esocialnetwork Classroom Final Project Report Author: Peter Bunus Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköping University

Transcription

1 esocialnetwork Classroom Final Project Report Author: Department of Computer and Information Science, Linköping University Linköping

2 Table of Content 1 Project Summary Project Summary Project Motivation Description of the Project Objectives Technical Architecture of the esocialclassroom Deployed Technical Platforms and Project Results Observed Benefits of the Project Educational Benefits Social Benefits Benefits for the Educators Benefits for LIU Pedagogical Motivation of the Project Contact Information... Error! Bookmark not defined. 7 References peter.bunus@liu.se Page 2

3 1 Project Summary Online social networking is an important part in the everyday life of college students. Despite the increasing popularity of online social networking among students and faculty members, its educational benefits are largely untested. The project aimed to exploit and use the platform offered by social networking application, video content distribution websites and mobile electronic devices like mobile phones, ipods, iphones and ipads as a complement of traditional classroom education. In particular the solution was based on effective adaptation, extension and integration of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and itunes services for delivering educational material to students on mobile platforms like ipods and smart mobile phones. The goals of the proposed educational platform, described in this proposal was to make the learning experience more engaging, to encourage collaborative work and knowledge sharing among students, and to provide an interactive platform for the educators to reach students and deliver lecture material in a totally new way. 2 Project Summary 2.1 Project Motivation Teens and college students, ages 12 to 28 years, have embraced very quickly online technologies that enable social, communicative and creative uses. They are more likely that other age categories to send and receive messages, play online games, create blogs, download music search for school information online or simply spending time online. They are used that information is delivered in this way. Traditional classroom education simply does not fulfill the expectation of our students. Use of media and modern means of interaction has literally rewired the way that our students think and process information. Moreover, the capability of thinking out of the box is very important for a becoming software engineer (the main career target for our students at the Computer Science Department). The most creative solutions arise when we are abandoning our preconceptions and trying out totally new ideas and making unusual associations. Most of our students with major in Computer Science, after graduation will eventually work for companies that provide Web 2.0 related technologies of target audiences using mobile platforms. Therefore it is extremely important that we provide to the students challenging learning environments and lecture content that will give them the possibility to exercise creative thinking as well as to experience Web 2.0 technologies, social networks and mobile platform from the customer point of view as well. According to a December 2008 survey performed by Lenhart 2009 [6] for the PEW Internet and American Life Project the share of the adult users who have a profile on an online social network has grown from 8% in 2005 to 35% in December It is worth noticing that the social network users are equally likely to be men and women, and also more likely to be young: 75% of adults between 18 and 24 have an online profile as do 57% of adults between 25 and 35, according to the same study. Moreover 68% of full time students and 71% of part- time students have a social network profile. It is even more interesting to take a look in the kind of activities those young people are engaging themselves when they are online. Table 1 depicts the generational differences in online activities according to another study performed by Jones and Fox 2009 [4] for PEW Internet and American Life Project. It can be noticed that a large proportion of the people with ages between years (the typical age of our students) are using the internet for watching videos online (72%), send instant messages (59%), reading blogs (43%) or use social networking sites (67%). The survey from Table 1 peter.bunus@liu.se Page 3

