Social Media for Social Learning

Social Media for Social Learning A Horizon Scan prepared for the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD)

Prof Ilana Snyder Dr Michael Henderson Dr Denise Beale Faculty of Education, Monash University February 2012

Table of Contents Executive Summary .................................................................................................. 3 Key findings......................................................................................................... 3 Recommendations for further research ............................................................... 6 Outline of the report ............................................................................................ 7 Introduction................................................................................................................ 8 (a)

The literature search ................................................................................... 8

(b)

Definition of social media .......................................................................... 10

(c)

Risk aversion ............................................................................................ 10

Understanding young people’s use of social media: Difference and diversity . 12 Teaching and learning with social media .............................................................. 15 Teachers, social media and pedagogy .................................................................. 17 (a)

New opportunities through social media ................................................... 17

(b)

The importance of preparation .................................................................. 21

(c)

Appropriate and purposeful tasks ............................................................. 25

Social media use and the impact on professional practice ................................. 30 (a)

Changing practices ................................................................................... 30

(b)

Professional learning ................................................................................ 34

Social learning ......................................................................................................... 38 Findings and recommendations for future research ............................................ 43 (a)

Findings .................................................................................................... 43

(b)

Recommendations for further research .................................................... 46

References ............................................................................................................... 47 Appendix A - Selected works: Annotated bibliography ....................................... 53 Appendix B- Search details .................................................................................... 68


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Executive Summary Widespread access to information and communication technologies (ICT) in educational settings and homes and the development of interactive media offer new possibilities for communication and collaboration with others to enhance learning. Children and young people’s growing use of social media in their everyday lives has provided impetus for serious consideration of their potential in education for three main reasons: (1) to take advantage of the new possibilities to communicate, create and engage (2) to recognise young people’s existing familiarity with social media as a resource on which new educational practices can be built and (3) to enhance their ability to use these media safely and in ways which contribute to their learning and well-being. A critical review of the literature is at the heart of this report. The focus of the Horizon Scan is on studies which investigate the ways in which social media are used collaboratively in schools. As the use of social media is a relatively new phenomenon, the report examines empirical research published since 2005 that explores how teachers and students are using social media in schools with the aim of developing recommendations to inform practice and suggesting avenues for further research. Social media are defined in this report as ‘a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content’ (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Social media include social networking services, blogs, wikis, forums, video and audio sharing. Virtual worlds and games are not covered by this definition although it is recognised that a number of these applications, such as massive multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG), are increasingly adopting characteristics of social media. The diversity and complexity of these emergent and new forms of social media, including mobile phone and personal device applications (e.g. iPad) need further research. The findings of the review demonstrate that teachers and students use social media extensively in their everyday lives and are beginning to use them in classrooms in a variety of ways. But while teachers and students are experimenting with educational uses of various interactive applications, so far their use for collaborative purposes for social learning is limited. The findings suggest that current classroom practices are best characterised as emerging. However, clear indications are evident in the literature as to which factors either enhance or inhibit the meaningful use of social media in classrooms. The key findings of this report and recommendations for further research are summarised here. The full set of findings can be found at the conclusion of the report.

Key findings 1. Despite their widespread use of social networking, it cannot be assumed that students are effective and sophisticated users of social media. Students’ use of digital technologies is characterised by difference and diversity. Explicit teaching in schools of how to use the appropriate interactive application for a particular activity is necessary.


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2. The majority of students’ use of social media is at home. Those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to be sophisticated users, which means that schools need to provide appropriate technologies and support to enable all students to gain skills in inclusive ways. 3. Students’ use of interactive media in their everyday lives has shaped their orientations to them so that they view social media as primarily affording communication and a means to coordinate their activities with each other. They do not consider these media forms relevant to education. Thus their use in education requires different pedagogical practices incorporating purposeful activities which are valued within the school setting and which acknowledge, but do not diminish, the students’ existing practices. 4. The studies revealed that social media were utilised most effectively for learning purposes when: (a) the pedagogical design had clearly articulated goals with social media used to extend learning through offering new opportunities (b) careful preparation was made for students’ collaborative use of social media (c) social media were used for tasks which were appropriate and purposeful. 5. Conversely, the studies also revealed that the use of social media was less productive for learning when: (a) there was insufficient scaffolding for a particular task (b) social media were employed in tasks or environments where collaboration was already high and they were therefore considered unnecessary (c) social media were employed to complete an existing task which had been planned for, and was better suited to, another type of approach. 6. Social media for collaborative learning is most likely to be effective when integrated into a pedagogical design that has clear goals and for which the media afford new opportunities. Uses which take advantage of these affordances provide: (a) contact with outside experts (b) an audience beyond the teacher (c) meaningful contact between students working on the same activity out of school (d) ways for students to view and build on the work of others in their group or class (e) purposeful interaction between students in different schools, levels or classes across time frames and distance (f) facility for timely feedback from teachers and peers (g) a means to enhance the participation of all students. 7. Collaborative work is more likely to succeed when preceded by careful preparation. Within schools, where it is the norm for individual work to be produced for assessment, students may not know how to collaborate for learning purposes. Effective preparation includes: (a) an explanation of the purpose of collaboration and how it benefits all students (b) explicit processes developed to work together collaboratively (c) collaboration through small group work to build trust (d) teachers allowing students to make more decisions about their learning (e) teachers monitoring interaction to ensure that collaboration is inclusive and that behaviours within interaction are appropriate and not hurtful or damaging (f) teachers encouraging all students to participate. 8. Students need careful preparation and familiarisation with the interactive media chosen for an activity. They need explicit teaching of the technical and social skills required for the application and for the learning activity. Teachers need to


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demonstrate commitment to the activity and to participate in the interaction. As well as moderating the use of the media, teachers’ interactions legitimise the practice as educational, value the interaction and shape it purposefully. Students gain confidence and skills through experiential learning with the medium. 9. Most students are hesitant to interact through social media with students or others whom they have not met before. They can feel exposed to risk through sharing work with young people they don’t know and haven’t met face to face. All students share some initial resistance to modifying others’ work. Time needs to be allowed for socialising in online interactions. Social chat is a means to build trusting relationships with others who are recognised as having the potential to deceive or abuse them. 10. The tasks for which social media are used need to be appropriate and purposeful. Tasks which facilitate effective use of social media for students offer: (a) clear links with the curriculum and explicit guidelines about assessment (b) an authentic learning experience (c) greater potential for collaboration (d) the preservation of students’ original work as this reduces their level of task anxiety and they will be more likely to comment on or modify another’s work (e) the opportunity to track their changes and to consider their progress (f) the opportunity for teachers to stimulate new lines of inquiry and provide feedback and encouragement (g) extended time for an activity which can be developed in stages and extend over a number of sessions. 11. Social media implementation benefits from the shift to a more student-centred model which enables students to make more decisions about their learning. Collaborative small-group work with social media provides a means for teachers to give feedback more quickly to groups rather than to each individual. The nature of the feedback should be to stimulate the students to think more deeply and to engage with each other meaningfully – it should not simply be a summative comment on progress. 12. Teachers’ beliefs about the greater workload required to incorporate social media into their practice can inhibit willingness to adopt them for use. Indeed, the use of social media does involve greater workload in the early stages, particularly when teachers require new skills in specific applications and when the use of interactive media means that they may need to interact with students or their colleagues out of school. Encouraging teachers in the use of social media needs to be more than just technical training. Critical discussion also needs to occur regarding the affordances of the media and their relationship to learning goals and learning needs, as well as the implications of their use such as the need for developing strategies to reduce workload. 13. This new openness also brings with it consideration of risks to perceived competence, reputation and employment. Teachers need to be more fully aware of risks when using interactive media, including those to their sense of identity and professionalism, and the obligation to maintain the highest standards. Scenarios which explore the risks and model appropriate conduct would be a salutary addition to the DEECD’s Social Media Guide. 14. Teachers vary considerably in their skills and confidence with interactive media for educational uses. They often encounter technical difficulties working with new technologies and applications which can cause them to disengage. This review has revealed that an effective strategy to encourage teacher learning with new


