Online social networking, the e-learning holy grail?
Introduction
The study reported in this chapter shows that students regard online collaborative learning (online social network learning; OSNL) motivating, productive and enjoyable, which tutors have found leads students to a better understanding of their subject. This chapter seeks to argue that the lessons learnt from this research can be harnessed to provide us with a generic template for managing online discourse, a protocol for using any online social networking Web 2.0 application for educational purposes. This generic template is, in effect, a new e-pedagogy for participative learning, which is platform independent and employs the positive social connectivity features that Web 2.0 provides.
Recent research supports the view that the e-learning ‘holy grail’ in higher education is to engage students in online discourse, whether student-to-student dialogue or student-to-tutor dialogue, or both, arguing that active involvement promotes effective learning (Webb et al., 2004). Work in this sector in the UK using discussion boards in the Blackboard virtual learning environment (VLE), notably Walton et al. (2007a and b), Pope and Walton (2009) and Hepworth and Walton (2009), corroborate this view. The empirical evidence furnished here supports the views stated in chapter 5 and 6 on the potential of Web 2.0 to deliver meaningful learning. It also complements the work of Jenny Yorke and Helen Walmsley (Chapter 4) on the use of communities of practice to foster staff development in e-learning and e-pedagogy. Indeed, the work discussed here features in discussions about the online community of practice explored in Chapter 4.
Background to the study
Information Services at Staffordshire University (UK) has delivered information literacy in traditional face-to-face format within the year one undergraduate sport and exercise module SHP91000-1 Effective Learning, Information and Communication Skills (ELICS) for five years. It should be noted that although the topic of information literacy is in itself interesting, a discussion of the concept itself is beyond the scope of this chapter. A working definition of information literacy is offered for the purposes of this study. It is argued that, in essence, information literacy is the ability to find, evaluate and use information in order to complete a task. This chapter centres on how students used online social network learning to understand how to critically evaluate information sources more effectively. Recent work by UCL (2008), CELEX (2009), Hampton-Reeves et al. (2009) and Head and Eisenberg (2009) continues to demonstrate the need for this kind of information literacy teaching and learning in education: ‘digital natives’ are not the same as information literate learners (Williams and Rowlands, 2006).
In the past, information literacy skills were delivered face to face and tended to focus on these skills in a generic fashion rather than via a learner-orientated mode where thinking skills and subject-specific information literacy were promoted. Information literacy activity-based exercises were assessed through an individual portfolio exercise with no built-in opportunity for collaboration or discussion. Understandably (because of the generic nature of the skills learned and the lack of opportunity for structured discussion), incidental student feedback indicates that students had difficulty in perceiving the benefit of these generic exercises and therefore felt less motivated to take part in them.
These issues led the researcher and module leader to believe that it was time for a change. It was envisaged that students would develop a more positive attitude towards their learning if tutors delivered information literacy activities using collaborative learning opportunities, particularly when the activities were subject based and linked seamlessly to the goal of undertaking professional research in sport and exercise.
In the face-to-face workshop this was realised by using a scaffolded framework (following resources developed for this purpose by Bordinaro and Richardson, 2004) where students (individually and collaboratively) were encouraged to identify their research focus, find, evaluate and use information within a specific subject-related context and reflect on the process (following structures suggested by Cowan, 2002), thereby creating a more subject orientated motivational atmosphere.
It was of particular interest whether this positive motivational context, as suggested by Keller (1983), could be further enhanced (and learning improved) by using online social network learning via the Blackboard VLE. Goodyear (2001), JISC infoNet (2004), Littlejohn and Higgison (2003) and Mayes and de Freitas (2004) indicate that, in the online context, learning only takes place when students are encouraged to engage in dialogue with peers and tutors and these authors regard this as e-learning best practice. E-group etiquette guidelines set out by Alpay (2005) in tandem with notions about reflective practice (following Teles, 1993; Hung and Chen, 2001; Cowan, 2002; and Walker, 2003) and communities of practice espoused by Mayes and de Freitas (2004) were followed to enable the online discourse between students and their peers and student and tutor to be meaningful and sustained.
