Student voice, intermediary genres,

and social bookmarking

WDHE conference, June 2010Florence Dujardin & Kirstie Edwards

Sheffield Hallam University

Overview

Context: pilot use of social bookmarking in an online Master’s course

Social media and social bookmarking Methodology: action research Findings: cautiously positive Discussion: value of social

bookmarking Action points

Context

MA in Professional Communication Online course Student profile:

mature learners – ‘digital immigrants’ (Prensky 2001)

communication professionals – what counts as knowledge in their practice and how they present it differs from the practices of Communication Studies (notably reading and writing practices)

What is social media?

a tool for augmenting human social and collaborative abilities

a medium for facilitating social connection and information interchange

an ecology for enabling a “system of people, practices, values and technologies in a particular local environment”

(Suter, Alexander, and Kaplan 2005)

And should we care?

What is social bookmarking?

Mason & Rennie (2008): store internet resources online (not your PC) organise them using user-defined tags share them with people (or not) comment on them (or not)

The ‘ecology’ view of social media: practices: reading, note-taking, ‘talk about

texts’ value: ‘criticality’ people: students, tutor (and External

Examiner)

An example: Delicious

Which application?

Many different applications: Delicious, Connotea, CiteULike, Zotero, Diigo, etc.

Why Diigo? It is designed for education: privacy (group accessible by invitation

only) threaded discussion about bookmarks ‘topic’ facility extract entries made by individual

students

Diigo task

Preparing for the end-of-module essay Increase ‘criticality’ (Ridley 2004) towards

readings Drafting ideas and develop a personal stance Share notes and get comments from peers Letting off steam about the literature

Assessed (up to 10% of module mark) Content: minimum of 5 texts (up to 2%) Sociability: minimum of 5 comments on peers’ work

(up to 2%) Quality: Summary and value of each text (up to 6%)

Research questions

Literature Social bookmarking seems to help students

engage with the literature Evidence is mostly about undergraduates

doing campus-based courses – using Delicious

What uses and benefits for an online MA? offer a type of informal learning with peers? support appropriation of disciplinary

knowledge? enable a pedagogy inspired by ‘Academic

Literacies’ (Lea, Street, Lillis, Ivanič, Barton)

Methodology

Case study - loop 1 of a wider action research project on using social media with e-learners 15 Diigo ‘contributors’:

8 women 7 men (incl. 1 late contributor and a non-contributor)

Online methods Questionnaire to find out about social media

skills Interviews to capture experiences Observation / content analysis

Students’ bookmarking skills

“I had not heard of social bookmarking before the diigo task. I had heard of Delicious

but did not know what it was used for.”

Only 3 students out of 12 use social bookmarking.

Summary of Diigo contributions

Summary of Diigo activity

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

T N R J A E K U S P O H C Z Y

Student

No

of

inte

rac

tio

ns

Posts

Comments posted

Responses received

Comparison of men and women contributions

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

posts commentsposted

responsesreceived

Contribution type

No

of

con

trib

uti

on

s

w omen

men

What happened?

Student perspectives on texts

Characteristics of postsPersonal ”“It took a while to stretch my head around the

concepts”

Supportive “You make a good point. I agree that one can easily be misled if they don't evaluate theories…”

Descriptive “This study focused on the analysis of icons used for information retrieval purposes...”

Making connections

“Metzger's article is interesting as it demonstrates... Pettersson (1997) also concludes that...”

Applying ideas “The best part about Gestalt theory is that you can apply it to a range of visuals...”

Evaluative “I feel that this framework does not offer much scope for considering visual/verbal collaboration…”

Short/superficial “I found the approach of combining semiotic and content analysis very interesting.”

Student views (end of week 1)

Students felt well prepared Some technical glitches

Can’t link PDF files Problems with password-protected articles

accessed via university library What does it feel to share?

in the beginning I was worried I find it a bit strange I feel fairly comfortable a feeling of pressure as though I am in

competition

Thoughts in reading peers’ posts? Useful to gain other perspectives Comments helped form opinions on what I have

read “I was going to reject Harrison’s model but after

reading peer comments I read it again and thought I could use it”

The level of discusses [sic] stayed superficial It helped me assuage my fears

A useful task? Interesting to get to know a social bookmarking

tool Useful, especially when readings are consistently

tagged It’s prompted me to think deeper about the texts

Student views (exit)

Helpful for writing your essay? (mixed) I didn’t use the comments I or others made Interesting but I had already done a lot of

reading It enable to read in a structured way and also

to record my thoughts It focused my mind and sharing info enriched

the learning process Reassurance that my ideas were on the right

track Links with other pieces of research

Repeat the Diigo task? Yes (phew) Certainly good to repeat the task… better

to have it assessed A good way to expose people to this sort

of facility I must admit, I’m enjoying it. In fact, it’s

sort of addictive It gives me a sense of achievement We didn’t all use Diigo to its full potential

Summary

Reasonably positive feedback about the social bookmarking task and its assessment

An informal learning space (a strong ‘social presence’: supportive, sharing)

Some appropriation of academic texts(some ‘cognitive presence’: connections with practice and evaluation)

Superficial (‘satisficing’: shorter comments, more descriptive – esp. male students)

Impact on marks?

In 2008-9 Range: 39 – 61 % Average: 42 %

In 2009-10 Range: 50 – 94 % Average: 65 %

Action points

Repeat but embed in a core module Start early the module (Webb 2009) Support students before and during the

task not just technical aspects encourage and support criticality more actively

(e.g. through the ‘topic’ facility) Encourage and support social tagging

Link to employability (and widening participation)

To conclude

Interesting experiment with social bookmarking (Diigo) Reasonably positive student feedback Refinements needed Worth revisiting (loop 2)

Potential to help mature e-learners to develop a personal stance towards academic literature

Thank you for listening

References Beaumont, C. (2010) Using Open Online Resources to Enhance Social Learning. Brighton: HEA Art Design

Media Subject Centre. Available at <http://www.adm.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/case-studies/using-open-online-resources-to-enhance-social-learning>. [Last accessed February 2010]

Garrison, D. R. and Anderson, T. (2003) E-learning in the 21st Century: A Framework for Research and Practice. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Hammond, T., Hannay, T., Lund, B. and Scott, J. (2005) 'Social bookmarking tools (I): a general review '. D-Lib Magazine. 11 (4). Available at <http://dlib.org/dlib/april05/hammond/04hammond.html>. [Last accessed January 2010]

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