1. Using social media
for teaching & learning
exploiting an indispensible tool in student hands
1Cheryl Brown
2. • I. Key Trends Accelerating Ed Tech Adoption
in Higher Education
• Fast Moving Trends: Those likely to create
substantive change (or burn out) in one to
two years
– ! Online, Hybrid, and Collaborative Learning
– ! Social Media Use in Learning
3. ISSUES ABOUT ACCESS
Sms 31957 example: R 8753 Example: R [space] 8753 [space] because I don’t know how
4.
5.
6. • ICT access is varied and unequal
Czerniewicz and Brown 2010
0.00%
10.00%
20.00%
30.00%
< 2 years ago 2-4 years ago 4-6 years ago 6-10 years ago 10-15 years ago >15 years ago
Years ICT experience of under 22 yr olds
Survey of 3556 students across 6 HEIs in South Africa
7. Digital Strangers
we're a lot of students and ICT
facilities are limited. I'll request
if donators can donate more as
students face difficulties in
queuing or computers. It's
expensive, I pay more money
for few minutes. I think ICTs
sometimes create digital
divide, especially for students
who find it hard to access
internet [ID 2922]
Digital Natives
people in my community don’t
have access to computers,
my knowledge of computer
& owning a computer at
home, it makes work easier
& you work more, improves
my learning capabilities,
this is a computer
dominated world, so it is
essential for me to
understand computers. [ID
190]
.,
8. .. Like issues of computers is that I never had a chance to be with a
computer before I came here ... [Bianca Int 1]
13. The computer skills I
learnt while using
Facebook and
YouTube has helped,
as these services are
more or less the
same, like Twitter.
So, it kind of helps
you to do other
internet things.
14. c
My phone has helped me because you
know like the keyboard n my phone is
more like the computer, so like I started
with it, they are more like similar so my
speed in typing has improved
15. But .... Cell phones are different
◦ Ownership is ubiquitous (98.7% in 2007)
◦ Ownership is not socially differentiated
◦ Main means of access to Internet off campus for students
from low SEGs
– - in 2009 78% of South African students accessed the internet via
their cell phones (Kornberger, 2009)
Dial up, 68
Broadband,
84cell phone,
191
wireless, 24
satellite, 25
Type of internet access
for low SEG students
(2007)
16. However not mainstreamed in
education yet
Sms 31957 example: R 8753 Example: R [space] 8753 [space] because I don’t know how
17. The only sustainable way
forward is to exploit devices
students already own and
use (Traxler 2013)
18. Do students use cell phones for
learning?
0.00%
20.00%
40.00%
60.00%
Digital Native Digital Stranger
34.97%
37.19%
49.91%
40.19%
15.12%
22.62%
No cell phone use
< 40% cell phone use
> 40% cell phone use
% of cell phone time spent for academic purposes
2007 survey of South African university students
28. Informal
• At one stage I was trying to
learn Spanish, which did not
go very well. I was in
contact with three people
from different parts of the
world and would chat to
them to practice it.
– Student O Int 2 UCT Ref 6
• I go on Vula on my small
phone, though its small,
when I am studying for
exams I took pictures of
stuff and I recorded myself
reading a test and then I
would listen to myself ....
– [Fudge Int 2]
29. • The "Prayer Network" will
be on a Facebook Page.
People can "like it" on the
Facebook page to stay
updated about its activites.
People will also be able to
submit their own prayer
requests. "We" will pray for
them, and all members will
pray for those who have
requested a prayer.
Student
K Int
1
UCT
Ref 1
Affective
• Jaa I always write on my
status like, Maths is giving
me stress, and people
respond to me and they say
like, hang in there and some
of them are like jaa, maths,
so yes I get a lot support
– [Fudge Int 2]
31. First of all I don’t
think I can live
without social
networks
It's not a lifeline, but
after not having it,
or being off it for a
while, I sort of feel
disconnected.