4 shows that teens and younger people ages are significantly more likely than older users to send and receive instant messages, playing online games, create blogs or download videos. This demonstrates that they have already adopted this new technology and they are used that information is delivered to them in this way. Table 1. Generational differences in online activities according to Jones and Fox 2009 [4]. Online Teens (12-17) Gen Y (18-32) Gen X (33-44) Younger Boomers (45-54) Older Boomers (55-63) Silent Generation (64-72) G.I Generation (73+) Go online 93% 87% 82% 79% 70% 56% 31% 74% Play games online Watch videos online Get info about a job Send instant messages Use social networking sites Download music Create SNS profile Read blogs Create a blog Visit a virtual world Description of the Project Objectives All Online Adults The goal of the project was to leverage new online technologies that the students are already using in their every day work or in their free time. It this way we could make the learning experience of the students more effective and engaging. We have proposed the use and integration of social networking sites, podcasting technologies and applications developed for mobile devices into a collaborative online educational platform called esocialclassroom. Our expectation was that the esocialclassroom should encourage collaborative work and knowledge sharing among students and function as a platform for the educators to reach the students and deliver lecture material in a totally new way. 2.3 Technical Architecture of the esocialclassroom Traditionally additional course and class material is delivered to the student in a printed form during the lecture or electronically via the course webpage. However the delivered electronic content via the webpage, in most of the cases, is in the form of a PDF file of the lecture slides and can be only visualized on a computer. The right side of Figure 1 illustrates this approach. From the teacher point of view this is a very convenient way of delivering the classroom material: it can be done very quickly and requires very little technical knowledge about the web technologies. From the students point of view this will require some discipline like checking regularly the course web page for updates or for new material. It is a safe communication channel between the teacher and the students. However there are several disadvantages with this approach: Firstly the material available on the course webpage is available only for computers and cannot be visualized on mobile devices. Moreover the material is seldom interactive or exploits the multimedia technologies available. Secondly, the students enrolled in a course hardly know their colleagues or have course related interaction. Their interaction is limited to the breaks between the lecture hours or during the laboratory sessions. As for example the students enrolled in the TDDB84 Design Pattern course (for which the proposed platform was already experimentally tested) are coming from 5 different undergraduate program lines and two different international master education programs. More than 25% of the student are exchange foreign students. peter.bunus@liu.se Page 4

5 Linköping University [SOCIAL NETWORK CLASSROOM] To overcome some of these problems, we have propose and implemented an educational platform called esocialclassroom (see Figure 1 below) that combines Web 2.0 technology, social networking and mobile application for delivering educational material to the student in a new and innovative way. Figure 1. The esocialclassroom Technical Architecture. The esocialclassroom Platform was built on Web 2.0 and mobile technologies and experimentally deployed for a several semesters in a Computer Science class (Design Patterns) at Linköping University, Sweden. In addition to the normal course web page the following components have been used: itunes and YouTube for podcasting course related multimedia content to the students. Audio files and classroom related video content like recoded lecture sessions combined with slideshow presentations can be automatically podcasted to students. The classroom material podcasted by the teacher is automatically downloaded to the student s mobile device (IPhones, Ipods or mobile phones), so the students receive an up to date material. Many American universities have already a presence on Apple itunes from where they can distribute video and audio lectures to the students. Just as an example we can mention Stanford University Carnagie Mellon University or Massachusetts Institute of Technology that are providing podcasting services for the students. Recently several other online course contend distributions platform have appeared such as Udacity ( or Stanford s University Course online platform ( During this project we have also investigated the possibility of developing interactive mobile teaching applications for IPhone, ITouch and IPad devices. Use of social networks sites such as Facebook and Twitter for distribution of course announcements, course related link, interactive slide shows and quizzes. In this way students Peter Bunus Department of Computer and Information Science SE , Linköping, SWEDEN peter.bunus@liu.se Page 5

6 can have access to additional course material is a new and innovative way while they can also know each other better and interact during the course. A special Facebook group was created for the students enrolled in the Design Patterns course. 71% of all the students enrolled in the Design Pattern Class have also joined the Facebook group. The Facebook group enrolment was optional. Several pre- exam quizzes have been distributed to the students before the exam period. 3 Deployed Technical Platforms and Project Results During the execution of the project the following technical platforms have been experimentally deployed for several courses given by the at Linköping University: 1. Deployment of the esocialclassroom platform (similar to the one described in Figure 1) for the following courses: TDDB84 Design Patterns, TDDD29 IT Project Management, TDDD31 Software Engineering with International partners, TDDD04 Software Testing, TDDD05 Component- Based Software. Figure 2 below show the Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter integration into the traditional course webpage of the TDDB84 Design Patterns course. Figure 2. The TDDB84 Design Patterns course webpage illustrating the integration with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn peter.bunus@liu.se Page 6