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applications is to involve teams of teachers working together, or collaborations between teachers and researchers, with appropriate support from technical staff. In addition, teachers need time to plan and share experiences with their colleagues. This can be achieved through working in teams and participating in funded professional development, accompanied by time release. 15. New skills are gained by teachers through using new media applications for contentbased, facilitated interaction in their school environment, working together with other teachers whom they know and trust. The involvement of the principal in developing a shared vision of social media for social learning and participating as a peer in interaction is vital. 16. Teachers’ commitment to the implementation of new media in their classrooms will be enhanced by state-based frameworks which encourage such use. Professional development as a requirement for accreditation and which is delivered through social media encourages teachers to use these media in ways which are purposeful.

Recommendations for further research The report has revealed a limited research base, particularly in Australia, and especially in terms of detailed empirical studies that reveal both the social complexity and pragmatic instrumentalism afforded by social media in the lives of students and for the purposes of learning. The majority of studies investigating the use of social media in classrooms are small-scale and focused on first uses of social media by teachers or researchers in one or small numbers of classrooms. The few large-scale or longitudinal research studies suggest changes in teachers’ and students’ attitudes and practices over time as they collaborate with social media, but generally do not reveal significant understanding of how the media can be implemented in other contexts or how they might influence learning outcomes. A critical issue repeatedly highlighted in the literature review is that what works in one school will not necessarily work in others. Consequently, there is a need for future research to clarify the contextual issues of use, particularly in-depth research which explores students’ learning (not just attitudinal change) in and out of classrooms with social media. A large-scale empirical study is recommended in which students and teachers from a diverse range of schools engage in a series of purposeful applications of social media informed by the principles outlined in this report. The study research design needs to collect data of student progression over time along with finely grained data of how affordances of social media (which transcend specific social media applications) are used, shape and are shaped by students in and out of school. The outcome of the research would in the first instance be the development of exemplar stories (preferably multimedia) that could be used by schools, teachers and professional learning coordinators. A longer term outcome would be the development of models (not just strategies) demonstrating how social media affordances can be identified and aligned with pedagogical designs, content and learning outcomes. As the role of social media in shaping learning outcomes is unlikely to be direct, it is important to undertake a comprehensive study that takes account of key contextual factors that influence the impact of social media. A small-scale single-intervention study could not build a sufficiently robust understanding of the


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complex ways in which social media interact with the social milieu of students’ and teachers’ lives, the educational enterprise and ultimately ways of knowing and doing.

Outline of the report The Horizon Scan is organised in seven sections: 1. Introduction. A brief outline of the process of the literature search, a definition of social media and a discussion of social media and risk aversion. 2. Understanding social media use amongst young people: difference and diversity. A summary of research findings which have explored children and young people’s skills and experiences with digital technologies broadly and social media specifically. 3. Teaching and learning with social media. The potential benefits of social media for education. 4. Teachers, social media and pedagogy. Detailed expositions of studies focused on teachers using social media in their classrooms. 5. Social media use and the impact on professional practice. The changes for teachers that occur when social media are used and the potential for professional learning. 6. Social learning. The extent to which social media are being used for social learning. 7. Findings and recommendations for further research. An extended set of findings and recommendations to those included in the Executive Summary.


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Introduction Social media offer new possibilities to communicate and collaborate with others to enhance learning. These possibilities have been enhanced by widespread access to ICT in educational settings and homes. Children and young people’s growing use of social media in their everyday lives has provided impetus for serious consideration of their potential in education for three principal reasons: (1) to take advantage of the new possibilities to communicate, create and participate (2) as a resource upon which new educational practices can be built and (3) to enhance teachers’ ability to use these media safely and in ways which contribute to students’ learning and well-being. Following extensive investigation, initial concerns about the safety risks to children and young people using social media have been addressed by governments and educational institutions around the world. Substantive inquiries have examined young people’s use of digital technologies from a range of perspectives. They have also documented their increased use of social media and explored the nature and extent of risk posed to them. As a result, a number of initiatives, both technical and educative, to develop and enhance cybersafety have been introduced in jurisdictions internationally (e.g. ACMA, 2008, 2010; Byron, 2008, 2010). The potential of social media to increase connectivity, interactivity and collaboration to benefit learning was recognised early (e.g. Desilets & Paquet, 2005; Knobel & Lankshear, 2006; Richardson, 2006) and a number of reviews explored the educational applications of social media (e.g. Bryant, 2007; DEECD, 2010; Luckin, Logan, Clark, Graber, Oliver & Mee, 2008; Owen, Grant, Sayers & Facer, 2006). However, empirical research investigating the actual use of social media for teaching and learning purposes in educational settings, especially in schools, has been relatively sparse. Greenhow, Robelia and Hughes (2009) suggest that in research investigating the use of social media in education ‘the first set of questions might focus on what learners do with Web 2.0 technologies’ (p. 250). The questions that guide this review are informed by their suggestion. Our questions include: How do we understand children and young people’s technology use, particularly social media? What does teaching and learning with social media look like? How are teachers using social media and how does the use of social media change pedagogy? How does the use of social media impact on professional practice? To what extent can we talk about ‘social learning’?

(a)

The literature search

In this Horizon Scan, we sought to identify those studies which investigated the use of social media for social learning and the factors which worked to limit or enhance it. It does not include examples of studies where social media are used essentially as one-way publication sites because they do not leverage the affordance of social interaction inherent in social media. Such usage may be highly valuable (e.g. the use of a blogging tool to create a portfolio of learning for self-reflection and assessment), however, as we sought to understand the particular opportunities and implications arising from the social interactivity afforded by social media, for the purposes of this report they are not included.


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Four categories of literature that cover the school and higher education sectors have been reviewed. They include: 1. Research studies in journals that focus on teachers and classrooms 2. Conference proceedings (national and international including ACEC, ASCILITE, SITE, EdMedia, etc.) 3. Reports on empirical research or horizon scans (e.g. Educause, The New Media Consortium) 4. Books and book chapters (recognising that they are likely to be less up-to-date than journals and conference proceedings). The main focus of the Horizon Scan is research published in journals, conference proceedings and reports on empirical research. Books and book chapters, while important, are referred to but not extensively as they do not showcase the latest research available. The literature reviewed does not include professional journals. Although we recognise these as valuable sources of information, often showcasing exemplars of good practice, they are readily accessible to educators. The purpose of the Horizon Scan is to identify research with which teachers may not be familiar because it is not easily accessible. However, to indicate the ways in which educators are incorporating social media into their teaching and learning, two examples of professional practice are provided. To conduct the search, a number of electronic databases were surveyed, followed by the use of a ‘snowball’ method to locate further studies from bibliographies (see Appendix B for a more detailed description of the search method). As our focus is on social media, we restricted the search to social media (as defined in the next section) and their application in education. To select the studies, we initially employed a simple schema based on the social structure of interactivity and included those which report on teacher-teacher/collegial interactions, teacher-student interactions, student-student interactions and interactions between students/classes and individuals or groups outside their classrooms. As there are large bodies of literature on social media, this schema allowed us to limit our scan to the studies which focus on educational interaction. (Appendix A contains summaries of some of the key articles selected.) Within each of the categories, we gave attention to the nature of social interactivity, in particular, the extent to which the media facilitated communication, cooperation and collaboration. These categories not only reflect the focal point of this report (social media for social learning) but also facilitate cross-pollination of ideas across curricular domains, year levels and sectors. The scan is focused on the schooling sector, with selected exemplars of practice from the higher education sector. The Horizon Scan begins with a definition of social media and a brief discussion of risk aversion. It then considers children and young people’s use of social media in their everyday lives to understand the learning resources they bring to the use of these media in education.


