Boundaries and Spaces

Extract from JISC report Higher Education in a Web 2.0 world

Those from whom we have taken oral evidence have been keen to impress on us the behavioural and attitudinal consequences of engagement with Web 2.0 that are apparent in several of the studies we have reviewed. These are a disposition to participate in peer networks and to share and, in the process, to develop a strong sense of community. The processes of participation and sharing are likely to be conducive to the development of what are deemed by one researcher (Grunwald, 2007) to be a ‘significant set of 21st century learning skills: communication, collaboration, creativity, leadership and technology proficiency’

These, we note, are entirely consistent with the employability skills that government, backed by employers, is keen to see developed. HE is already seized of this agenda and it is also a driving force in the reforms in the 14 to 19 curriculum that are now underway in all parts of the UK.

Less positively, perhaps, but understandably, the community spirit also leads to the formation of a clear sense of boundaries in web space. This has been typed (Locke, 2007) broadly as:

1. secret space: eg Short Message Service (SMS); Instant Message (IM)

2. group space: eg Bebo, Facebook

3. publishing space: eg blogs, wikis, YouTube

4. performance space: eg Second Life, World of Warcraft

5. participation space: eg meetings, markets, events

6. watching space: eg lectures

Young people are defensive about the first two, essentially the ‘me’ and ‘we’ spaces, as opposed to the others, the ‘see’ spaces. Hence, their discomfort with staff-initiated discussion groups in social networking space when they are at ease with those they set up themselves for study-related purposes. We have been told that there is considerable untapped potential for exploitation of this, effectively a third space within group space – somewhere between pure study/work and pure social – to support learning and teaching.

The first three might be employed usefully in the Web 2.0 course/to conceptualise ELGG

Web 2.0 for Collaboration and Learning - 5th Iteration (Autumn 2009)

Bloodied but unbowed, the course has licked its wounds and is ready once more to share the cornucopia that can be Web 2.0. So, what has been learnt?

• focus on individual engagement with the course before forming groups - my somewhat over-confident rush into tutor-created 'communities of practice' was ill-thought through and disastrously enacted!  I started out convinced that the new cops arrangement would work and felt that this was borne out by the electric first session - which subsequently subsided quite suddenly (in a rash of alliteration, apparently) - online diffusion of responsibility vs individual engagement?
• Course blog should be central rather than peripheral to a course
• Organise participant account set-ups (gmail, igoogle, blogger) before the course begins - pre-course tasks

• use igoogle right from the start and throughout as a bucket of web 2.0, a place to store everything, a PLE
• give participants one thing at a time to focus on in sessions (ie, don't ask to focus on activity sheets, as well as what i'm doing or saying): 1. demo (eg google docs this is what it does - demo it, passive watching, sell it); 2. info sheet and participants do task (list of 5 things to do); 3 give support where needed but mostly just watch and collect things for a quick feedback at the end 
• include optional info sheets and further reading/links (eg google docs, include spreadsheets, forms, presentations) more examples of using the tools in your teaching or of other people using these tools in HE contexts.

Online Literature Review Advice

Merten's advice (1998, p.39) about online Literature Review is somewhat out of date, but the three main sub-steps identified in a search strategy remain relevant:

1. identify preliminary sources: databases, abstracts, indexes, google scholar
2. identify primary research journals - examine reference lists at end of relevant articles or books - 'citations' from google scholar - go directly to journals relevant to topic
3. personal networking - talk to people doing work in areas related to your interest, at Bham, professional associations, eg. HEA - talk to people who have completed related work.

Mertens, D. M. (1998). Research methods in education and psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

Pragmatism's History

Mainly American: Peirce, William James and Dewey (Cherryholmes, 1992; Howe, 1988). For these pragmatists, truth is 'what works'. Hence the test is whether or not it is feasible to carry out worthwhile studies using qualitative and quantitative studies side by side (Tashakkori and Teddlie, 1998, pp. 137-70, provide an extensive set of examples).

From Robson, C. (2002, p.43). Real World Research: a resource for social scientists and practitioner-researchers, Blackwell Publishing.

See also

After positivism: a scientific attitude

Robson (2002, p.18) makes a case for rejecting positivism but retaining a scientific attitude, by carrying out the research:

• systematically - giving serious thought to what you are doing , and how and why you are doing it; in particular, being explicit about the nature of the observations that are made, the circumstances in which they are made and the role you take in making them;
• sceptically - subjecting your ideas to possible disconfirmation, and also subjecting your observations and conclusions to scrutiny (by yourself, initially, then by others);
• ethically - you follow a code of conduct for the research which ensures that the interests and concerns of those taking part, or possibly affected by, the research are safeguarded.

The intention behind working in this way is to seek the 'truth' about whatever is the subject of the research.

Robson, C. (2002). Real World Research: a resource for social scientists and practitioner-researchers, Blackwell Publishing)

Research Student Conference 2009

Unfortunately I was only able to come along for the morning, but I did get my poster aired and there were a few people nice enough to have a looksee! I really enjoyed the presentations I saw (the use of technology in education) and thought the 'any questions' panel were great - really interesting! Especially liked the answer about:

1. research impact: identify the different audiences who might be interested in your research and write with those audiences in mind
2. methodology section will start by explaining who you are as a researcher, then go on to epistemology and ontology - what I believe to be valid knowledge.
   

Best other things:

• thinking through my own research layout by seeing what others have done in their presentations
• meeting up with fellow research students and finding out about a conference with Wenger attending (thanks Brendan!), as well as about an assignment linking Wenger and Kolb, both of which I like because they seem eminently practical as well as theoretical...

Feedback from Web 2.0 Course Spring 2009

I posted the visual feedback earlier, so here's the more detailed textual version from the two post-course questions looking at pros and cons.

Q. What else would you have liked included in the course?

• Perhaps more examples of using the tools in your teaching. I knew most of the tools before, but it hadn't really occurred to me to use blogs in teaching, for example. I now have some of an idea, but more of that would have been useful. Maybe it's something that needs to be followed up over the next few years, trying to stay in touch with people who attended the course and can report on their uses of technology in teaching.
• I realise on reflection that I'd been hoping to find out about Google docs. I should probably have looked into this myself in the week when we were asked to investigate Google tools, but I think I thought it would come up later in the course.
  
• Examples (where possible) of other people using these tools in HE contexts.
• Perhaps explored a bit more of the Google tools (Google Docs, for instance) which apparently is very useful.
  

Q. What would you leave out?

• Personally, I can't see the point of twitter, but other people liked it, so it's not something to take off.
• Twitter
• Nothing - we need to have our eyes opened, so even if stuff unpopular we should be aware of it. The sessions were short enough for no one product to dominate if you didn't take to it.
• Not sure. It all fits together, and people have different needs, so leaving out stuff would mean there'd be gaps. Part of the whole thing is that there are many tools, and you pick what you think is useful.

In addition, one participant, an experienced University teacher, very kindly spoke to me at some length about various aspects of the course, with the result that I will include the following in the next iteration:

• slow it down - and ss can only do one thing at once
• what are they going to learn in each class - how long to learn each topic?
  
• focus on google docs - important! build it into course formally
• Strategy for approaching tools/activities in class and base everything on activity sheets so that participants have all they need to move at their own pace:
  1. theory - here is x (eg google docs) this is what it does
  2. demo it, passive watching, sell it)
  3. participants use it - produce list of 5 things that you should do , list of activities - plus optional action sheets and further reading/links (eg google docs, include spreadsheets, forms, presentations