It was argued that by using Blackboard discussion board in this way the ‘tertiary courseware’ function (Goodyear, 2001) where learners produce materials during their discussions and assessment of their own learning would be created. For example, online dialogue between learner and tutor or peer discussion outputs would be captured and made available to all learners.
Pilot study
A full account of the pilot study can be found in Walton et al. (2007a and b).
Methodology
To test whether online social network learning really did make a difference to student learning the activities were delivered to an experimental group via Blackboard over seven weeks immediately after the face-to-face workshop. In addition, a control group, which received the face-to-face workshop only, was monitored to enable a comparison between online social network learning and traditional delivery methods. In effect the experimental group received a ‘blended learning’ programme – a mixture of face-to-face and online activities. The structure for the whole blended programme (in chronological order) and the data-gathering instruments are represented in Figure 3.1. In addition to these the textual output from the discussion board in the form of student postings and summaries was captured at the time by copying and pasting all discourse into a Word document.
The initial process devised to manage the online social network learning information literacy activities in discussion board within Blackboard is represented in Figure 3.2.
Figure 3.2 Initial process for managing online social network learning
Forum: This constitutes the title, e.g. ‘Referencing your sources’.
Thread: This contains the instructions for the task, e.g.: ‘1 Think about what you have covered today. 2 Answer the questions set out below. 3 Send your response to the discussion board. 4 Read the responses your fellow students have made and make at least one comment.’
Seed: This contains the starting point for the discussion, e.g.: ‘It was mentioned in the previous discussion that you can check the URL of a web page to work out its origin – whether educational, personal, commercial, governmental, sporting organisation etc. What is a URL and how do you work out its origin?’ Student posting: This is the output from students once they have opened the forum, read the thread and seed, and engaged with the online activity, e.g.: ‘I would judge a book by determining how referenced the book is and what references it included.’
Tutor’s summary: This summary contains salient points raised from student postings with additional comments from tutors, e.g.: ‘You have identified some excellent criteria – we have added some extra points you should consider when using web pages. General point: there are no guarantees that any web page is unbiased, error free or reputable but if you adhere to the criteria you have put forward – summarised below – then you should get a reasonable idea as to how reliable the source is.’
This was envisaged as a linear process with each activity concluded and closed with a summary before moving on to the next new forum. The threads were generated each week by tutors, so the content was tutor led. Source: Walton et al., 2007a, 17
Brief summary of findings from the pilot study
The outputs from the online social network learning information literacy activities were very encouraging and a new process for managing these emerged. Students produced some excellent output that could be used as threads for many of the subsequent online social network learning activities, for example, a scaffolded discussion was developed by selecting a student comment regarding URLs (from OSNL 4). This was then used as the thread for OSNL 5 by reiterating the previous discussion, but this time in more detail. This is an extract from the student posting used:
You can check the URL of a web page to see if it’s an educational piece or a personal piece which contains someone’s own opinion.
The subsequent task derived from the student comment was posted as follows:
It was mentioned in the previous discussion that you can check the URL of a web page to work out its origin, for example, educational, personal, commercial, governmental, sporting organisation etc. So what is a URL and how do you work out its origin?
Hence, students were reiterating the task completed during the previous week, but in much greater depth. This demonstrated that there was a recursive element to this activity, which was harnessed for future online discussions. This process of iteration is mentioned as an essential part of information literacy in, for example, SCONUL (1999), Big Blue Project (2002) and Andretta (2005), as part of the information behaviour process in, for example Hepworth (2004) and Ford (2004), and as part of the learning process in, for example, Laurillard (2002) and Moseley et al. (2004). Finally, it has the desirable outcome of making the process student rather than tutor led, allowing the programme to adopt a more constructivist approach to learning.