7 2. Deployment of Facebook group pages for the TDDB84 Design Patterns, TDDD29 IT Project Management, TDDD31 Software Engineering with International partners, TDDD04 Software Testing, TDDD05 Component- Based Software courses. Figure 3. The TDDB84 Design Pattern Facebook group that currently has 402 members. Page 7

8 3. Deployment of experimental interactive quizzes for the TDDB84 Design Pattern Course. Figure 4 below show the Quiz module developed for the TDDB84 Design Pattern course that has been integrated into Facebook. Figure 4. Interactive Course Quiz for the TDDB84 course platform 4. Some of the preliminary results of this project has been submitted and accepted at the 1st International Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, Reforming Education and Quality of Teaching: Bunus Peter (2010). The Social Network Classroom. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, Reforming Education and Quality of Teaching (TECH- EDUCATION 2010) (Athens, Greece, May 2010). 5. We are also collaborating with several researchers and teachers on pedagogical issues regarding social networking benefits in teaching, collaboration that was made possible through the interaction provided by the esocialclassroom platform that was preliminary deployed for the TDDB84 Design Patterns course. 4 Observed Benefits of the Project During the project we have observed and documented the following benefits. 4.1 Educational Benefits The following scenario illustrates a typical usage of the proposed esocialclassroom platform. The scenario is based on the interviews performed on three students at the end of the course. The names peter.bunus@liu.se Page 8

9 [SOCIAL NETWORK CLASSROOM] Linköping University used in the following use case scenario are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons is purely coincidental. Anna Svenson, a student of University of Linköping, is enrolled in the computer science program in her last study year. Soon is time for Anna to choose a final master project. Anna lives in Norrkoping and every day she takes the campus buss to Linköping to attend her lectures. In our scenario we can see her waiting for the bus at the central Figure 5. Recording of a TDDB84 Design Course lecture running on an Apple itouch. station. She has arrived a little bit earlier to the station and while waiting for the buss she flips open her mobile phone and start writing an SMS message to her friend. After finishing sending the message she decides to check what her friends are doing on Facebook. She connects to Facebook using the mobile phone and she can immediately see that Angelica her classmate has posted some pictures from the last week party. A smile on her face immediately appears while looking at the pictures. There is also a friendship request from a former classmate David. David was an exchange student from Australia. Anna met him two years ago, but after 6 month spent at Linköping University David went back home. She did not hear from David since then. Anna accepts his invitation and immediately access David s profile. Now she can see that David become a graduate student at Carnegie Melon University in USA. This is great thinks Anna, because she would like to enroll as well for a graduate program at a university in USA after her graduation. Now I can ask David how this can be done, he surely went through this already and he might be able to help me. She quickly writes a message to David then she is navigating back to the Facebook home page to see what else happened with her friends. Then she notices that there are some new postings from the Facebook group of the TDDB84 Design Patterns course in which she is enrolled this term. The teacher just posted a small video from YouTube in which Alan Kay a famous computer scientist explains the functionality of an early computer graphics system developed at MIT in the late 60s. Anna remembers that her professor mentioned something about that computer system during the last lecture. She watches the four minutes short movie and indeed now she clearly sees the connection between the computer science notions that her teacher presented and the computer graphics system developed at MIT. She decides to check further the messages on Facebook but the bus has arrived. Now it is time for a quite boring 50 min trip to Linköping. She close the mobile phone, shows the ticket to the bus driver than she takes a sit in the bus. What a boring trip says Anna trying to figure out what do do during this trip that she need to make it every day. She searches her pockets and finds the ITouch in the internal pocket of the jacket. This trip it will not be so boring after all if I listen to some music thinks Anna and carefully removes the protective cover of the itouch. While searching for her favorite song she notices that the animated slideshows of the latest TDDB84 Design Patterns Lecture together with the sound recording of the lecture have been automatically downloaded to her ipod via the itunes podcasting service. Ohh, Great Anna says Now actually I Peter Bunus Department of Computer and Information Science SE , Linköping, SWEDEN peter.bunus@liu.se Page 9

