Orchestrating the student experience with social media tools Jessie - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Orchestrating the student experience with social media tools

Jessie Paterson & Kirsty Hughes (Paul Anderson, Hamish Macleod, Catherine Shields) Funded by The Principal’s Teaching Award Scheme (PTAS)

Hypothesis

• Can we classify types of “interactions models”

supported by different social media & online tools?

• Could this classification be helpful for

– Categorising – Selecting tools For particular pedagogic objectives?

11 semi-structured interviews with teaching staff across range of disciplines within University asking about tools used in teaching:-

• “Tool” loose definition but some sort of group interaction/

activity

• Covered UG and PG teaching
• From Teaching Fellows to Directors of Teaching

– Views generally of “their” teaching on their course rather than discipline/programme

• Not necessarily representative of discipline but seen as

someone interested in teaching

Methodology

What tools?

Many including:-

• Privacy – who can see what is happening?
• Data protection – external tools & student data?
• Inclusivity/accessibility (e.g. if students using Facebook

groups who excluded?)

• Speed change/changes in what available (e.g. mobile

phone features) BUT main issue:- Time to understand/develop/incorporate into teaching

Issues surfacing

• Is it helpful to think about what interactions among

students we want to achieve?

• Can we classify the interactions supported by different

social media tools?

• If so, would this be useful in identifying different tools

producing similar interactions so can choose which to use for particular situations?

How might this be made easier – Interaction Models?

Very simple classification:

– who is communicating with whom, in what order? – no analysis of message content

Possible classification

NB

• Same colour = same

message

• Different colour =

different message

Example 1 - dissemination (simultaneous)

• lectures
• nline videos
• student presentations
• web pages
• twitter

One person giving out the same message to all

Example 2 – Fully connected

• face-to-face group

discussion

• skype, second life
• virtual classroom
• twitter

All giving out the same message to others & all receiving

There were quite a few cases of more complex processes

• usually sequential compositions of individual interactions
• For example - Critical Friend…

– A group of students collaborate to create (closed) Wiki pages – The Wiki pages are then opened up to a wider student group – The other students comment on the Wiki pages – The original students revise their pages – The Wiki is presented for marking – The staff return marks and comments

Compound Interactions

• A lecture as

– Information delivery

Or

• A lecture with

– Clickers or online polling to gauge understanding

• – Peer instruction; discussion with peers prior to re-voting
• n answer

How it might work?

• Should we consider the message content?
• If yes what level of message content should we

consider?

– Is a very coarse classification such as "question and answer“ enough? – Is a more detailed classification needed?

• Is it important to consider the timing of the interactions?

– Synchronous or asynchronous

Questions

• Further analysis of data
• Look at more formal techniques for describing models

e.g. calculus of communicating systems? BUT

• Is this useful?

– Feedback from our colleagues has suggested that for some people it is useful even just thinking about interactions in this way as it provides new insights

What next?

• Jessie.Paterson@ed.ac.uk
• Kirsty.Hughes@ed.ac.uk

Contacts