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Next, the potential benefits of social media for education are explored. This is followed by detailed expositions of studies which have focused on teachers using social media in their classrooms. The impact of social media use on professional practice is then considered, as well as the ways in which professional learning can support teachers. A discussion of the extent to which social media are being used for social learning follows. The report concludes with findings and recommendations for further research.

(b)

Definition of social media

There is no universally agreed definition of social media. This problem is exacerbated by the considerable variation in the way other terms have been used synonymously with social media, especially in the educational field. Terms employed include Web 2.0 (Greenhow et al., 2009), social networking (Livingstone & Brake, 2010), social software (Owen et al., 2006; Minocha, 2009) or simply the internet. The changing landscape of terminology is consistent with rapid technological developments and evolving conventions and uses (Burnett & Merchant, 2011). While Web 2.0 is the most frequently used term in relation to social media, it has been applied so widely that its initial meaning has been lost. Web 2.0 is often mistakenly used by teachers and academics to refer to any interactive website. In recognition of this confusion in the literature, this report uses the term ‘social media’ because it emphasises social interaction. Social media have been defined as ‘a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content’ (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p. 61). These interactive applications encompass, amongst others, social networking services, blogs, wikis, video and audio sharing, tagging and social bookmarking (Anderson, 2007). They connect people for ‘collaboration, contribution and community’ (Anderson, 2007, p. 14). Our definition of social media excludes virtual worlds, interactive games, and device-dependent applications (mobile and personal devices like the iPad) as they are so diverse and complex that they would require a separate report.

(c)

Risk aversion

The use of social media, particularly social networking and its rapid adoption by young people, has caused considerable public concern since the introduction of Facebook in 2005 (boyd & Ellison, 2008). There are a number of risks associated with the use of social media. Some children and young people have become victims of unwanted attention (such as cyberbullying) and criminal activity (such as sexual grooming). Other risks include exposure to unwanted material such as violent or pornographic content. More recent attention has focused on legal risks to young people in social networking sites, including breaches of privacy, failure to comply with copyright legislation and the potential for defamatory publication (de Zwart, Lindsay, Henderson & Phillips, 2011).


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Considerable research into the use of social media sites by young people has been conducted (e.g. De Souza & Dick, 2008; Hinduja & Patchin, 2008; Livingstone & Brake, 2010) and the contours of the risks to children and young people mapped in some detail. Contrary to public belief, the vast majority of children and young people use social media for contact and communication with their family and friends rather than strangers (ACMA 2009a, b; ISTTF, 2008a, b). Recognising the potential for harm, governments have taken actions which aim to protect children and young people within these spaces, particularly in education. In Victoria, a safe environment has been established with the DEECD’s Ultranet, an interactive learning platform which gives students access to collaborative applications such as wikis, blogs and discussion forums for communication with each other and with teachers. Cybersafety programs have been implemented to enhance students’ safety, their awareness of risk and the appropriate behaviour when they interact with others via social media (ACMA, 2008, 2010; Australian Government, 2011). The DEECD’s new Social Media Guide provides a framework to inform teachers in their engagement with social media and to minimise risk. This report acknowledges that there are risks to teachers and students in these spaces but as these are addressed in other publications, they are not considered in any further detail here. Instead, as the focus shifts towards curriculum and pedagogy, with teachers and students able to interact in monitored digital environments, it should also be recognised that social media have many positive aspects and that the majority of students engage with and enjoy a wide variety of such media as do teachers. However, this use is not uniform and studies reveal significant diversity in how children and young people use these media in their everyday lives. The next section explores the dimensions of technology use amongst children and young people and their implications for education.


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Understanding young people’s use of social media: Difference and diversity Marc Prensky’s (2001) influential framing of young people as ‘digital natives’ and older generations as ‘digital immigrants’ was designed to depict young people metaphorically as ‘“native speakers” of the digital language of computers, videogames and the Internet’ (p. 1), thus requiring new forms of education. By casting teachers as ‘digital immigrants’ with an ‘accent’ (p. 3), he promoted the idea that the young have an instinctive facility with digital technologies that their elders could never claim, a facility as central to their lives as language. Prensky’s characterisation has been accepted widely, becoming part of the vernacular and used to argue that schools must change to accommodate new learning styles (Topsfield, 2010). Behind it lies the assumption that all young people have high levels of skill with digital technologies and that only teachers’ reluctance to change is hindering progress. Recent studies have sought to examine the nature of students’ use of digital technologies and their facility Policy regarding social with them. As social media depend on the ability to media use in educational use an increasingly diversified range of technologies, settings should not assume these studies are important indicators of the degree to that all students are familiar which students and teachers are able to leverage the technologies’ affordances. Their findings provide a with a range of different more complex picture of classrooms and students’ and media, that they use them teachers’ skills with digital technologies which forms a all equally or that they are backdrop to our consideration of the use of social proficient users. media in education. Students’ use of technologies, at Can the box be reduced? all levels of education, is not uniform and is characterised by diversity and difference. Policy regarding social media use in educational settings should not assume that all students are familiar with a range of different media, that they use them all equally or that they are proficient users. Research has explored the degree to which young people and children have access to and use technologies in their everyday lives, with a more recent focus on social media. For example, in the US in 2007, a nationally representative survey of teenagers aged between 12 and 17 reported that 93 per cent used the internet, 55 per cent of whom had a profile on a social media site (Lenhart, Madden, Macgill & Smith, 2007). In a similar survey conducted in 2008, social media were used by 73 per cent of teenagers (Lenhart, Purcell, Smith & Zickuhr, 2010). Social media have taken on more importance globally, becoming increasingly popular with children Many students use social and young people. In 2009, the Australian networking sites to varying Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) (2009b) reported that social media were used by 90 degrees, but they are less per cent of Australian young people between 12 and familiar with other forms of 17 and by 51 per cent of those between eight and 11. social media, in particular, Of those over 16, 97 per cent use one or more social blogs, microblogs and media sites. In 2011, 65 per cent of Australian wikis. internet-using young people between the ages of 9 and 16 were reported to have a profile on a social media site (Green, Brady, Olafsson, Hartley & Lumby, 2011) and social media had been used by 94.9 per cent of students in Years 7 to 10 (de Zwart et al., 2011). Similar findings


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have been reported in the US, the UK and Europe. While many students use social networking sites to varying degrees, they are less familiar with other forms of social media, in particular, blogs, microblogs and wikis. The focus on the frequency of use and who uses digital technologies and social media has obscured important dimensions about how they are being used (Livingstone & Haddon, 2009). This works to entrench the image of young people as the ‘digital natives’ of Prensky’s (2001) formulation. However, there are examples of studies that have built on the survey reports and attempted to map the nature of technology use, with some looking specifically at social media. Those exploring young people’s use of technologies in their everyday lives as well as in educational settings draw a more nuanced picture, contesting the concept of the ‘digital native’ (Barron, Walter, Martin & Schatz, 2010; Calvani, Fini, Ranieri & Picci, 2012; Eynon & Malmberg, 2011; Ito, Horst, Bittant, boyd, Herr-Stephenson, Lange, Pascoe, & Robinson, 2008; Sweeney & Geer, 2010; van den Beemt, Akkerman & Simons, 2010, 2011). They demonstrate that children and young people’s use of digital technologies more broadly is diverse and differentiated across a range of countries. Their use of interactive technologies varies, with skill levels ranging from basic to highly sophisticated, although the majority fall somewhere in between. Access to computers in the home is related to more frequent and sophisticated use (Barron et al., 2010; Calvani et al., 2012). The association between learning from parents and peers in relation to interactive technologies is also strong (Barron et al. 2010; van den Beemt et al., 2010). There are clear links with socio-economic status, with those from higher socio-economic status more often highly skilled users (Barron et al. 2010; Eynon & Malmberg, 2011; Sweeney & Geer, 2010). The concept of the ‘digital native’ has also been contested in educational settings. Some studies have focused specifically on Web 2.0 technologies and the ways in which they are used and could be used by secondary school students in the UK (e.g. Clark, Logan, Luckin, Mee & Oliver, 2009; Luckin, Clark, Graber, Logan, Mee & Oliver, 2009). Seventy-four per cent of students reported using social media, most commonly to upload photos and to keep in touch with friends. Instant Messaging (IM) was used by 55 per cent of students to contact each other, while email was used by students to contact teachers. Students used Google and Wikipedia for searching. Few students wrote blogs, although some read them. Games were very popular with some students, although disliked by others. Few students used online forums or discussion boards. Luckin et al. (2009) noted that the majority Contrary to some depictions of students were engaged in ‘consuming’ rather of students’ use of social than ‘producing and publishing’(p. 94) , a finding media, the majority consistent with those reported in other studies of ‘consume’ rather than students’ use of interactive technologies (e.g. ‘produce and publish’. Barron et al., 2010; van den Beemt et al., 2010). Students did not consider Web 2.0 tools useful for learning. The overwhelming majority had access to a computer and the internet at home, although in schools, policy often restricted some sites. Students’ use of technology was largely uncritical but researchers point to examples showing that where students’ learning with both the tools and the tasks was scaffolded by teachers, the result was enhanced critical engagement. These researchers suggest different pedagogical practices which enable teachers to integrate and model different technologies and their purposes. Investigations into the use of interactive digital technologies with students in higher education reveal similarly differentiated levels of skill and use (e.g. Andrews, Tynan & James, 2011; Corrin, Lockyer & Bennett, 2010; Kennedy, Dalgarno,


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Bennett, Judd, Gray & Chang, 2008; Margaryan, Littlejohn & Vojt, 2011; Riddle, 2008; Riddle & Howell, 2008). In Australia, there have been few studies which have examined the extent and nature of the use of digital technologies, particularly social media, in schools. Moyle and Owen (2009) draw on online surveys and focus groups to consider students’ and early career teachers’ views on learning with technologies generally in schools and on data from PISA to consider their use in education (Moyle & Owen, 2008). They note the importance of computers at home for students and the high levels of access in homes, with the majority of students accessing the internet from home. In a study of Year 9 students in an Australian regional secondary school, Chan and McLoughlin (2008) found that more than 90 per cent had access to the internet at home. Their use of particular applications showed a marked gender bias, with males more familiar with games than females and females using social networking more than males, but the study considered only familiarity and frequency of use, rather than sophistication. Singh, Mallan and Giardina (2008) examined students’ use of Google and Wikipedia for school-related purposes in four Queensland secondary schools, noting that all of the students used computers both at home and at school and more than half used the internet five or more times weekly. Not all thought of themselves as technologically fluent although the internet, particularly Google, was an important first source of information for them, corroborated by There is a significant gap in other more authoritative sources, such as books in rich and deep Australian school libraries. Bulfin and North (2007) considered research which investigates the wider spaces of young people’s digital the nature of students’ use technology use as social media were only just beginning to become apparent, reporting an example of social media. of instant messaging. Other Australian reports of student and teacher use of social media in educational settings have come from practising teachers in professional publications. There is a significant gap in finely grained Australian research which investigates the nature of students’ use of social media in their lives, particularly larger-scale studies, despite considerable discussion of the benefits of social media for learning. The possibilities for teaching and learning with social media are considered in the following section.


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Teaching and learning with social media Young people’s everyday use of social media creates inherent ‘tensions’ in adopting these media for There is an inherent tension learning purposes when they are employed largely when we adapt students' for leisure, communication and informal informationuse of social media in their gathering (Crook, Fisher, Graber, Harrison, Lewin, everyday lives for Logan, Luckin, Oliver & Sharples, 2008, p. 33). Some educational purposes. of the tensions are related to risks to safety and to privacy, as referred to earlier. Others reflect the often chaotic and rapidly evolving network of practices involved with the creation, recreation and circulation of digital material. However, social media offer considerable affordances for education which are illustrated in a number of the studies reviewed. For instance, connections can be made between different physical locations and outside specified class times with teachers (Chandra & Watters, 2010; DeGennaro, 2008), with groups outside the class such as other students at different levels of education (Gomez, Schieble, Curwood & Hassett, 2010; Maher 2009, 2010), with external experts (Hastie, Casey & Tarter, 2010) and with the wider community (Valk, Atticks, Binning, Manekin, Schiff, Shibata & Townes, 2011). Equally, they can be employed within the classroom in ways which enhance the ability of students to collaborate on group tasks (Liu, Liu, Chen, Lin & Chen, 2011; Pifarre & Fisher, 2011), as well as to draw on the knowledge and skills of others to enhance their own (Zhang, Scardamalia, Lamon, Messina & Reeve, 2007). Students can connect with others to provide feedback and support, and share their work with an audience beyond their teacher (Duncan-Howell & Lloyd, 2008; Hastie et al., 2010). For some students, who may be reticent about participating in classroom activities such as sports in physical education, social media offer alternate spaces in which to share or display expertise as a designer of a game, for instance (Hastie et al., 2010), or to have that expertise recognised by their teacher in an authentic learning context (DeGennaro, 2008). These same affordances enable teachers to monitor students’ progress more closely as well as to provide guidance and feedback (Hastie et al., 2010). They can also take advantage of learning opportunities as they arise by stimulating students to extend and elaborate their thinking (Zhang et al, 2007; Zywica, Richards & Gomez, 2011). Beyond these studies, a number of books have considered the possibilities of social media for education, recognising the affordances of social media and the opportunities they offer as well as the challenges they present. Two prominent uses considered for social media are in distance education (e.g. Jakobsdottir, McKeown & Hoven, 2010; Lee & McLoughlin, 2010) and foreign language learning (e.g. Lomicka & Lord, 2009; Thomas, 2009). Other authors consider social media and their relationship to education from a media literacy perspective, arguing that as social media represent another form of media already pervasive in students’ lives, education can build on this use and understanding of media to develop more critical approaches (de Abreu, 2011). Informed by a digital literacy perspective, other scholars advocate the incorporation of social media into education to develop students’ critical awareness and to recognise and build on their existing practices to enhance learning (Stergioulas & Drenoyianni, 2011). The potential to develop learning through new possibilities of collaboration has been explored (Carrington & Robinson, 2009; Davies &


