tenets of psychology can help maximize the learning potential of online content. Cole & Kritzer (2009) note that there are specific strategies professors can use to psychologically increase student chances for success in online courses -- discussion boards, scaffolding, and modules.  Scaffolding occurs when instructors stretch out an assignment and break it into parts, so that students can get feedback on small pieces of the project and use that to assemble the final project – kind of like a long paper or proposal submitted intermittently in parts for grading.  For online learning, when instructor feedback is markedly different than the classroom, scaffolding can be a source of structured learning and encouragement for students as they build their assignments in steps rather than all at once.
 
Using modules means grouping content together in small units and having students complete each unit separately, slowly converging the knowledge as they make their way through the course.  In my university, we “module-ize” online instruction in Blackboard by assigning “weekly” content that must be completed consecutively.  

 Cognitively, this helps students schedule their work throughout the online semester and gives them a visual representation of the calendar.  All content for each week is included in each weekly module and is thus united around a single set of objectives for each week.  Again, it gives the students’ “wetware” a structure on which to work, thus helping information processing and ultimately, long-term learning -- to make a psychological and cognitive imprint.


Emerging Social Knowledge and Media

What is it about college students and adults that leads them to post party pictures on Facebook and boast of 1,000 or more friends, yet also causes them to clam up in an online discussion about history?  Why are their inhibitions different in social media than educational technology and online learning?  What can social knowledge and media offer to online learning to help students participate more fully?

A search in Academic Search Complete with the keywords “online learning” and “social media” reveals just one article, and it’s from Helsinki, Finland.  Miikka Salavuo, writing in the Journal of Music, Technology, and Education (2008), suggests that learning management systems are bad because they are hierarchical and allow instructors to simply copy course structure and content to the Internet. In Social Media as an Opportunity for Pedagogical Change in Music Education, she recommends that social networking platforms like FaceBook, Elgg, MySpace, and Ning be used as an alternate to LMS’s because they offer increased participation, presence, and ownership, as well as the ability for students to use the expertise of others, create lasting connections, and network widely.  She also believes students need to be actively involved in creating socially-based communities of practice.

Clearly, more research needs to be done regarding the disparity of student inhibitions and participation in LMS-driven online courses and social media.  We have much to learn from the evolving social knowledge efforts currently pursued by Google, Wikipedia, and others, and from the social media outlets that so easily draw participants to open their lives to others.  The wetware of social media participants doesn’t change when they enroll in an online course, but students typically respond differently, somehow, and it would help us to know why.  Making online courses that appeal to students' cognitive, psychological, and social interests -- their wetware -- would doubtless lead to richer and more lasting learning.

Online learning is changing.  The wetware students bring to online environments is influenced by constantly changing technology, psychology, and social media experiences.  As professors who teach online courses, we should consider these issues as we plan and deliver courses to students who cognitively are prepared for much, much more than what we traditionally offer.  We need to tap that potential!