It can be seen that the literature anticipated this occurrence of the iterative nature of the online discussion task (and learning itself) but was not planned for in the original process. As a result, a new process map was devised for managing online discussion for the main study, which is illustrated in Figure 3.3.
Figure 3.3 Scheme for the new information literacy programme indicating new features Source: adapted from Walton et al., 2007b, 197
It can be assumed that there was no ‘social desirability bias’ (Bryman, 2004): students were not averse to making negative as well as positive comments or statements:
In fact the majority of questionnaire statements were positive. For example this typical statement strongly indicates that the referencing exercise was the most successful online social network learning activity:
A typical response to the question about what they found not so useful was:
This showed that the online reflective practice activity required further work.
In the questionnaire 11 of the 16 respondents made one or more negative statements about the online reflective practice activity. This suggests that students may have tacit expectations that learning should be provided by ‘experts’ such as tutors and that they can’t possibly learn anything from their peers.
Responses indicated that none of the students had looked at the tutor summaries after completion of the online activity, demonstrating that it was necessary to find an alternative process for presenting these.
Pre- and post-delivery tests produced no statistically significant differences in marks although, gratifyingly, postdelivery test scores were higher.
An analysis of the written reflective statements can be found in Walton et al. (2007b).
Changes to processes for the main study
Students in the pilot study commented that the online social network learning activities were ‘repetitive’ and ‘tedious’. It was also observed that in OSNL 6 the numbers of secondary postings were far greater than any of the other online social network learning activities. OSNL 6 was the only discussion held over two weeks. Therefore, it was felt that fewer online social network learning activities should be deployed in the main study and each should take place over at least two weeks to minimise repetition and maximise the available time for students to engage in the discussion.
In addition, following recommendations made by the Plain English Campaign website a number of changes to online activity instructions were made. The main recommendations were: use short sentences, use simple words, refrain from using jargon and use an active ‘voice’ where possible. These recommendations were deployed for the seeds and threads of online social network learning activities in particular. Following recommendations by Nicol, Minty and Sinclair (2003), tutor summaries were made more personal using students’ and tutors’ first names (to identify the origin of online postings) and using coloured text or bold to separate students’ comments from tutors’ comments as illustrated here:
Tracy said that a good resource should consist of many different points of view, which allows us to assess it against our own work.
We would add that bias is minimised by using evidence to back up the points that are made with detailed explanations of the information that is needed (in other words lots of facts and figures).
Placing these summaries before a task or activity within the same online document will ensure that students read the summary before reading the instructions for the new task. In addition students will be given the summary as a printed handout for future reference.
It was decided to construct a reflective multiple-choice quiz in the form of an instant reflective practice activity (IRPA) rather than an open-ended reflection. These activities were designed to take up to ten minutes to complete and enabled students to reflect actively on their learning. They contained ‘ready made’ reflective statements for students to select, enabling them to see how to construct a reflective practice statement for their assessed work. The ‘ready made’ reflective statements were created using reflective statements made by previous students. It was felt that by using real reflective statements students would identify with and consequently choose at least one that was provided, or else write their own. The structure for the new information literacy programme is shown in Figure 3.3.
To replicate the findings of the pilot study and take advantage of the new online social network learning process that emerged, it is recommended that the online social network learning process is managed as shown in Figure 3.4.
Figure 3.4 New process for managing student centred online social network learning activities Source: Walton et al., 2007b, 200
Main study
Methodology
The online social network learning activities were delivered to the experimental group via Blackboard over six weeks immediately after the face-to-face workshop. In tandem the control group received only the face-to-face delivery. A third group received the face-to-face delivery and access to the interactive web resources but were not given access to the OSNL activities on the discussion board. The structure for the new programme is shown above in Figure 3.3. The new online social network learning process was managed as shown in Figure 3.4 and data-gathering instruments were reused including any changes described above.