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Merchant, 2009) and the implications for teachers (Walsh, 2009; Wankel, 2011). Specific social media applications and their uses in the classroom have been considered (Bain, Cullen, Farrow & Gough, 2009; Brack, 2009; Knobel & Lankshear, 2006; Richardson, 2006). Vignettes from practice and brief accounts from empirical research are reported in the books and book chapters reviewed, but attention in this report has focused on the empirical studies reviewed because of their level of detail related to specific uses of social media in classrooms. The majority of studies reviewed in this report involved: (a) interactions between students that were directed or moderated by teachers or (b) interactions between teachers and students. This is despite our effort to identify studies relating to learning activities which were largely or wholly independent of teachers. On the one hand, the paucity of such studies is a little There is a paucity of studies surprising as social media, and especially Web 2.0, relating to social media are generally lauded as enablers of personalised and used independently of independent learning. On the other hand, it reflects teachers, for educational the complex mix of factors which are involved in purposes. integrating new technologies and practices in student-centred activities at a time when the technologies are still evolving. The cultural/social norms and structures within educational environments are powerful influences on expectations and behaviours, for teachers and students alike. Teachers have complex roles with multiple responsibilities and work within constraints which afford them some level of authority in their classrooms at the same time as limiting their options. Students, too, have expectations of what schools and teachers should deliver (Cuban, 2001). However, of the studies reviewed, many were small-scale studies, often conducted by teacher-researchers or researchers within one classroom. Few were Most studies relating to conducted over a significant period of time, and the social media in schools majority focused on a particular intervention by the have been small-scale over teacher and not from the perspective of the students a limited period of time. which might reveal the process by which the specific use of social media influences students’ learning. While Moyle and Owen (2009) considered the views of students and their use of digital technologies in schools, further in-depth research which explores the use of social media from students’ perspectives is needed. In the following section, which comprises the body of the report, a number of studies have been selected to be described in greater detail because they reveal the key issues related to the collaborative use of social media in classrooms for learning. The detail with which these studies are reported provides the basis for our set of guidelines devised to inform the implementation of school-based initiatives with social media. These studies show teachers and students using social media for a range of purposes, with differing outcomes, as well as the implications for pedagogy.


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Teachers, social media and pedagogy A number of factors in the studies reviewed worked to enhance or limit the use of social media for social learning. The most important was what we have called ‘pedagogical design’, in which teachers played a key role. The studies revealed that social media were utilised most effectively for learning purposes when: 1. the pedagogical design had clearly articulated goals with social media used to extend learning through offering new opportunities 2. careful preparation was made for students’ collaborative use of social media 3. social media were used for tasks which were appropriate and purposeful.

Conversely, the studies also revealed that the use of social media was less productive for learning when: 1. there was insufficient scaffolding for a particular task 2. social media were employed in tasks or environments where collaboration was already high and they were therefore considered unnecessary 3. social media were employed to complete an existing task which had been planned for and was better suited to another type of approach.

We now examine in detail several studies which employed these features to foster collaborative work between students or which offered insights into how collaborative work could be enhanced.

(a)

New opportunities through social media

In the most successful cases, the incorporation of social media proceeded from a specific aim formulated by a teacher, group of teachers or teachers and researchers, and were integrated into a unit of study with often extensive preparation for the learning task as well as practice with the technology. A study of a class of Grade 4 children in Canada investigated the children’s use of a group workspace called the Knowledge Forum (Zhang et al., 2007). Informed by Scardamalia and Bereiter’s (2006) knowledge building principles, Knowledge Forum aims to assist students to build knowledge through conceptual development. The space allows students to record ideas, upload material and comment on each other’s work. Students’ individual contributions and patterns of collaboration can be compiled and assessed by the teacher. During the four month period of the study, the children worked on optics in their science lessons. The teacher interacted with the children online, providing feedback, suggesting lines of inquiry and asking questions designed to stimulate higher-order thinking. Students communicated with each other in the online space and offered suggestions on individual work as they tried to move the collective project forward. They were able to view the contributions of others and


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move to groups to work on other topics. Their work included reading, checking other sources, contributing with summaries of their findings and detailing how they had built new ideas, both online and offline. Gains in their knowledge of the topic were recorded in Knowledge Forum. The researchers’ analysis of the children’s contributions to Knowledge Forum identified the ways in which they had assisted each other to develop new conceptual insights through interactions with each other in the form of questions and comments. The students’ post-tests showed significant gains in their scientific knowledge. Through building on each other’s ideas in the interactive space, the children gained new understandings.

Higher-order thinking can be facilitated through teachers asking questions and thereby stimulating further enquiry.

The researchers attribute this achievement to the teacher’s pedagogical design, which focused on enhancing the children’s ability to think deeply through stimulating further inquiry and encouraging them to extend their collaboration in ways that contributed to community knowledge building. In this case, the pedagogical design demonstrated a clear aim and the development of a unit of work in which the technology was integrated in a purposeful way.

Collaboration does not just happen. The teacher needs to encourage students to see their role as not just reactive or responding to the teacher, but as contributing to the learning community.

A quite different study in an English secondary school also demonstrates an integrated design. A teacher undertaking doctoral research incorporated a wiki into a group project in his subject area, physical education (Hastie et al., 2010). Groups of boys from two classes in Years 10 and 11 were given the task of developing a game, assisted by the librarian and an American professor outside the school who was an expert in games. Each group was allocated a wiki to collaborate and record their progress, with one member designated as its manager. Students showed considerable interest in the wiki, posting comments on it outside school hours. The teacher was able to monitor students’ progress through the emails he received when changes were made and to provide feedback. Students benefited from comparing their work with others after class as well as from the suggestions made by the Students benefit from the way American professor’s students, who social media can facilitate diverse commented on their work. The students were and timely feedback. Students can excited by the outside audience, even though gain feedback from teachers, they didn’t always take the advice. The wiki students and others without also enabled less athletic boys to participate having to wait until the next positively. The researchers noted that ‘almost 100 iterations of the wikis were completed lesson. Students can also evaluate within the first week of the project’ (p. 89). their own progress as they This social media project, unlike some of interact with the contributions of those in other studies reviewed, did not form other students. part of assessment.


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The students were provided with a place for after-school discussions amongst themselves Students and teachers need to and an outside audience for their work which negotiate a shared would not normally have been available to them. understanding of how The wiki was integrated into the task of creating a collaborative work can be game, one which had been taught before by the edited. teacher but without a wiki. The same task with a wiki was judged to be more successful, although some conflict occurred when the group wiki managers asserted control over content and editing rights. Chandra and Watters’ (2012) study in an Australian secondary school investigated whether Year 12 students’ learning in Physics could be improved by incorporating social media. The website, Getsmart, was designed for this purpose by the teacher/researcher and incorporated a number of Social media can be used to features such as chat, a discussion board and ensure all students get an quizzes. After school chat in ability groups of five was initiated with hour-long sessions at scheduled times. opportunity to contribute, Twenty minutes was allowed per student. In these even if they do not normally chat interactions, the teacher posed questions which do so in class. the students answered. The researchers reported that these interactions between teachers and students in their homes on aspects of the subject matter enabled the participation of those who might not normally do so in the classroom. The analysis of students’ Student engagement can be chats demonstrated that they remained on task and were focused on extending their conceptual heightened through breaking understanding through reflecting on their answers the class into small groups and and learning from others. The teacher was able to the teacher actively give positive feedback immediately and the participating in stimulating students noted that the chat facility meant that their enquiry. they were more active in preparing for the session than they may have been in class, with one remarking that ‘the idea of after school chat lessons with a teacher is enough to attract the laziest of students’ (p. 635, emphasis in original).

