Sebastian, Rob and George are presenting today at Ascilite 2009 in New Zealand our thoughts on the role of social media in educational intervention and transformation. Unfortunately I couldn‘t travel down under, because we are waiting for a great moment to come… ;-)

Here are some infos about the Symposium:

Sebastian Fiedler (Austria), George Siemens (Canada), Rob Fitzgerald (Australia), Jan Philipp Schmidt (South Africa), Leigh Blackall (New Zealand), Barbara Kieslinger (Austria), Cyprien Lomas (Australia), Terje Väljataga (Estonia), Frederik G. Pferdt (USA)

In recent years social media and social software tools and practices have been applied in numerous implementation and pilot studies in higher. Some have been driven by explicit educational goals, while others seem to have been inspired by the attractive, technical flexibility of an emerging decentralized landscape of loosely-coupled, networked tools and services and its alleged potential for changing the dominant patterns of institutional provision of ICT in education. This symposium brings together a diverse and international group of researchers to explore the problems and limitations of using social media as a leverage point for second-order change in higher education. It aims to engage contributors and the audience in theoretical and empirical reflection on possible directions for further conceptual and methodological development in that area.

Ascilite 2009 reflects on the emergence of multiple spaces in our personal and learning environments. Presentations are invited that explore developments and experiences in the following spaces:

BlendedSpace
How do learners move between independent and dependent
spaces for learning? How are physical learning spaces changing to facilitate learning in blended environments? What makes blended learning effective – why, how, when and where?

Virtual Space
What is happening around education in virtual worlds? What is the impact, what are the implications and how can the potential of developments in this emergent area be realistically assessed?

SocialSpace
What Web2.0 technologies are teachers and students using? How well do they work, how do you know and what can be done to improve and enhance their use. What is the nature of the social space in educational settings?

MobileSpace
How are mobile devices being incorporated into the learning environment and what does their unique functionality have to offer? What do the students think? How do they learn with these ubiquitous tools?

WorkSpace
What are industries, trades, businesses and professionals doing with e-learning technologies for further education and training. What works and why? Where does their future lie in the world of e-learning?

Here is our full proposal text:

In recent years social media and social software tools and practices have been applied in numerous implementation and pilot studies in higher education (for example Yew, Gibson, & Teasley, 2006; Rogers, Liddle, Chan, Doxey, & Isom, 2007; Sharma & Fiedler, 2007; Fitzgerald, Barass, Campbell, Hinton, Ryan, Whitelaw, et al., 2009; Fiedler, Kieslinger, Pata, & Ehms, 2009). Some of these studies have been driven by explicit educational goals (such as fostering community involvement in learning and teaching; peer learning; competence advancement in collaborating, social-networking, and self-directing; social and collaborative production, and so forth). On the other hand numerous implementations seem to have been mostly inspired by the attractive, technical flexibility of an emerging decentralized landscape of loosely-coupled, networked tools and services and its alleged potential for changing the dominant patterns of institutional provision of ICT in education. Some have noted that these implementations produce more questions than answers (Guess, 2007). It is becoming clear that greater depth of examination is required to clarify what type of educational change goals and what type of systemic interventions (Midgley, 2000; Hawe, Shiell & Riley, 2007) can actually be supported effectively by bringing social media practices into higher education.

Furthermore, exploration is needed of the tensions, barriers and unintended consequences that are likely to result from educational interventions that try to use such practices as a significant “leverage point for change” in higher education. However, as Postman (1992) has noted, the change promised by new technologies often represents a Faustian bargain.
Increased understanding of the unintended consequences of change is imperative if intervention focuses not only on first-order change by making mere “incremental improvements within existing modes of practice” (Foster-Fishman et al. 2007), but strives for second-order (or radical) change (Bereiter, 2002) involving a fundamental shift in how things are done within the targeted context. Change agents need to understand if and how a strategic change made in one part of the system influences (or fails to influence) other parts of the system. What actors are (or ought to be) included in an intervention is another important issue here. Foster-Fishman, Nowell, & Yang (2007) remind us that “… if the boundaries are drawn too wide, then the systems change effort can become cumbersome and unmanageable; if drawn too narrow then vital system pieces may be ignored” (p. 204). The way a system is bounded places limits on our understanding and our ability to leverage change (Midgley 2000). This is where many technology driven interventions in education seem to fail. While re-mediation efforts based on the introduction of new technological tools often trigger temporary changes in practice, “this emphasis on instrumental re-mediation often entailed a relative neglect of corresponding transformations in the division of labor, community and rules – that is, the social-organizational re-mediation of the activity system” (Engeström 2001, p. 91).