Findings
Online discourse
Students readily engaged in the online activities provided and all those present made a contribution. They tended to use their own words and identified a range of appropriate evaluation criteria which they could use when gathering web pages for an assignment:
I would evaluate a web page by: looking at the URL address and seeing weather [sic] it is e.g. a government source, which would mean the source is reliable. You can also look at the author and find out whether they have a good reliable background and you should also be able to find any related links and other sources used. Finally look at the last time when the web page was updated especially when stats are involved.
The average length of a posting was 66 words with at least two salient points per posting. Students tended to focus on relevance above any other criterion, but many mentioned authority, reliability, currency and the importance of being able to understand a URL, which was a remarkable achievement as the allotted time to undertake activities rarely exceeded 15 minutes.
The pilot study findings on moments of iteration were replicated and provided opportunities to explore issues in more depth. This extract from the tutor’s summary demonstrates how this was achieved:
Ozzy mentioned that you can get clues from a URL to see whether it is a ‘personal’ website and (therefore) the information may not be a reliable source.
We agree with Ozzy regarding URLs BUT stress that we need to be more systematic in the way we analyse their structure. To practise analysing a URL follow the instructions 1–5 below.
This in turn led to students posting more detailed comments on how to analyse a URL:
The URL informs us that it is an online article from an academic server (.ac) based in the United Kingdom (.uk). It tells us that the website contains football research and resources (/resources) with factsheets (/factsheets). The end of the URL shows us that the article is a html file (.html).
Tutors then summarised all pertinent comments into a brief handout to act as an aide-mémoire for evaluating web pages for their assignments.
Students’ views on the information literacy online social network learning programme
The focus group interviews and questionnaire generated a large body of data. Only selected transcriptions are presented here, in an attempt to give as accurate a representation of students’ views as possible.
Comments from student respondents confirmed that they felt that the online social network learning task was framed at the right level:
Easy to follow because obviously I did the activity so it didn’t go over my head, explained what I needed to do and went about doing it.
Students quickly took on the role of online learners and understood what was required:
Made our replies on the forum, we had to feedback on each others. I remember I was commenting on his, he was commenting on mine and I was writing about how he hadn’t actually written about all the actual points you were meant to evaluate.
What began to emerge was that students regarded the activity as a rewarding learning experience:
Obviously you feel something productive like you’ve done some work and you’ve done something useful like you’ve learnt stuff and then you’ve like soaked up the information then you’ve managed to like extract it in the reply for other people to see in the forum.
Students seemed readily to transfer the norms associated with face-to-face discourse into the online environment:
Everybody’s got limits ain’t they and you’ve got to respect the other person’s opinion and they have to respect your opinion at the end of the day.
Within the online social network learning environment students showed that they quickly achieved a sense of what was required in this setting:
I went into the link about what you should look for when you go onto the internet websites and using them as references, and taking that information and then so I took all that in then basically just wrote a few paragraphs on what I thought was important.
The activity appeared to get students to think about what was being written by their fellow students:
The opinions got on it were really, really good. I read through everybody’s really, and I seen what everyone was getting at and it made me understand more clearly because at first, as I said before, I didn’t get it, it didn’t click. That helped by reading other people’s statements on the activity so it worked better for me.
In addition, an interesting debate arose in the full focus group meeting on what constituted the most important criteria for judging web pages. Students concurred that by doing the online social network learning task they had become sensitised to these issues.
These statements show how detailed students’ knowledge had become when they analysed web pages:
Looking at URL, e.g. .com/.uk, taught me that website URLs mean something important.
I learnt how to assess a website by simply looking at the web address, date published, author etc.
[Before] I didn’t know what the things at the end like .ac [and] .org meant.
It should be noted that the experimental group performed statistically significantly better in the post-delivery test than the control group (p<0.025). It is our contention that this indicates that online social network learning does promote deeper learning in students for information-literacy-based activities.
As identified by Hepworth (2004), in cognitive terms evidence from respondents showed that in this learning context they had moved from a position of uncertainty to one of certainty:
It was good because I didn’t really know about what type of things you should look for when you are looking at websites to get references so now obviously when I’m looking at references in the future I’m going to look and see whether it is from a big company where it’s very probably going to be factual or whether it’s from someone’s own personal website or something that’s less formal and I’ll be able to tell whether to take information from it or not.
Students’ responses also demonstrated that they had begun to adopt a more questioning approach as a result of the activity:
Allowed me to see what other people thought of the web site, the way they had evaluated it, not just myself. Then you got, obviously, to post a reply to them saying well look at this, look at that, and also got their feedback to yours.
You got to see what you was missing out or something you hadn’t looked at, so they could bring up the points saying may be look at this, look at this.
Almost all student interview comments and questionnaire responses were positive. It emerges very clearly that students thought the pedagogic intervention was useful and that it helped them to learn:
Yeah, it’s a good idea I think, it gets people quite motivated to do things because they can see next week they get involved, it’s more hands-on and they can actually see that what they did is actually being used for the good really.
However, a minority of students made negative comments:
It also appears that students felt very positive towards the activity and felt that they had a real part to play in it:
It was really good, you got to see what other people thought of their web site and you could have a look at different web sites and different people’s opinions, which was really good.
I think it was quite interesting, gets you involved as well and that side of it was quite fun – as opposed to being lectured to.
Students’ views on the tutor’s summary reinforced this view:
Just a nice way of being recognised, basically it was really nice knowing it wasn’t just being done for you to write up and to be left. It was nice knowing it was going to be read through, all the reflective stuff was, and actually being given a report on it.
It is argued that by creating a positive and motivational atmosphere in this way learning is more likely to occur.
Research from learning theory (Race, 2001) and thinking skills work (Moseley et al., 2004) shows that in order to facilitate learning metacognitive processes should be evident. Online social network learning discourse appears to initiate this process in that students feel they have missed or overlooked something and realise there is something else to know:
You got to see what other people thought about… your evaluation, get new points in case you missed anything.
Somebody commenting on your evaluation and you could possibly highlight things that you overlooked.
These statements appear to indicate that the online social network learning process has enabled students to identify gaps in their information seeking, or in information literacy terms to recognise a need to find more information, which provide the moments of iteration (Walton et al., 2007a) and the motivation to continue enabling further opportunities for discussion and hence learning.
The following statements indicate the realisation or recognition that new knowledge had been acquired:
Quite informative, something I weren’t [sic] aware of. I was aware that there was a lot of pages but I was under the impression they were all .co.uk. You actually realise there are quite a lot of organisations that put web pages online. It’s good I suppose when you are researching, you don’t want to put lies in your assignment and stuff, you want to put truth in there.
It helped me recognise weaknesses in my study skills.
Referencing correctly – didn’t realise how many ways there was.
The process was then closed off by completing the reflective activity:
I remember it [the IRPA], basically asking you how you felt or what you learnt doing the workshop. You can reflect yourself, then it’s not just reflecting for a lecturer it’s, like, you can understand yourself what you have learnt and gone through.
However, students weren’t entirely at ease with the instant reflective practice activity and didn’t entirely engage with or value it:
The workshop was useful to me, but I think, like, that one [the IRPA] was more of a getting my views on, on things and stuff, so not really that useful to me. It questioned my opinion on the workshop I suppose. I was just giving my opinion, it didn’t really learn [sic] me anything.
Students’ responses indicated that in completing this activity their behaviour had changed and learning had taken place:
It makes you aware, a little bit more aware, of what web sites are more useful to you than others and there are quite a lot of web sites on line and you don’t want to be writing stuff in your assignments that’s not true.
Many students commented that they would use their new knowledge in their future undergraduate career and had already used it in other modules:
It was quite informative actually. I learnt quite a few things. I’ve used it for a couple of my essays and a lab report I’m doing at the moment.
Finally, students liked the fact that their efforts were recognised and included, not just in the tutor’s summary but also in the handout given to them as an aide-mémoire. It appeared to create a real sense of ownership:
I thought it was really good, obviously. It gave the whole group a bit of recognition, you could see individuals what they’d done what they’d said, but it also helped you read through what other people thought of URLs and took advice from other people not just the lecturer. It worked really well, it is a good way of reflecting what you’ve done.
