1. Changing Conditions for Networked Learning? A Critical View on Social Technologies as a Springboard to Unfold the Opportunities and Potentials Thomas Ryberg (ryberg@hum.aau.dk) Associate Professor E-Learning Lab – center for user driven innovation, learning and design Dept. Of communication and Psychology Aalborg University

2. Outline Beyond the web 2.0 educational hype – as a springboard to singling out the novel Problematising and nuancing the Digtial Natives discourse What might be somewhat novel? How can conceptualise this? –Knotworking –Trajectories –Patchworking This is work and thinking in progress – more an invitation to dialogue than presenting fixed ideas or results!

3. Why social media or web 2.0 in education Some of the keywords from the tech-ed buzz-o-sphere: Realised through use of: Blogs, wikis, social bookmarking etc. But many of these ideals are not new! Web 2.0’Progressive’ education (since 19XX) User-drivenLearner-centred CollaborationCollaborative learning ParticipationActive students vs passive recipients 2 -way communicationDialogues and interaction Creating and sharingKnowledge construction vs acquistion Bottom-upAhierarchical, flat – students as co-producers

4. Web 2.0 in educational context (e- learning 2.0) – general buzz From hierarchical structures based on courses and topics towards more student centred networks From distribution to more horizontal patterns of exchange – peer-learning From Learning Management Systems (LMS)  Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) Encouraging exchange, sharing of knowledge and students’ production of knowledge and artefacts Encouraging the production of personal portfolios – personal repositories

5. From LMS to PLEs Separate management and learning Focus on learning activities Individual and collaborative tools From big packages of educational software (LMSs) to numerous light-weight, interoperable web 2.0 service (blogs, wikis, social bookmarking) Dashboard systems where students collect relevant resources and tools (Dalsgaard, 2006): http://www.eurodl.org/materials/contrib/2006/ Christian_Dalsgaard.htm

6. How do our institutional systems and designs for education support this? LMSs / VLEs are often impersonal, hierarchically structured walled gardens – more Non-Personal Learning Environments than PLEs Person, identity and resources over time not represented – organised around semesters and non-connected project groups – no personal environment that over time glues together students’ interests and interactions together No overlap with other aspects – social book-marking, blogs, news, jobs outside university, no visible connections to other students No PLE Wider World

7. THE DIGITAL NATIVES DEBATE

8. Quick overview Increasing numbers of studies are problematising the digital natives or net generation as hyperbole (Jones & Czerniewicz, 2010) But also pointing out that changes are happening –Complex digital ecologies and social networking However, use of web 2.0 tools among students less advanced than ‘imagined’ or ‘hypothesised’ in the tech-ed sphere Gap between ‘what could be’ and ‘what is in fact’ Just a brief intro to a study we did

9. Methodology Data collection across different levels of scale - multi-method study combining qualitative and quantitative studies Questionnaire (cross-campus to 3000 students – 253 completed): –Background –Mobile life style (where do students work) –Project collaboration –Familiarity with Web 2.0 tools (state of diffusion) Narrative analysis of blog post (133 student narratives from 51 M and 82 F) –1.semester students within a programme (humanistic informatics) asked to write blogs about technology use during 1.sem (analysing diffusion of various technologies) Oberservational studies –Following a 2.semester group (interview and observation) – their use of technology

10. Illustration from questionnaire Percentage of students who do not know about a certain tool – may not mean they use it if they know about it though!!! Green: Pervasive use or knowledge of (twitter – knowledge, but little use) Red: Tools that might be very useful, but little/scattered following

11. Findings from blog posts and observational studies How they support problem and project based collaboration Facebook & Dropbox rather pervasive Skype used among many groups Some groups utilised Google services (e.g. Calendar, Docs) Live next to formal systems (e.g. Moodle) but are not intertwined – formal system for course activities Cautious about bringing in new tools in their problem and project based group work Some of the more ‘advanced’ tools for academia 2.0 purposes (tech-ed-buzz) and problem based project work were not very pervasive –Google Docs –Social bookmarking (delicious, diigo) –Social referencing systems / bibliography (zotero, refworks)