Social media provide a record of student participation and consequently can enable teachers to gain greater understanding of students’ knowledge and needs.

The researchers concluded that the chat sessions enabled the teachers to gain greater understanding of students’ knowledge and needs and also contributed to a sense of a learning ‘community’ (p. 636). Notably, one of the two teachers pointed out the extra workload created for teachers by the chat sessions.

The interactive chat in this study, however, was only one part of an overall web-based strategy which enabled students to learn in a variety of ways, with 72 per cent believing that their results had improved.

The use of social media can increase the workload of the teachers, especially outside of school hours.


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New opportunities for interaction were afforded through the chat sessions in which the teacher’s participation was crucial. His authoritative knowledge enhanced the importance of the chat sessions to the students but also legitimised the interactive space as a site of educational practice designed to enhance content knowledge. All the students could participate in this interaction, although collaboration between students was more limited.

Teacher participation online is essential to legitimise the space for educational purposes.

In a different kind of learning experience, Maher (2009) reports on the use of social media within an established transition program for Australian primary school students. An online chat facility was integrated into the transition program to afford preliminary contact with students from a neighbouring secondary school. The task involved the students in online discussion to prepare them for a drama activity and subsequent performance. The Year 5/6 and Year 7 students discussed the scenes over eight 40 minute lessons. The researcher noted that ‘opening/closing’ took up considerably more time than in face-to-face classrooms as students needed to establish their identities with strangers when there were no visual or auditory cues and that such social chat was necessary in the online learning environment Teachers need to allow time before learning could proceed (p. 512). He for students to interact suggests that while teachers may see this chat as socially in online discussion wasting time, it should be considered as critical to as a way of building trust. establishing relationships and teachers should allocate time for it within their planned activities. In a related study, Maher (2010) found that the social activity led to a discussion of the different norms prevailing in the high school situation. Language practices demonstrated in this space by one Year 6 child were clearly recognised as not permitted in the secondary space and the Year 7 student response reflected this. Maher (2009) concluded that the online discussions were helpful in supporting other transition activities. However, the affordance of new opportunities with social media, even when they provide valuable learning experiences, is no guarantee of their success. In an example of reflective teacher practice from Brazil, a teacher of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) introduced blog writing into her classroom partly as a result of her own interest in technology, but also to motivate her students to write in the target language, as this was an area of difficulty for them (de Almeida Soares, 2008). Through the blog, the teacher was able to connect to other EFL teachers and their students in different parts of the world, offering the class authentic contexts for English language use. To her surprise, while students enjoyed reading the blog and the comments on it from teachers in other countries, they were reluctant to contribute unless they could do so in the classroom. The teacher surveyed respondents from other countries, mostly teachers, who experienced a similar phenomenon with their own students. Teachers were more interested in blogging than the students, who were hesitant to interact with people they didn’t know. De Almeida Soares concluded that as blogging was a new practice within schools, students needed a blogging platform which was easy to use with scaffolding that showed them how to use it effectively. She was, however, convinced that blogging was an effective way of learning for her students and was determined to encourage use of it through more explicit teaching of both skills and modes of interaction. While the teacher recognised the potential value of the contact with other learners of English, the study raised issues about the students’ confidence and willingness to expose themselves to risk. Their willingness to participate in the classroom when the teacher was present suggested


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that they were more confident in an environment where they could draw on her expertise and her knowledge of them. The study demonstrates that collaboration with unknown students in different parts of the world was neither easy nor natural and required work to build trust and relationships. While social media extend learning opportunities through contact with others beyond the classroom, these same contacts also present new challenges. A central issue identified by the researchers in these studies was that of trust. For instance, working with students at a Building trusting relationships is distance when they did not know each other critical to the success of online made interaction difficult as trust could not readily be gained online and students were collaborations using social reluctant to comment on others’ work when media. they didn’t know them (de Almeida Soares, 2008). However, the involvement of the teacher in moderating the discussion worked to enhance confidence, and allowing time for social chat fostered trust (Maher, 2009). In a study that used a wiki, individuals’ desire for control over the content of the group project’s wiki mitigated against successful participation and Working with social media collaboration (Hastie et al., 2010). The role of requires establishing new teachers in mediating these challenges through norms of social behaviour. Like their knowledge of external participants is an group work in classrooms, the important factor in building trust (e.g. de Almeida Soares, 2008; Hastie et al., 2010). Where contact process of collaborating online is with participants within the same group, the needs to be explicitly taught, teacher’s role in valuing the participation of all modelled and reinforced. students and moderating participation is crucial to establishing new norms of social behaviour to instil trust in the medium and the participants (Chandra & Watters, 2012; Hastie et al., 2010; Zhang et al., 2010).

(b)

The importance of preparation

While the studies referred to in the previous section share a number of features that contribute to the effective use of social media use in schools, other studies have examined the impact of specific characteristics of different social media, such as blogs, wikis and chat, to achieve collaborative goals. In these studies, attention is directed to process as well as to outcome and they suggest important implications for educators: careful preparation is required to ensure that students understand the purpose for and the process of collaboration and to familiarise students with the social media application to be used. A study by Lund (2008) highlights some aspects of classroom pedagogy that could be disrupted by the introduction of social media. In a second language learning class in a Norwegian secondary school, the researcher investigated whether the introduction of a collaborative wiki into the classroom would disrupt the individualised classroom work with which students were familiar. Earlier research had suggested that individual work was the norm in classroom tasks even when a collaborative facility was provided. The teacher and the class of 31 17-year-old students negotiated a task, which was to complete the construction of an English text in a MediaWiki on the topic of the US. The teacher introduced the wiki environment. Students were given freedom to decide how to tackle the task and