10 can check what the professor said during the lecture about the MIT computer graphics system. She opens the video file and the she find the sequence where the professors explain the MIT systems. She listens to the explanations while watching the animated slide show. Now everything is much clear thinks Anna and she continue to watch the lecture movie for 5 more minutes. Then she remembers that she had some difficulties with the latest laboratory work for that course. She was simply not able to compile the latest program on her machine. She decides to check the course discussion forum on the course Facebook. Maybe some of her colleagues have already solved that problem. Anna opens again her mobile phone then and check the forum. Unfortunately nobody posted a solution to her problem. She decides to post a question to her problem on the form. She starts writing the question and after finishing she push the publish button. Maybe somebody will help me hopes Anna. She notices a flashing banner in the right corner Amy Eriksson took an object- oriented programming skills quiz. Her score is 85. Could you beat her score? I m sure that I can eat her score thinks Anna very confidently. The quiz was made by the teacher of the design pattern course and consists of 15 programming questions similar to those that will be given during the exam. Anna starts working on the quiz. It is actually harder than she thought at the beginning. She finishes the quiz after 15 min with the final score of 82. Well, she did not beat Amy but she can see that 42 other colleagues have taken the quiz and she has a score that it is in the top 10 of her class. It is not bad - she thinks. While she is contemplating the quiz statistics there are two incoming messages that informs her that two answers were posted to the discussion thread that she opened 15 min ago. Two classmates, Mark and Spencer have both posted a solution to Anna s compilation problem. Ohh it was so easy to solve it. How could I miss that compilation directive? The buss finally arrived at Campus Valla and Anna takes the shortest way to the C Building where her lecture that she intends to attend will start in 10 min. Plenty of time left to tweet a message to her friends: I feel :- ) today despite the rainy weather in Linköping. 4.2 Social Benefits The study performed by Ellison et al [1] indicates a clear association between the use of a social network site like Facebook and three types of social capital: bonding social capital, bridging social capital and maintained social capital, as defined by Putnam 2007 [9]. Social capital, in this context refers to the resources accumulated through the relationships among people. Bonding is the strongest form of social capital and it is usually manifested among individuals that are belonging to a homogenous category like family, very close friends or even criminal gangs. Bridging is usually manifested among individuals with the same goals or similar interests like a sport team, classmates or neighbors. The third form of social capital called maintained refers to relationships that are kept despite the fact that a significant change has happened in the social networks of the individuals. As an example, a social relationship with a former high school classmate that is located now in a different geographic location and has different interest compared to ours can be considered to be a maintained relations. A high social capital is generally considered to be closely related to positive outcomes for the society in general and a better psychological wellbeing of the individuals that is part of the high social capital group. For individuals and for the students in particular the accumulated social capital allows them to benefit from the social network wisdom in form of useful information, personal relationships that will directly affect their academic life with future extension to their professional life. Social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace are actually designed to exploit bridging and maintained social capital (people who kind of know but you wouldn t chat with). According to the peter.bunus@liu.se Page 10

11 Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter 1973 [2] weak ties are more likely than strong ties to provide new information and opportunities like a new job or new career path. The resources of the bonding social capital are probably very similar while the weak ties will provide a much larger diversity. All the three types of social capitals were visible in the developed relationships inside the Facebook group that we have created for the course. The accumulation of bonding and bridging social capital was very evident among the members. The students very quickly developed a course identity extending to personal social relationships despite the fact of the cultural diversity of the class members. The bridging capital was not only limited to the students enrolled in the course. Several other external members with interest in computer science have also joined the group together with other academic people interested in educational aspects of the social networks. An unexpected aspect was that we have also observed several instances of maintained relationships in which former students from previous years have joined the course social network site and interacted with students or the teacher. 4.3 Benefits for the Educators Much of the existing academic research on social networks and in particular on Facebook has focused on the social benefits aspects (Ellison et al [1], Valenzuela et al [10], Zywica and James 2008 [11]) including studies on differences among users and non- users of social networks (Hargittai 2008 [3]) or privacy, identity and security aspects (Lewis et al [7]). We are not aware of any detailed studies that address effects of the social networking sites in the relationship between professors and students or between students in classroom settings despite the fact that many faculty members have already a social network based classroom presence. This is an important aspect that we will need to study further as a continuation of this work. 4.4 Benefits for LIU We intend to repeat the experiment and the deployment of the esocialclassroom platform again during the fall term 2012 and fall term The student satisfaction and learning improvement will be systematically measured by conducting interviews with the students and systematic evaluation of the impact that the proposed framework has on the learning process. The didactical success of the system can be defined by the student satisfaction and the degree of how much the esocialclassroom boosts collaboration of students that would otherwise work on their own. Before extending the project at other courses we need however to answer several questions: Is there sufficient proof of educational value to consider the proposed platform as an alternative/complement and as a non- conventional way to classical information distribution (printed lecture notes and course web page)? What would be the effect of such an information distribution and how much will involve the students? Will it improve learning or it will distract the students from their usual course work? How teacher would embrace this new technology and way of teaching and how will impact our traditional way of preparing teaching materials? peter.bunus@liu.se Page 11

