1. Promoting open
educational
practices
through social
and participatory
media
Gráinne Conole
The Open University, UK
6th June, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
New dynamics of language learning: spaces and
places - intentions and opportunities

2. A little context…

3. A little context…
My background:
Irish
PhD Chemistry
Professor of e-learning
•Research interests:
Learners’ and teachers’
experiences of using
technologies
New approaches to design
Open Educational Resources
Learning theories
Strategy and policy

4. A little context…
My background:
Irish
PhD Chemistry
Professor of e-learning
•Research interests:
Learners’ and teachers’
experiences of using
technologies
New approaches to design
Open Educational Resources
Learning theories
Strategy and policy

5. Today’s educational context
• Rapidly changing
technological environment
• New digital literacy skills
needed for learners and
teachers
• New forms of open
practices emerging
• New forms of online
community and
interactivity

6. Limitless
• Unbounded
intelligence
• Unlocking
potential
• Distributed
cognition (people
and technologies)
Trailer

7. Social and participatory media 5

8. Social and participatory media 5
Media sharing

9. Social and participatory media 5
Media sharing Blogging

10. Social and participatory media 5
Media sharing Blogging
Messaging

11. Social and participatory media 5
Media sharing Blogging
Messaging
Recommender
systems

12. Social and participatory media 5
Media sharing Blogging
Messaging
Recommender
systems
Virtual worlds
and games

13. Social and participatory media 5
Media sharing Blogging
Messaging
Recommender
systems
Virtual worlds
and games
Syndication

14. Social and participatory media 5
Media sharing Blogging
Messaging
Recommender
systems
Virtual worlds
and games
Social
Syndication
bookmarking

15. Social and participatory media 5
Media sharing Blogging
Messaging
Recommender
systems
Social Virtual worlds
networking and games
Social
Syndication
bookmarking

16. Social and participatory media 5
Media sharing Blogging
Messaging
Collaborative Recommender
editing systems
Social Virtual worlds
networking and games
Social
Syndication
bookmarking

17. Social and participatory media 5
Media sharing Blogging
Mash ups
Messaging
Collaborative Recommender
editing systems
Social Virtual worlds
networking and games
Social
Syndication
bookmarking

18. The machine is Us/ing us

19. Peer
critiquing
The machine is Us/ing us

20. Peer
critiquing
User
generated
content
The machine is Us/ing us

21. Peer
critiquing
User
generated
content
Networked
The machine is Us/ing us

22. Peer Open
critiquing
User
generated
content
Networked
The machine is Us/ing us

23. Peer Open
critiquing
User
Collective
generated
aggregation
content
Networked
The machine is Us/ing us

24. Peer Open
critiquing
User
Collective
generated
aggregation
content
Networked Personalised
The machine is Us/ing us

25. Mash ups 7
http://voicethread.com/

26. SecondLife
8

27. Virtual worlds 9
http://muversllc.blogspot.com/2009/12/medical-roleplays-in-second-life.html

28. Social networking 10
http://sometu.ning.com/

29. Livemocha 11

30. Busuu
12

31. italki 13

32. Spanish meetup 14

33. Role play 15

34. Social networking 16

35. Using the media for Spanish learning
17
 Follow Spanish speakers on Twitter
 Post in Spanish on Twitter and facebook
 Change facebook skin to Spanish
 Join relevant social networking groups of language learners
 e-dictionaries and Google translate (with care!)
 Listen to online podcasts
 Read Spanish newspapers online
 Download Spanish mobile phone apps

36. 18
Effective use of new technologies requires
a radical rethink of the core learning and
teaching processes; a shift from design as
an internalised, implicit and individually
crafted process to one that is externalised
and shareable with others. Change in
practice may indeed involve the use of
revised materials, new teaching strategies
and beliefs - all in relation to educational
innovation.
Conole and Alevizrou, 2010

37. Digital literacies
Jenkins et al, 2006

38. Digital literacies
Performance Simulation
Appropriation Judgement
Networking Multitasking
Collective Transmedia
intelligence navigation
Distributed Negotiation
cognition
Play Jenkins et al, 2006

39. Creativity

40. Definition • Derived from Latin ‘creo’
to create/make
• About creating
something new (physical
artefact or concept) that
is novel and valuable
• Ability to transcend
traditional ideas, rules,
partners, relationships
and create meaningful
new ideas, forms,
methods, interpretations

41. Why is it important?
• Essential skill to deal
with today’s
complex, fast and
changing society
• Discourse and
collaboration are
mediated through a
range of social and
participatory media

42. Technologies
• Can promote creativity in
new and innovative ways
• Enable new forms of
discourse, collaboration
and cooperation
• Access and repurpose
knowledge in different
forms of representation
• Aggregation and scale -
distributed and collective

43. Online communities
• New open, social and
participatory media enable new
means of communication,
collaboration, sharing and co-
construction of knowledge
• Want to focus on the nature of
community in these new online
spaces
• From tight to loosely coupled:
groups, networks and collectives
(Dron and Anderson, 2007)
• What is it and how can it be
fostered, supported?