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which resources to use for the two week period of the task. Initially, they worked in pairs in the wiki to develop their topic without linking their text to the collective space. As they began to complete the work on their topic, students gradually added tags, linking their work to the rest of the wiki and increasingly invited comments from others. The quality of the wiki developed further when students were able to view others’ work, discuss ideas and exchange information, and, at the same time as it grew, it became a resource. While the students valued their work in the wiki, they were less comfortable with the fact that others could modify or remove their work, even though they knew that the wiki retained their original entries. The researcher noted a clash between the cultural values of school assessment which are focused on individual work and that of the collective authorship of a Teachers need to consider how text where individual contributions are they can assess collaborative distributed and are not necessarily identifiable. activity in social media (e.g. a In the collective production mode, issues of collectively authored text) when trust become central. The researcher argues school culture and assessment that working within a wiki is a new process for is usually focused on individual students and modes of working collaboratively work. within it involve questions about how to assess the collective product as well as how to incorporate it within the traditional schooling culture. It is important to note here that while the task preparation included a brief outline of the wiki and its collective nature, there was no preparation around the collaborative nature of the task and how it should be negotiated, consistent with the researcher’s aim to discern whether existing norms would be disrupted. In Spain, a study examined the ways in which the writing processes of a class of 9-10-yearold children could be improved through the use of a wiki (Pifarre & Fisher, 2011). The researchers developed a three-stage process to a collaborative wiki task, building on earlier studies, including Lund’s (2008) (see above), as they believed that ‘an instructional process that explicitly embeds how to use wikis to reach collaborative learning objectives is needed’ (p. 463). In the study, students were invited to write a collaborative text in a wiki on the topic of colonising Mars. There were three stages in the wiki writing process. Before students enter a wiki they need to The first prepared students for be prepared for working collaboratively: collaboration, with three lessons learning to collaborate through talk; devoted to working together to working on text in pairs; and groups of develop ‘collaborative talk’ (p. 455). pairs coming together to work in the wiki. In the second stage, students worked in pairs and used the World Wide Web to research Mars, constructing a pair-work text that explored the feasibility of colonising Mars. In the third stage, the process of writing in a wiki was demonstrated by the teacher, as was its collaborative nature, with the teacher emphasising that it allowed students to discuss their ideas and the ways they could be elaborated and modified in the wiki. Three pairs of students were combined into one group for the wiki writing task. The wiki itself contained two sections, one for discussion to agree on the ideas and structure of the text to be entered into the wiki, and the other, a group page. On this group page, students entered the text, added new ideas or modified existing ones and refined their text until it was finished, a process which took place over seven lessons. The researchers examined the nature of individual contributions, noting that they varied considerably, with some students making changes to the text while others did not. They conclude that the process of writing in the wiki and the discussion that took place during that


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process enhanced the students’ understanding of the nature of a writing task. Students also learned from the comments and changes made by others. The ability to review each student’s changes to the wiki meant that the teacher was able to judge students’ individual participation and progress. Several similar features can be seen in a study of Year 7 students in a Hong Kong secondary school, as they were beginning their studies in an English-speaking environment (Mak & Coniam, 2008). For these students, English was not their first language. The study set out to investigate whether a collaborative writing task with an authentic learning task would enhance students’ ability to write in the target language. A wiki which only the teacher and students could access was used. The students were divided into groups of four by their teacher and invited to produce a brochure on the school over a period of six weeks. Each group was given a different topic. The project and the wiki were introduced. In the first lessons, students experimented in the wiki through an exchange of comments which the teacher observed without intervening. Initially, as in Lund’s (2008) and Pifarre and Fisher’s (2011) studies, there was a two-stage process to the wiki work. Groups of students worked together to produce material for the topic, often at home. Students commented on others’ work in the wiki but gradually started to add to work begun by others or to modify it. They also Students collaborate more revised and elaborated their work. As they gained readily when they gain confidence in working with each other and in the wiki, confidence in working with they were more willing to comment on others’ work others and within the wiki. and gained ideas which they used to extend their writing. These ideas in turn stimulated other students to comment and to expand their own writing. They also revised and reorganised their work which, the researchers explained, is unusual in the Hong Kong context. Revisions could be tracked which enabled both students and the teacher to explore the way they developed their ideas. The brochures were checked by the teacher and approved by the principal before being printed and distributed to parents. The knowledge that parents were to be the audience rather than simply the teacher added to students’ motivation for the task. The researchers tallied student contributions to the wiki, noticing When giving feedback to students considerable variation. They also noticed collaborating online it may be useful that their entries were characterised by to consider the nature of their contributing, elaborating, editing and contributions other than simply the correcting, with the majority of inputs length, for instance, contributing a contributing ideas. Only a few inputs new idea, elaborating on an idea, involved correction, although the synthesising ideas, editing work. researchers explain that this is consistent with established practice in Hong Kong. The students enjoyed the project and the researchers concluded that their writing output was longer, important in a second language class, but also that it demonstrated more attention to revision and reorganisation than was usually the case.


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The collaborative nature of the wiki enabled them to learn together within a small group. This was a new feature for the students and they learned from the comments of others in their group. Importantly, the process took considerable time but the teacher felt that one benefit was greater student engagement. The school planned to expand the program in the following year.

Activities using social media in which students add to each other’s work can take considerable time. However, the process of revision and editing is valuable and the quality of the product is improved.

A study of 36 primary school children aged 10 to 13 in Singapore examined the use of blogs as a tool to improve writing English narratives, a task which is assessed but which students find difficult as English is not their first language (Wong & Hew, 2010). The researchers believed that the affordances of blogs offered the potential to advance students’ ability to use English for narrative writing because the blog could be seen as a less formal place for writing, consistent with their desire to use English in narrative writing. They still believed that students Students need to be given needed preparation both for the task of narrative explicit instruction in how to writing and for using a blog for that purpose. They use a blogging platform. regarded this preparation as a form of ‘scaffolding’ (p. 4), through which the student would gain understanding of the process of blogging and also of narrative writing and then would be able to incorporate these understandings into their repertoire of learning strategies. The first stage was to introduce students to Google’s blog platform through an individual Gmail account, establish a blog and learn how to invite others to it. The second stage involved the explanation of a writing model for the students to follow. Students’ initial blog posts were The use of peer feedback completed on a word processor then posted to their blogs for other students to read and comment on. such as comments in blogs These comments were used to revise the students’ can be a powerful learning original work, this time within the blog itself. The aid. process of comments followed by revision was repeated for another draft, again within the blog. Other students then remarked on grammar use and the development of ideas, and these were incorporated into the final version. Each student’s blog attracted three to five comments from other students. Students’ scores in post-tests on language use improved but in the posttest on narrative content, there was limited improvement, even though the students mostly enjoyed the experience of blog writing. Despite some degree of collaboration, the learning was limited, in part by the students’ focus on language correction, suggesting that preparation for the task should include instructions about the purpose of collaboration. While the task included preparation for blogging and for structural features of writing, explicit teaching of the purpose of collaboration could have enhanced students’ ability to extend the suggestions to their narrative construction. A different medium was used in a study in Taiwan with 57 primary school students. The researchers adopted a quasi-experimental approach to investigate the effect on students’ collaborative efforts of preserving a student’s original work during a collaborative task in which students’ work was edited and transformed by other students (Liu et al., 2011). Previous studies had demonstrated that students were reluctant to lose their original work.