12 5 Pedagogical Motivation of the Project The goal of our pedagogical project was to provide good practices in online learning that would be realized through a combination of collaborative environments and interactive resources that engage the learner. As an evaluation methodology for the proposed esocialclassroom Framework we have used the Conversational Framework developed by Laurillard 1993 [5]. The teaching strategy advocated by the Conversational Framework model is based on the interaction between the teacher and the student and not solely on the actions required of the students as in the traditional way of teaching. The conversational Framework follows the theory of constructivist epistemology that postulates that the students constructs and interprets a reality from their own perceptions and prior experience. The learning environment in which the learning process is taking place is extremely important because the students will construct their own knowledge based on that. The task of the teacher is to provide a material and guide the learner in way that will encourage student to synthesize their own knowledge and encourage them to explore and search for new information. A major goal in a constructivism approach is to provide a learning environment as rich as possible and the social networking applications, mobile multimedia devices and latest web technologies have clear possibilities for producing such environment that will encourage student s exploration, as pointed out by Phillips 1998 [8]. According to Laurillard 1993 [5] the academic learning that follows the constructivism approach should be: Discursive between the teacher and the students at the level of descriptions Adaptive adaption of the environment by the teacher and by the actions of the students Interactive between the student and some aspects of the environment defined by the teacher Reflective- reflection of the student s performance by both teacher and students Laurillard argues that the only use of technology which can meet these aims is the "ʺmultimedia tutorial simulation"ʺ, characterized in terms of guided- discovery learning. The esocialclassroom platform proposed in this project aims to be a multimedia tutorial simulation for the courses for which it will be deployed. Figure 6 depicts the workflow between teachers and students during the learning process in a conversational framework. Figure 6. Laurillard 1993 [5] Conversational Framework. peter.bunus@liu.se Page 12

13 In the proposed project the esocialclassroom platform should take the place of the Teacher s Constructed Environment from Figure 6. The primary workflow actions that take place in interactive medium are as follows: 6. Teacher describes conceptions to the students. 7. Students redescribes the conceptions presented by the teacher. 8. Teacher redescribe conception in light of the students conception or action. 9. Student redescribes conception in light of the Teacher s redescription. 10. Teacher set up micro- world activities in light of student description or action. 11. The Teacher set up goals for the micro- world activities. 12. Students interact with the micro- world activities and the environment set up by the teacher. 13. The Teacher s constructed environment gives a feedback on the Student s actions. 14. Students modify actions in light of the feedback. 15. Students adapt their action in light of theory, goal and feedback 16. Students reflect on their own performance 17. Teacher reflects on student s action and modify conception or the constructed environment. During the project we have evaluated the following aspects in the context of the esocialclassroom framework according to the following table: Conversational Framework Aspect Learning aspect description according to Laurillard 1993 [5] Support and measurement provided by the esocialclassroom Platform Discursive Teachers and students conceptions should each be accessible to other. Teacher and student must agree learning goals for the topic and task goals. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogger will be deployed for continuous communication between students and teacher and among students. Teacher must provide an environment within which students can act on, generate and receive feedback on descriptions appropriate to the topic goals. Adaptive The teacher has the responsibility to use the relationship between their own and the student s conception to determine the focus of the continuing dialogue. Continuous adaptation of the teaching material in light of the students conception or action. Learners must to integrate feedback and link it to their own conceptions Interactive The students must act to achieve the task goals Creation of interactive quizzes, The teacher must provide meaningful intrinsic feedback on the actions that relate to the nature of the task goal. interactive multimedia teaching material for mobile deployment (IPhone, IPad, 3 rd generation mobile phone applications), Facebook educational games, etc. Reflective The teacher must support the process in which students link the feedback on their actions to the topic goal for every level of description within the topic structure. Learners should reflect with all stages of the learning process (initial concepts, tasks, The interactive applications developed in the framework of this project and integrated in the framework of the esocialclassroom will provide direct feedback on actions of the students. We peter.bunus@liu.se Page 13