12. Summarising Indications that students do bring in social media to the university – forming digital ecologies, which may live next to formal systems (happily or not) Some systems pervasive, but systems which could support more advanced academic practices are largely under the radar of the students Students are to some degree capable of creating efficient digital ecologies to support problem and project based group work – but also ask for introductions For more advanced socio-technical academic practices to emerge there’s a need for facilitation – combining tech-support with meaningful integration of technologies into courses / group work We should not ignore they are adopting social media, but neither should we ignore they might need facilitation to ‘scholarise’ their social practices, as to develop advanced academic socio-technical practices

13. SO WHAT MIGHT BE NEW?

14. Sharing across different social constellations Homebase(s) – profile PLE Strength of tie Own content Friends’ content Groups’ content Collectives’ content – aggregated other Shared fields of interest – imagined communities Glued together by RSS, Widgets, ‘open standards’, open APIs – Streams of continuously evolving ‘data’ and ‘information’ that can be somewhat easily manipulated We all become entrance points into complex (overlapping) networks

15. Ideas about “new” social constellations or aggregations Networks between people working collaboratively Networks between people sharing a context Networks between people sharing a field of interest (Dalsgaard, 2006): http://www.eurodl.org/materials/contrib/2006/Christian_Dalsgaard.htm Picture taken from: (Andersson, 2008) http://terrya.edublogs.org/2008/03/17/networks-versus-groups-in-higher- education/ Learner in the centre Let’s briefly explore some examples of this – there are however many other sites and mixes

16. Flash activities Cloudworks – clouds where anyone can add content,, tags, references, discuss etc. Twitter-streams e.g. #Occupy – stream where content and conversations are pulled together MOOCs - Massive Open Online Courses

17. KNOTWORKING, TRAJECTORIES, PATCHWORKING How can we conceptualise this?

18. How can we conceptualise and utilise: Content is easily shareable and can move fast through multiple networks Flash-like activities (maybe run-away objects) – fast- paced (or slower) stitching together - or creating - temporary stabilisations content and conversations Pulsations and complex moves between individual and collective/collaborative networks How can we make sense of this in relation to learning and educational theory and practice? Maybe viewing what enters and leaves ’the class, course and programme’?

19. How can we conceptualise and utilise: How is knowledge distributed, but more importantly – how is it sustained and made ’productable’ – becoming part of deeper processes of meaning making and knowledge production Does it or how does it become more than ’streams of content’ Understanding the movements between: –Individualised traversing of personalised social networks to collaborative meaning making –From serendipitous encounters to sustained interactions How do we make sense of both individual and collaborative engagements? Pulsations between foraging of information and digesting this?

20. Knotworking Increased focus on / interest in less stable types of activities and organisations – what happens when activity systems come together and collaborate on-the-spot? “Distributed and partially improvized orchestration of collaborative performance between otherwise loosely connected actors and activity systems” (Engeström, 2000) “A movement of tying, untying and retying together seemingly separate threads of activity characterizes knotworking. The tying and dissolution of a knot of collaborative work is not reducible to any specific individual or fixed organizational entity as the centre of control. The centre does not hold.” (Engeström, 2000) “Groups of people, tasks, and tools are mustered for a relatively short period of time to get some task accomplished.” (retrieved from: http://kplab.evtek.fi:8080/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Knotworking) http://kplab.evtek.fi:8080/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Knotworking

21. Knotworking Based in CHAT – consciousness of both the fleeting interactions – but equally how these are affected by and affects historically shaped and sustained activity systems How knotworking functions at the intersections of multiple interacting activity systems

22. Knotworking and Mycorrhizae Smart mobs and mycorrhizae (rhizome-like) – Linux communities, birding, skateboarding “Mycorrhizae are difficult if not impossible to bound and close […]. They may lie dormant for lengthy periods of drought or cold, then generate again vibrant visible mushrooms when the conditions are right” (Engeström, 2007) “A mycorrhizae formation is simultaneously a living, expanding process (or bundle of developing connections) and a relatively durable, stabilized structure; both a mental landscape and a material infrastructure.” (Ibid) But where is the individual located in this? Identity and individual development over time?