Discussion
The findings indicated that student participants readily engaged with the tasks and seemed to enjoy them. The activities appeared to capture students’ interest, which was evidenced in the level of participation and the quality of the output. They appeared to realise the relevance of the skills to them as they could see how the skills could be applied in other modules and in later years. In particular they appeared to show signs of becoming critical thinkers and what Senn Breivik calls ‘information sceptics’ (Brower and Hollister, 2007), a key milestone on becoming information literate.
The fact that students in the experimental group had performed statistically significantly better in the knowledge test than the control group is further indication that this intervention has been beneficial. The tutor’s summary appeared to create a sense of success and ownership by recognising students’ efforts and reinforcing them in a positive way.
These findings suggest that the conditions required to meet Keller’s ARCS (attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction) model for facilitating motivation (Keller, 1983) were achieved. Quantitative measures indicate that students have gained new knowledge through this programme and that they appear to recognise this. Students have demonstrated a willingness to engage with this pedagogic intervention and prefer it to other modes of learning (particularly lectures) and their interview responses – evidenced above – support this view.
A new process for online social network learning in Blackboard
In view of the changes and improvements made to the online social network learning process during delivery it is suggested that a revised process has emerged, which is shown in Figure 3.5.
Recent developments using the revised online social network learning model
The revised online social network learning model was rolled out to the whole of the student cohort enrolled on the ELICS module (now entitled Research and Professional Development) in Semester 1 of 2007. A training session was held for academic colleagues in early September 2007. Once fully embedded it is hoped that this model can be used for other subjects within the university in the near future.
The activity for this year centred on students being tasked to peer review essay drafts for an assignment. Three years of very rich data has now been gathered which will be analysed and then form the basis of further published research. In the meantime, initial comments from tutors and students point towards a very positive outcome. When undertaking the online activity tutors have described students as ‘engaged’ and ‘motivated’, with large numbers of postings (30 plus) made by each seminar group. There were seven seminar groups with 12 to 15 students in each.
Early indications from data gathered from the City of Sunderland College (which at the time of writing was piloting the online social network learning process in Blackboard with A-level sociology students) appears to suggest that this process can be used in a further education environment.
A discussion board activity (following the revised online social network learning model set out above) was set up for AS sociology students during the week of ‘stepping up’ in the summer term of 2007. (‘Stepping up’ is a transition period at the end of Year 1 when students begin to address some areas of the curriculum in readiness for Year 2 in their A-level studies.) The aim was to assess how useful the discussion board environment is as a means of independent learning and for student interaction. In this short programme students were presented with an initial task of investigating the UK education system that existed before the comprehensive system. They were given the option of taking the Eleven Plus test online to get a sense of being a part of this system, and given a series of questions to discuss together online. Students were paired according to their friendship groups to enable them to feel more comfortable in this new learning environment. One half of the class attended this initial session.
The students took to the task very well indeed. They were very keen to participate and found the environment of the discussion board easy to use and very accessible.
However, some issues did arise:
This initial activity brought to light some potential problems in that if a student is given a web site to look at and discuss there is a danger that they could just cut and paste.
As a result the instructions were adjusted before the second half of the group was given the task in the next session.
The students taking part in the pilot produced their own set of ‘netiquette’ rules, which were posted up in their classroom. It was important that the rules appeared in hardcopy and on Blackboard so that all activities had the same baseline rules.
The second half of the group worked well in the online setting:
All students made a number of sensible contributions demonstrating a good understanding of the topic under investigation and engagement in the online discourse.
The class tutor also noted a number of positive outcomes:
The discussion board activities did prove to be a good means of independent learning because the students have a good background knowledge on the tripartite system. This is important because it is where the A2 syllabus begins. These students will be better informed than students in previous years. The students appeared to be keen to work on the tasks that they were given and value the activities.