Since social media practices tend to fundamentally alter the traditional configurations of responsibility and control of instructional functions that characterize settings in formal higher education, these changes always effect other parts of the overall system such as norms (beliefs, values, attitudes, orientations), resources and regulations (policies, procedures, routines). A common example of these phenomena is the misfit of the production modes mediated by social software (co-production, multi-authorship, etc.) and their typical products (networked artefacts) with the assessment norms and procedures of the overall institutional system.

Our symposium brings together a diverse and international group of experienced researchers to explore the problems and limitations of using social media practices as a leverage point for second-order change in higher education. Furthermore, it intends to engage symposium contributors and audience in theoretical and empirical reflection on possible directions for further conceptual and methodological development in that area.

Here is a short abstract of my talk:

Social Media is changing the way we learn and offers potential for the design of innovative learning environments. But how can we use these technologies to improve learning and design learning environments? This research shows some insights of a three-year school project using social media in learning environments and offers an innovative research approach producing theory and solutions to problems of educational practice for a change in education.

Here you can find the paper abstract.

Concerning feedback, I would like to highlight two noteworthy discussions.

Firstly, the difference between didactics and instruction(al) (design) in the German and Anglo/American context. Some literature argues and this is aligned with my observations, that the term “didactics“ is rarely used in the Anglo/American educational scientific and practical context. The reason for this is that the term has a more or less negative connotation in the sense that it describes a very teacher driven approach combined with a moralizing aspect. In contrary, the term instruction or instructional design (German: Instruktion) is used in the German educational discussion in a similar way and describes a very teacher oriented way of education, which also could be described as a form of indoctrination. “Didactic” in the German context has a very long tradition and is mostly seen as the general theory and practice of teaching and learning and is discussed in various didactical models. My implication of this discussion is that it could be useful for future talks to clarify the difference shortly before using the terms.

Secondly, a high school teacher was surprised about my findings, that a few school children in my study argued that they wanted to be taught in a traditional setting and teachers should tell them what to do. I argued shortly, that this can be interpreted in the way, that the effort is mostly less to be a passive recipient of information in traditional classroom settings but also the learning effects are not as high as in self-directed, problem oriented and design-based didactical approaches. My implication of this discussion is that I will try to finish my research project as soon as possible to deliver the interpretations of various findings.

In retrospect, I really enjoyed the presentations at the conference and the informal discussions during the coffee breaks and lunch.

“In der zweiten Rubrik ‚Lernen mit Medien: Varianten und Modelle‘ wird der Schwerpunkt auf didaktisch-methodische Konzepte gerichtet. KREMER/ PFERDT zeigen vor dem Hintergrund von Entwicklungen in der beruflichen Bildung unter Social Media Design eine didaktische Konzeption zur Nutzung kooperativer Technologien in der beruflichen Bildung”

Abstract:

„‘Technology and education‘ usually means inventing new gadgets to teach the same old stuff in a thinly disguised version of the same old way“ schreibt Seymour Papert vom MIT 1971. Ein größeres „Gadget“ und weitreichende mediale und soziale Entwicklungen stellen die veränderte Nutzung des Internets unter den Begriffen Web 2.0 und Social Software dar. Nahezu alle Lebensbereiche unserer Gesellschaft weisen Bezugspunkte zur geführten Diskussion auf. Die Rede ist von neuen Formen der Partizipation und Kooperation, anderen Möglichkeiten der Darstellung, der eigenen Identität und veränderten Potenzialen der Informationsrecherche und -bereitstellung. Bislang hat diese Veränderung noch nicht den Weg in die Bildungsinstitutionen gefunden und die Neuauflage von Bildungskonzepten wird nur an einzelnen Stellen aufgegriffen, was zur Folge hat, dass man innovative Konzepte zur Gestaltung von Lernen bislang vergebens sucht. Die Nutzungsmöglichkeiten, -chancen und Probleme, berufliches Lernen mit Social Software zu gestalten, sollen in diesem Beitrag fokussiert werden. In diesem Rahmen soll neben einer grundlegenden Annäherung an Social Media und der Bestimmung von Potenzialen für Lehren und Lernen eine Position zur Modellierung von Medien als Entwicklungswerkzeuge in einer kompetenzorientierten Bildungsarbeit dargelegt und empirisch belegt werden. Konsequenzen für kompetenzorientierte didaktische Designs mit Web 2.0 und Social Software erfahren somit eine Grundlegung und eine erste Formulierung.

Den gesamten Beitrag finden Sie als Download hier: