Summary of a pilot study about Diigo social bookmarking (WDHE 2010 paper)

1. Student voice, intermediary genres, and social bookmarking WDHE conference, June 2010Florence Dujardin & Kirstie EdwardsSheffield Hallam University

2. 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

3. 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)

4. What is social media? And should we care? (Suter, Alexander, and Kaplan 2005)

5. 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)

6. An example: Delicious

7. 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

8. 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%)

9. 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)

10. 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

11. 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.

12. Summary of Diigo contributions

14. What happened?

15. Student perspectives on texts

17. Characteristics of posts

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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)

24. Range: 50 – 94 %

25. Average: 65 %In 2008-9 Range: 39 – 61 % Average: 42 %

26. 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)

27. 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

28. Thank you for listening

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