44. The nature of community
• Complex, distributed, loose
communities are emerging
• Facilitated through different but
connected social networking tools
such as facebook, Twitter, Ning
• Users create their own Personal
Digital Environment
• Mix of synchronous and
asynchronous tools
• Boundary crossing e.g. the power of
retweeting
• Links between interests, rather than
places

45. Definitions
[Community does not] imply necessarily co-presence, a
well-defined identifiable group, or socially visible
boundaries. It does imply participation in an activity system
about which participants share understandings concerning
what they are doing and what that means in their lives and
for their communities
Lave and Wenger, 1991
Virtual communities are social aggregations that emerge
from the Net when enough people carry on those public
discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to
form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace.
Rheingold, 1993

46. Community as a process
• Constantly evolving and
changing
• Shifting groups and depths
of relationships
• Dynamic, evolving and
potentially transformative
• Both directed and
serendipitous interactions

47. Interactivity
• New technologies enable
increasing interactivity between
learners and teachers
• Complex: psychological, social,
technical, linguistic and cultural
dimensions
• Types: communication-based,
purpose-based, tool-based,
activity-based
• Important in achievement,
persistence, enjoyment and
approaches to learning

48. Definition
Interactions occur when these objects and events
mutually influence one another. An instructional
interaction is an event that takes place between a
learner and the learner's environment. Its purpose is
to respond to the learner in a way intended to change
his or her behavior toward and educational goal.
Instructional interactions have two purposes: to
change learners and to move them toward achieving
their goals.
Wagner, 1994

49. Types
• Learner-learner
• Learner-teacher
• Learner-content
• Learner-interface
Moore, 1989; Hillman et al., 1994

50. Open practices
What are the
implications of
adopting more open
approaches?

51. Social and participatory media 32
Media sharing Blogging
Mash ups
Messaging
How are social and
Collaborative participatory media Recommender
editing systems
being used to enable
open practices?
Social Virtual worlds
networking and games
Social
Syndication
bookmarking

52. Open resources

53. Open resources

54. Open resources

55. Open resources

56. Open courses

57. Open design
Shift from belief-based, implicit
approaches to design-based, explicit
approaches
Learning Design
A design-based approach to
creation and support of courses
Encourages reflective, scholarly practices
Promotes sharing and discussion
Conole, 2010b

58. Open research

59. Open research

60. Open research

61. Open research

63. Open scholarship 38

64. Open scholarship 38
Discovery
Integration
Application
Teaching

65. Open scholarship 38
Discovery
Integration
Application
Teaching
Open
Digital
Networked
Weller: http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/

66. Cloudworks
Cloudworks audio presentation

67. Community indicators
Participation Cohesion
Sustained over time Support & tolerance
Commitment from core group Turn taking & response
Emerging roles & hierarchy Humour and playfulness
Identity Creative capability
Group self-awareness Igniting sense of purpose
Shared language & vocab Multiple points of view
Sense of community expressed, contradicted or
challenged
Creation of knowledge links
& patterns
Galley et al., 2010

68. Participation
• Three types of
hierarchical roles
• Veterans: support and
encourage groups and
newbies
• Trendsetters: make a
difference
• Posters: need to be
incentivised to turn
from lurkers to active
contributors

69. Cohesion
• Through support,
tolerance, reciprocity
and trust
• Language and tone are
critical factors in the
development of an
online community
• Emotional and peer
support

70. Identity
Central to the notion of community
are issues of membership and
exclusion. Some people are in, others
are out. Communities range from
being open to anyone who shares
particular ideas or interests to
communities accessible only to those
who meet certain criteria of
geography, ethnicity, gender, etc
Erickson (1997)

71. Creative capability
• Importance of conflict,
disagreement and
negotiation in the
process of collaborative
knowledge creation and
developing
understanding
• Social discord as a
catalyst for knowledge
construction and
expansive learning

72. Framework for sociality
• System needs to accommodate both evolution
of practices and inclusion of newcomers
• Both individual and group identity are important
• People more likely to use systems that resemble
their daily routines, languages and practices
• Metaphors that mimic real life practices are
likely to be more successful
Bouman et al., 2007