14 objectives, feedback,...) envision that the proposed platform would help teachers to perform a continuous examination of the students during the course duration and provide them with continuous individualized feedback. The online esocialclassroom environment is ideally suited to constructivist educational models, which use technology to engage learners in: Knowledge construction rather than reproduction. Exploring media rich and complex environments. Conversation rather than reception. Collaboration rather than competition. Reflection rather than prescription. 6 Conclusions and Future work The proposed esocialclasroom platform was adapted very quickly by the students despite the fact that students expect social networks to be social and not necessarily educational. At the end of this experiment we could clearly see the potential of social networks as an educational tool for extending the traditional classroom education. We intend to repeat the experiment and the deployment of the esocialclasroom platform again during the fall term 2012 and The student satisfaction and learning improvement will be systematically measured by conducting interviews with the students and systematic evaluation of the impact that the proposed framework has on the learning process. The didactical success of the system can be defined by the student satisfaction and the degree of how much the esocialclasroom boosts collaboration of students that would otherwise work on their own. 7 References [1] Ellison Nicole B., Steinfield Charles, and Lampe Cliff. (2007) "The Benefits of Facebook "Friends:" Social Capital and College Students' Use of Online Social Network Sites." Journal of Computer- Mediated Communication, vol. 12: 4, pp , [2] Granovetter Mark S. (1973) "The Strength of Weak Ties." American Journal of Sociology, vol. 78: 6, pp. 1360, [3] Hargittai Eszter. (2008) "Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non- Users of Social Network Sites." Journal of Computer- Mediated Communication, vol. 13: 1, pp , [4] Jones Sydney and Susannah Fox, "Generations Online in 2009," PEW Internet & American Life Project, [5] Laurillard Diana. (1993). Rethinking University Teaching: A Framework for the Effective Use of Educational Technology. Routledge, [6] Lenhart Amanda, "Adults and social network websites," PEW Interned & American Life Project, [7] Lewis Kevin, Kaufman Jason, and Christakis Nicholas. (2008) "The Taste for Privacy: An Analysis of College Student Privacy Settings in an Online Social Network." Journal of Computer- Mediated Communication, vol. 14: 1, pp , [8] Phillips Rob, "Models of Learning Appropriate to Educational Applications of Information Technology," in Teaching and Learning Forum. University of Western Australia, [9] Putnam Robert D. (2007) "E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty- first Century The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture." Scandinavian Political Studies, vol. 30: 2, pp , peter.bunus@liu.se Page 14

15 [10] Valenzuela Sebastián, Park Namsu, and F. Kee Kerk. (2009) "Is There Social Capital in a Social Network Site?: Facebook Use and College Students' Life Satisfaction, Trust, and Participation¹." Journal of Computer- Mediated Communication, vol. 14: 4, pp , [11] Zywica Jolene and Danowski James. (2008) "The Faces of Facebookers: Investigating Social Enhancement and Social Compensation Hypotheses; Predicting Facebook and Offline Popularity from Sociability and Self- Esteem, and Mapping the Meanings of Popularity with Semantic Networks." Journal of Computer- Mediated Communication, vol. 14: 1, pp. 1-34, peter.bunus@liu.se Page 15