The class tutor noted how her role may change in this setting:
The learning of the student also depends upon the contributions made by the lecturer; initially these were difficult to make and time consuming but it could be argued that in time this will become much easier.
The pilot appeared to be successful in a number of ways:
It is a good means of monitoring student activity. During the period of ‘independent learning’ the lecturer is provided with a clear record of student activity and understanding, sound information for contributing to progress reviews.
With one problem regarding initial contributions, the online social network learning activities seemed to work well particularly for those students who are sometimes reluctant to contribute in face-to-face group working:
It proved to be a very good environment for student interaction. In the past this activity took place in the classroom only, students entering into a discussion after doing some initial reading. With the discussion board activity every student made a contribution and joined in the activity, whereas classroom discussions can allow quiet students to say very little. Students that normally say very little contributed much more to the discussion board. The effect of this was to improve their confidence in this environment, but it is also hoped within the classroom environment too. Some student interaction was initially juvenile but this was soon addressed and a productive online discourse ensued.
Finally, the class tutor was very upbeat about online social network learning and noted several positive benefits. She also noted that this mode of working initially requires more time:
This was most definitely a worth while exercise as it allowed the teacher to assess the level of student interest and capability in the discussion board learning environment. The student transition into second year will prove to be much smoother than in the past. The teacher is well informed on how to produce tasks for the discussion board and has a realistic idea of how much work is involved in the monitoring of student progress in managing these activities.
Online social network learning: the e-learning holy grail?
Given that this process has translated well into different contexts it is suggested that this model provides us with a generic online discourse process, which can be used to manage this kind of activity in other Web 2.0 applications such as blogs or similar online social networked environments. It appears that the labels used here (and derived from Blackboard) for each part of the process are commonly used in some social networking applications such as MySpace. For instance, ‘forum’, ‘thread’ and ‘posting’ appear to be common terms, but the term ‘seed’ may be better understood as ‘topic’ in this context. Finally, the tutor would in effect be the ‘topic starter’ or similar depending on the setting. Whatever the context the challenge is to follow the processes described above: that learners are set a problem to be solved with appropriate resources, which provide opportunities for guided discourse, leading to a deeper understanding of a topic and ultimately to a solution – a successfully completed assignment.
Conclusion
It can be seen that online discourse particularly in the form of online social network learning engages students in successful learning. It is because student participants proved remarkably articulate and honest in the pilot and main studies that such a rich picture of online discourse and its implications could be revealed. The outcome of the main study was far more positive than the outcome of the pilot study; however, it is clear that some aspects of the programme require further work, particularly in the area of reflective practice. Although it is recognised that the findings from this study may not be generalisable to other situations and levels of new developments within ELICS (now called Research and Professional Development), the City of Sunderland College experience is encouraging. In addition, at the time of going to press, Kingston University is in the process of replicating the research described here.
In completing the online social network learning activities described here students readily demonstrated an ability to take control of the process and become active producers of knowledge rather than passive information consumers. Perhaps this is unsurprising as online social network learning replicates, albeit in an educational context, some of Web 2.0 technology’s social networking aspects. By the same token tutors, while structuring and guiding discourse, became guides in facilitating the process rather than governing it. It is clear that new tutors may require additional training, particularly in managing discourse and constructing summaries.
Students appear to develop a set of robust critical thinking skills and become information sceptics, enabling them to engage effectively with the information world, which we contend is a baseline requirement for those who participate in the Web 2.0 information revolution. Hence, it is proposed that online social network learning facilitates some important processes involved in thinking, such as motivation, reflection and ultimately changed behaviour, which enables deep learning to take place. It would appear that online social networked learning may indeed be the e-learning holy grail.
The next step in this research is to migrate this generic protocol in a Web 2.0 application such as a blog in MySpace, Facebook, Beebo, Elgg or one of the plethora of new social networking tools that will undoubtedly emerge, and continue to emerge, to test to what extent online social network learning translates to online environments beyond Blackboard and indeed the university or college campus.
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