I wanted to stay away from Facebook for
ever; - it was draining – I was addicted to it
- needed space, so I stopped for three
weeks and deleted my profile.
felt a bit ignored, so
deleted Facebook. I got
angry at it. Then I
remembered this project
34. Arguments for
• increased student and teacher technology use
– facilitate faculty student interaction
• increased student engagement and interest level
– increase rates of in-class participation and student
motivation
• increased ease and speed of note taking and
engagement with online sources related to the
course material
• modest increases in student achievement
35.
36. Arguments against
• In lecture style classes where computers are not
essential to the material, the sustained use of
laptops during lecture is potentially so distracting
as to hinder a student’s performance and distract
their fellow students.
– students with open laptops remembered less lecture
content than those with closed laptops (Hembrooke
and Gay 2003)
– Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for
both users and nearby peers (Sana, F., Weston, T and
Cepeda, N (2013)
39. I can lie in my bed and sit with the laptop
and then watch the lectures and then I can
do the assignment in bed…
So Friday, I’m running all the
way back to my room, sitting
on my laptop watching all the
lectures and then trying to
type in whatever and
submitting in time for 4,
Self paced
learning
47. Technology and teaching and learning
interactions
All about matching your teaching and learning
tasks with appropriate educational technologies
48. Invisibility of technology
• “… for technology to be used effectively in any
learning process it must be highly visible as a
learning tool but at the same time highly
invisible as a mediating technology” (John &
Sutherland 2005: 408).
49. Both task & learner experience
• “As designers for learning, we need to make
choices about technologies in a way that takes
account both of how they support the
learning task [design features] and how they
will be experienced by individual learners –
the different ‘possible relationships’ between
task and learner they might mediate”
(Beetham 2007:34)
56. Prepared by Dr Cheryl Brown
Cheryl.brown@uct.ac.za
@cherybrown
http://www.scoop.it/t/developing-learning-
teaching
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Notes de l'éditeur
Digital is the Buzz word
Yes there is a sense its generational
Even amongst young people
South African residents lead as one of the highest users of mobile technology and mobile social networking on the continent. However, stationary Internet and computer ownership lags. (Unicef 2012)
South African adolescents and youth are the first adopters of mobile technology, with 72 per cent of 15 –to 24-year olds “having a cell phone.” (Unicef 2012)
The only sustainable way forward is to exploit devices students already own and use (Traxler 2013)
The computer skills I learnt while using Facebook and YouTube has helped, as these services are more or less the same, like Twitter. So, it kind of helps you to do other internet things.
Student X Int 2 UFS Ref 3
My phone has helped me because you know like the keyboard n my phone is more like the computer, so like I started with it, they are more like similar so my speed in typing has improved
Bianca Int 1
universities globally are still trying to overcome the “experimental status of m-learning” with most mobile learning projects “restricted to short-lived, short-funded pilot projects or to researchers using individual courses as experiments outside mainstream methods offered by their institutions”(Rajasingham, 2011)
In South Africa, a study of elearning across 14 universities in 2007 indicated that only 2 institutions were investigating or undertaking pilots using mobile learning technologies
Use of mobile phones is banned in many schools and university lecture theatres => bad orientation of students to mobile phones
Types of devices
To empower ‘silenced’ , ‘dominated’ & ‘marginalised’ voices to become co-producers of knowledge
UNICEF 2012 – South African Mobile generation http://www.unicef.org/southafrica/SAF_resources_mobilegeneration.pdf
Traxler 2013 – Context as text in mobile digital literacy http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-955/papers/paper_42.pdf
FutureLab 2012 – Digital Literacy across the curriculum http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/digital-literacy-across-curriculum-handbook
Beetham and Sharpe 2010 Digital Literacy Framework http://jiscdesignstudio.pbworks.com/w/page/46740204/Digital%20literacy%20framework
Brown and Czerniewicz 2010 – Debunking the Digital Native http://www.cet.uct.ac.za/files/file/2010/Debunking%20the%20digital%20native%20draft.doc
Brown 2012 – University students as Digital Migrants http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/langandlit/issue/view/1371