73. Final thoughts
Open, participatory and social media enable new forms
of communication and collaboration
Communities in these spaces are complex and
distributed
Learners and teachers need to develop new digital
literacy skills to harness their potential
We need to rethink how we design, support and assess
learning
Open, participatory and social media can provide
mechanisms for us to share and discuss teaching ideas
in new ways
We are seeing a blurring of boundaries: teachers/
learners, teaching/research, real/virtual spaces, formal/
informal modes of communication and publication

74. The future?
• Limitless potential of
technologies
• Individual, tools and
collective
• Augmented and
gesture technologies
• Blurring the
boundaries of real World Builder
and virtual worlds

75. References
 Conole, G. (forthcoming), Designing for learning in an open world, Springer:Verlag.
 Conole, G. (2010a), Review of pedagogical models and their use in e-learning, http://
cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/2982
 Conole, G. (2010b), Learning design - making practice explicit, ConnectEd conference, Sydney, 28th
June 2010, http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/4001
 Galley, R., Conole, G. and Alevizou, P. (submitted), Community Indicators: A framework for building
and evaluating community activity on Cloudworks, Interactive Learning Environments.
 Conole, G, and Alevizou, P. (2010), A literature review of the use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher
Education, HE Academy commissioned report, http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/EvidenceNet/
Conole_Alevizou_2010.pdf
 Galley, R., Conole, G. and Alevizou, P. (2010), Case study: Using Cloudworks for an Open Literature
Review, An HE Academy commissioned report.
 Alevizou, P., Conole, G. and Galley, R. (2010), Using Cloudworks to support OER activities, An HE
Academy commissioned report.
 Conole, G., Galley, R. and Culver, J. (2010), Frameworks for understanding the nature of
interactions, networking and community in a social networking site for academic practice, The
International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning.
 Conole, G. and Culver, J. (2010) 'The design of Cloudworks: applying social networking practice to
foster the exchange of learning and teaching ideas and designs' Computers and Education, 54(3):
679 - 692.
 Conole and Culver (2009), Cloudworks: social networking for learning design, Australian Journal of
Educational Technology, 25(5), pp. 763–782, http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet25/conole.html.

76. Websites
• http://ouldi.open.ac.uk
• http://cloudworks.ac.uk
• http://e4innovation.com
• http://oer-quality.org/
• http://olnet.org

77. Other references
• Jenkins, H., Clinton, K., Purushotma, R., Robison, A.J. and Weigel, M.,
(2006), Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: media education
for the 21st Century, http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/
%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/
JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF
• Weller, M (2011) The Digital Scholar. Bloomsbury Academic
• Loveless, A M (2007) Creativity, technology and learning – a review of
recent literature Futurelab, http://archive.futurelab.org.uk/resources/
documents/lit_reviews/Creativity_Review_update.pdf
• Dron, J., and Anderson, T. (2007). Collectives, networks and groups in social
software for e-Learning, Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in
Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education Quebec.
Retrieved Feb (Vol. 16, pp. 2008).
• Moore, M. (1989). Three types of interaction. American Journal of Distance
Education, 3(2), 1-6.
• Hillman, D. C., Willis, D. J., and Gunawardena, C. N. (1994). Learner-
interface interaction in distance education: an extension of contemporary
models and strategies for practitioners. The American Journal of Distance
Education, 8(2), 30-42.

78. URLs
• http://robwall.ca/2009/03/10/creativity-is-the-new-technology/
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvIQP-EBPqc
• http://vimeo.com/3365942
• http://blogs.hbr.org/video/2010/05/andrew-klavan-on-how-21st-
cent.html
• Questionmark http://www.flickr.com/photos/crystaljingsr/3914729343/

79. Acknowledgements
• Snoopy http://www.flickr.com/photos/andertoons-cartoons/2754475964/
• Juggling http://www.flickr.com/photos/r8r/4109502436/
• Social media http://www.flickr.com/photos/intersectionconsulting/5045734278/
• Creativity http://content5.videojug.com/89/89cae62c-c95f-a407-cf09-ff0008ca3c71/how-to-
improve-your-creative-thinking.WidePlayer.jpg
• 8LEM http://cetl.ulster.ac.uk/elearning/images/8LEM.jpg
• Voicethread http://www.elearningclouds.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/VoiceThread.png
• Secondlife http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bsWh9JKbOZ0/SxYN0s1MWJI/AAAAAAAABuk/
Pvj5ETXXSRU/s400/MUVErs%2BPatient%2BRoleplay%2BSimulation%2B2.jpg
• Pandora’s box http://www.flickr.com/photos/darkwood67/3431956363/
• Clouds http://www.flickr.com/photos/torley/2311784203/
• Students http://www.flickr.com/photos/snoy/2599258991/
• Community http://www.flickr.com/photos/anonymonk/1403378488/