Encouraging Online Engagement with Social Software
In a previous post (OUseful Info: Online Student Engagement) I blogged a conversation about some of the issues related to getting students to engage with online activities.
What follows in this post, and the two blog posts that will come directly after it, is a first attempt at thinking through how how we might use wikis and social bookmarking in an online, distance education course in a way that encourages students to engage online.
To set the scene, then, what's the motivation for using social software?
I'll keep this introductory post deliberately brief on the outside chance that is sparks some amount of confernce or Trackbacked discussion.
So what are some of the possible reasons for using these technologies in a distance education setting?
- Online engagement: One significant aim here is to find ways of increasing levels of online social engagement between students. In addition, we need to find ways of encouraging students to develop their information and research skills, for example by helping them develop search skills via our online library facilities.
- Knowledge sharing skills development: Develop knowledge sharing skills and an awareness of knowledge sharing tools. Social software is not yet a proven technology for promoting knowledge sharing and co-working, but it has greqat potential as the much lauded Wikipedia wiki, and del.icio.us social bookmarking sites show.
- Course maintenance: Identify mechanisms for allowing long-lived course materials to maintain currency in fast moving subject areas. Maintaining a course year on year can present a significant overhead, so one possible aim here is to find mechanisms whereby course team academics can easily feed contemporary information sources into a course over a period of years.
- Co-creation of content: Identify mechanisms for capturing student created materials, particularly in developing case studies and software programming examples. This approach may also have a role to play in keeping course content frexh over time, or seeding/drafting new content for course revisions.
To promote discussion (hopefully) I'll blog a few preliminary thoughts about the use of wikis and social bookmarking in a separate post for each (to get them, you should be able to use the Trackback link at the end of this post).
Posted by ajh59 at September 16, 2005 08:32 PM