23. Trajectories – or Itineraries Development and learning happens through multimembership in overlapping, conflicting CoPs over time Pulsations between individualised foraging and meaning making in CoPs “This simultaneous focus on constellations of communities of practice and individual trajectories will place emphasis on aspects of the theory that have not received as much attention as communities of practice per se: boundary structures, multimembership, cross-community trajectories, various modes of belonging, and large-scale properties of composite systems” (Wenger, 2005 – Learning for a Small Planet) Picture from Wenger, 2005

24. Interpretative communities of practice An interpretative community can be seen as a more loosely bounded CoP CoPs are usually thought of as networks with strong collaborative ties and interdependencies In my view – we might point to a more loosely bounded structure – like ” Networks between people sharing a context” or an ”interpretative CoP” This could be e.g. a research centre, a semester / class / subject An entity where ties are pulsating between strong and weak, but where there is an overall potential for collaborative sense or meaning making One place where resources might be digested

25. Patchworking Patchworking as a metaphor for learning (Ryberg, 2007) Looking at how various knowledge artefacts (conceptual or (semi)material) are actively stitched together by drawing on existing or creating new resources How (or do) such artefacts “travel” between context, become remixed, re-purposed – and is it critical knowledge construction An example of young people’s construction of a presentation

26. An example Copy-catting and plagiarism or creative reappropriation? We need to pay close analytic attention to how and why patches and pieces are woven into the patchworks Rich multimodal presentation incorporating e.g. graphs from a lecture

27. A glimpse into Patchwork of many different sources, means and media that were assembled to convey their conceptualisation of poverty and how to address this issue –Some graphs came from a presentation of an expert, which had even ripped some from an UN webpage –Facts and information came from various web pages and books –Ideas came from interviews, a bus conversation and other sources –They made four different interviews which were video-taped, edited (some subtitled) and made part of the presentation. –Music was carried on the computer from home –Poor people’s pictures through Google image search –Pictures in animation were hand-drawn and animated in PowerPoint –Their stage show was choreographed and practised the night before

28. Foraging and gathering – no no – we want it NOW! – E-mail won’t do!!! ’Cycle of stabilisation work and production’ – re-ordering and selecting slides Cycle of ’patchworking and remixing’ – negotiating the use of the slide – constructing the ’conceptual blueprint’ Process of re- weavingProcess of re- weaving….negotiating the meaning of the slide – Success or Problem Cycle of stabilisation work and production – Working it into the final slideshow

29. Summing up Fast paced interactions and flow of materials – but how do we go beyond this – collecting content is not enough! Study how (or if) these contribute to more collective or collaboratíve processes of digesting and making sense How are the movements between individual engagement and collaborative sense making? (Brokering?) Study partcular incidents of: –Foraging, gathering, aggregating –Vivid patchworking and knotworking –Information stabilisation points (hub, plazas, cafe - metaphorically) Wonder if the following model can be a help

30. From study of informal knowledge sharing in social network/community site (Computer problems) – (Ryberg & Christiansen, 2007) Studying the movements between these

31. References Engeström, Y. (2000). Activity theory as a framework for analyzing and redesigning work. Ergonomics, 43(7), 960-974. Engeström, Y. (2007). From communities of practice to mycorrhizae. In J. Hughes, N. Jewson & L. Unwin (Eds.), Communities of practice: Critical perspectives. London: Routledge. Jones, C., & Czerniewicz, L. (2010). Describing or debunking? The net generation and digital natives. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26, 317-320. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2729.2010.00379.x Ryberg, T. (2007). Patchworking as a Metaphor for Learning – Understanding youth, learning and technology (PhD-thesis). Department of Communication and Psychology Aalborg University. Retrieved from http://vbn.aau.dk/files/18154524/eLL_Publication_Series_-_No_10.pdf Ryberg, T., & Christiansen, E. (2008). Community and social network sites as Technology Enhanced Learning Environments. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 17(3), 207-219. doi:10.1080/14759390802383801 Wenger, E. (2006). Learning for a small planet - a research agenda. Retrieved from http://www.ewenger.com/research/index.htm