Exploring the Role of Social Software in Higher Education

2010 ◽  
pp. 1030-1044
Author(s):  
Yoni Ryan ◽  
Robert Fitzgerald
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Personal Networks ◽  
Social Software ◽  
Instructional Designers ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
The Social ◽  
Peer Engagement ◽  
Teaching In Higher Education ◽  
A Current

This chapter considers the potential of social software to support learning in higher education. It outlines a current project funded by the then Australian Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, now the Australian Learning and Teaching COuncil (ALTC) (http://www.altc. edu.au/carrick/go) to explore the role of social software in supporting peer engagement and group learning. The project has established a series of pilot projects that examine ways in which social software can provide students with opportunities to engage with their peers in a discourse that explores, interrogates and provides a supplementary social ground for their in-class learning. Finding creative ways of using technology to expand and enrich the social base of learning in higher education will become increasingly important to lecturers and instructional designers alike. This project represents one small step in testing the applicability of social software to these contexts. While many of our students are already using various technologies to maintain and develop their personal networks, it remains to be seen if these offer viable uses in more scholarly settings.

Exploring the Role of Social Software in Higher Education

2010 ◽  
pp. 159-173
Author(s):  
Yoni Ryan ◽  
Robert Fitzgerald
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Personal Networks ◽  
Social Software ◽  
Instructional Designers ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
The Social ◽  
Peer Engagement ◽  
Teaching In Higher Education ◽  
A Current

This chapter considers the potential of social software to support learning in higher education. It outlines a current project funded by the then Australian Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, now the Australian Learning and Teaching COuncil (ALTC) (http://www.altc.edu. au/carrick/go) to explore the role of social software in supporting peer engagement and group learning. The project has established a series of pilot projects that examine ways in which social software can provide students with opportunities to engage with their peers in a discourse that explores, interrogates and provides a supplementary social ground for their in-class learning. Finding creative ways of using technology to expand and enrich the social base of learning in higher education will become increasingly important to lecturers and instructional designers alike. This project represents one small step in testing the applicability of social software to these contexts. While many of our students are already using various technologies to maintain and develop their personal networks, it remains to be seen if these offer viable uses in more scholarly settings.

From the Editors

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-7
Author(s):  
Penny Welch ◽  
Susan Wright
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Higher Education ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Group Work ◽  
Course Design ◽  
Strong Continuity ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
International Policies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Teaching In Higher Education

We are delighted to introduce the first volume of Learning and Teaching: The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences. As founding and now-former editors of Learning and Teaching in the Social Sciences (LATISS), our new journal reflects a strong continuity in the editorial aims that inspired ourfirst journal. We remain committed to using social science perspectives to analyse learning and teaching in higher education. In particular we invite contributors and readers to reflect critically on how students’ and academics’ practices are shaped by, or themselves influence, wider changes in university strategies and national and international policies for higher education. Viewing changes in course design and curriculum, in students’ writing, in group work, seminars or tutorials as taking place within a network (or lattice) of institutional, political and policy contexts is the focusof this journal.

Social Network Informed Design for Learning with Educational Technology

2011 ◽  
pp. 352-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Haythornthwaite ◽  
Maarten De Laat
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Learning Networks ◽  
Research Directions ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
The Social ◽  
Design For Learning ◽  
Teaching In Higher Education

This chapter discusses and illustrates how knowledge of social networks can be used to inform social and technical design for learning and teaching in higher education. The chapter introduces the social network perspective and how this can be used to explore learning. It shows how a relational approach can be used to explore the basis of learning ties, uncover social roles and positions, and form a basis for a network’s social capital. This is followed by a discussion of current research directions illustrating how this approach can be applied in education. This research indicates how knowledge of informal learning networks can facilitate informed design for learning, teaching, and professional development.

scholarly journals The Role of the Hidden Curriculum: Institutional Messages of Inclusivity

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Killick
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Learning Communities ◽  
Hidden Curriculum ◽  
Curricular Change ◽  
Formal Curriculum ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Alignment Process ◽  
Teaching In Higher Education ◽  
Significant Attention

Significant attention is rightly given in literature concerning institutional curricular change to the design and delivery of the formal curriculum. Particularly influential in this area has been Biggs’ work on constructive alignment (Biggs, 1999, and subsequent editions) and the learning taxonomies which higher education has sought to utilise in the alignment process (Biggs & Collins, 1982; Bloom, 1956). However, the role of the hidden curriculum (Giroux & Purpel, 1983), much discussed in the context of school education for many years, has barely featured in the discourse around learning and teaching in higher education. In this reflective analysis, I consider the question, ‘To what extent do the learning communities we create and the hidden curriculum which frames them foster or fight the development of capabilities needed by our global students?’ and propose the hidden curriculum to be an area we can no longer neglect.

scholarly journals The ecosystem of e-learning model for higher education

2019 ◽  
Vol 115 (5/6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentino van de Heyde ◽  
André Siebrits
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Physics Education ◽  
Developmental Process ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Full Account ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
E Learning ◽  
The University ◽  
Teaching In Higher Education

We present the ecosystem of e-learning (EeL) model, which can be applied to any higher education context, and which takes full account of all inhabitants and their interrelationships, not only the components, of the e-learning food chain. Specifically, this model was applied to our context within the University of the Western Cape, highlighting the role of the academic developer within the model. A key argument advanced in this paper is that academic developers should work to reduce complexities associated with emerging e-tools. The EeL model is used to emphasise the role of academic developers as mediators between components and relationships. Significance: By the application of the EeL model, it is demonstrated that the use of e-tools and their alignment with pedagogies within any context must be sensitive to the entire ecosystem, with the recognition that this is simultaneously a top-down and a bottom-up process. The student must be the core focus in the adoption of emerging technologies and the learning process, but simultaneously the student can only be in focus when they are placed within their broader ecosystem – including the societal level. Our findings add to the debate on physics education specifically, and more broadly by providing new ways of conceptualising an e-learning ecosystem. It is advocated that an academic developer-mediator should step in to mediate between academics, tutors and emerging e-tools, through a structured developmental process for learning and teaching. The EeL model can afford an insight into the processes involved when incorporating a learning management system (and emerging e-tools) into learning and teaching in higher education institutions.

scholarly journals Editorial

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. v-vi
Author(s):  
Penny Welch ◽  
Susan Wright
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Higher Education ◽  
Information Literacy ◽  
Home Country ◽  
The United States ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Social

In this issue of Learning and Teaching: The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences, academics from Denmark, Chile, the United States and the United Kingdom analyse capacity-building projects between European and African universities, the experiences of mobile academics returning to their home country, the role of tutors on international interdisciplinary MA programmes, the contemporary relevance of classical and medieval approaches to education and levels of information literacy among undergraduates.

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