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The task was collaborative storytelling through drawing an online picture book using a researcher-developed platform, ‘a Web accessible sketchpad’ (p. 1547) which incorporated social media to facilitate interaction. Through this medium, students could add to each other’s picture books by inserting scenes or characters or modifying other students’ drawings. They could also add new elements to their stories through voiceovers and animations. The study involved two different storyboards to examine which was more likely to enhance collaboration. One class was assigned to a hypermedia storyboard, which permitted multiple storylines and retained students’ individual stories, and the other class to a linear one, which only permitted students to add to an already established storyline and did not retain their original work. Students, who were already accustomed to using computers, were taught to use the web platform and then worked individually to produce a short picture book over a period of four weeks. When this was completed, students worked together to enhance the books through adding voice, text and animations to others’ work in the online platform. In addition to questionnaires, the researchers examined logs which tracked students’ changes to the storyboards. Students in the hypermedia group, whose original stories were preserved, produced more episodes of collaboration with others, whereas those in the linear group, whose original stories were not preserved, were distracted by the effort to protect their own work and experienced more tension with less collaboration. One telling example which occurred only in the linear group was retaliation when a story was defaced by another student: ‘when one student’s episode was scribbled by a spoiler, he or she would scribble the spoiler’s episodes in return’ (p. 1552). At the same time, the comparative freedom of the hypermedia environment seemed to facilitate positive enhancement of the picture books through a greater sense of ownership. The researchers set out a model which they believe could prove useful as a guide to enabling greater investment in collaboration by students. These studies share several important similarities. The nature of collaborative work, where the product is one in which individual entries cannot readily be distinguished, entails careful thought by educators about the social and cultural context, which varies across these studies, as does the age of the students. However, all students showed some degree of concern about the status of their own entries – about when they could be modified or removed by others. Preservation of students’ original work enabled some students to feel more comfortable with collaboration (Liu et al., 2011). Several researchers (Mak & Coniam, 2008; Pifarre & Fisher, 2011; Wong & Hew, 2010) suggest the value of a staged process in which students move from individual or pair work to a collective process. Lund (2008), on the other hand, regards the development of new forms of assessment as critical to collaborative work, arguing that existing assessments privilege individual work. While training in the particular social media application was provided in most of these studies, Pifarre and Fisher’s (2011) study suggests that preparation for the collaborative nature of a task through ‘talk’ is a valuable precursor to such a task.

(c)

Appropriate and purposeful tasks

Social media are used by teachers in a variety of ways and for different purposes. A number of studies have focused on how social media are used with students in their learning, where the purpose may not be to foster collaborative learning but for communication or to provide a


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communal resource. These activities are often valuable in their own right but they also suggest factors which can work against uses of different media for collaborative learning in relation to specific tasks. Implications for task design can be drawn from the studies reviewed below. Duncan-Howell and Lloyd (2008) discuss a study that examined the implementation of a curriculum unit, Land Yachts, undertaken online in Queensland in 2007 with several hundred primary school students aged 9 to 12, their teachers and more than 100 pre-service teachers in Queensland and Western Australia. The report focuses on the theoretical framework, distributed constructionism, and the way it was evident in the online project. However, the study is revealing about other aspects of social media use in relation to the task. The children undertaking the project used a blog on a secure website and the entries which were analysed by the researcher recorded primarily descriptive accounts of work undertaken by the individual teams and encouraging comments from other participants. Most of the collaboration occurred offline, with the online medium primarily offering a repository for information that documented the process and a space for sharing that elicited support from other participants. The social media in this case provided a useful adjunct, but were not intrinsic to collaboration. In a Finnish study with secondary students working collaboratively in pairs on argumentation and using an online chat facility at the same time, Marttunen and Laurinen (2007) note that the students engaged in face-to-face collaboration rather than online which in this case rendered the social media redundant. In a US study, Heafner and Friedman (2008) If collaboration through social investigated the use of wikis in a secondary media is a goal, then it needs to be social studies program. Together with a social studies classroom teacher of eleventh meaningfully integrated into the grade students, the researchers created a lesson design. course component which required the students to construct a wiki explaining World War II. The unit was taught to one class using the wiki and another without a wiki. The researchers collated primary source material and placed it in the wiki, then presented initial sessions on using wikis and continued to provide assistance throughout the sequence of classes. In the other class, they observed rather than participated. While the students engaged with the wiki, with the topic and with each other through their comments, their collaboration took place face to face rather than in the wiki, and the students did not appear to have demonstrated any learning gains beyond the norm on the usual assessment administered. However, the researchers argue that in follow-up interviews eight months later, students in the wiki class had retained higher levels of topic knowledge than students in the control class. The researchers note that three teachers in the class may have assisted students’ recall. In this case, even though a wiki was used, it was added to existing tasks, suggesting a flaw in the pedagogical design, as it afforded little to the students other than the opportunity to collaborate, when face-to-face collaboration was already incorporated into the task.

Making student participation in social media a compulsory part of an assessment does not guarantee high levels of engagement. The task needs to be purposefully and clearly integrated with the learning goals.

Joubert and Wishart (2011) report on the use of social media in two different contexts: one with six teachers and 134 students across six secondary schools and the other with a network of researchers in the EU. In the first study, they instigated the incorporation of online discussions with teachers and students in six schools, with professional development beforehand with


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the teachers, and they compare this study with research into the use of a wiki for the collaborative development of a research vision by academics. For the students, the aim of the online discussions was to improve their ability to advance an argument in the difficult field of ethics in science. While teachers had taken part in the professional development which focused on use of the discussion board to develop argumentation skills amongst students, they did not focus on extending students’ understanding of the nature of the task. The school students participated in the online discussions minimally, with many participants making only the one comment that was required by their teachers. Teachers’ participation was also low. Few commented on others’ posts, although they were intended as a process of dialogue which would develop students’ skills. Students saw the task as one which required completion, rather than as one which would improve their argumentation skills. The pattern for the researchers and their use of the wiki in the second study was similar. Few contributed. For the researchers, accustomed to working together on a text, the lack of ability to see changes in the text on the wiki or to claim authorship may have been inhibiting factors. The fact that the wiki was established with text at the beginning may have discouraged contributions, as it already seemed complete. Reluctance to contribute partially considered views was a factor for some academics. For both groups, posts were short. For the school students, these were no more than two sentences. Rather than developing an argument about difficult ethical issues, students’ comments generally expressed beliefs and opinions, reinforcing these with emoticons. Other students may have thought it impolite to challenge their comments. The authors note that expressions of belief or opinion tend to lead to an exchange of views rather than to constructive dialogue which builds knowledge. The task of building a ‘vision’ for a future trajectory is also a highly individual one, involving, as it did for the students, opinion and belief. The authors note that the task of collaborative knowledge building may be less suited to some types of work than others. For instance, statements of belief or the construction of a vision were too individual to produce collaboratively. In neither case did the Statements of belief or the participants share in the goals of the task and construction of a vision may be thus had no commitment to their achievement. too individual to be easily Students were focused on task completion. For the academics, the construction of a shared constructed collaboratively. vision did not seem important. The researchers Students are hesitant to edit stress that it is necessary for participants to each other’s opinions. fully understand the nature and purpose of the task to be completed and to have a sense that their participation is important to achieve an outcome, that is, that the task is purposeful for them so that they have ‘shared goals’ (p. 9). In this study, the teachers and academics who were its focus had no role in designing the tasks to be completed and this may have led to their low participation. Equally, for the teachers, if they were not committed to the task and saw no clear purpose, they were unable to impart this to their students. The importance of individual commitment and investment in the collective task is suggested by this study. A similar finding as to the relevance and appropriateness of the task is borne out in Grant’s (2009) study of three Year 9 ICT classes in a British secondary school. The aim was to consider whether writing together in a wiki could enable greater collaborative learning development, noting that the potential existed for working together to involve ‘co-ordination’ or ‘competition’ rather than collaborative learning (p. 107). The wiki environment afforded the opportunity for both collaboration and an audience, as students could read each other’s


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work, but it was chosen by the researchers to enable editing of each other’s work rather than simply to collect the work together. This was based on the view that this editing process would move students to a deeper level of engagement with ideas that would encourage reflection and further development. Students were selected by their teachers to participate in groups of six to nine and each group was given a separate wiki which was available only to the students and teachers of the groups and the researcher. They were given some preparation for the technical aspects of working in a wiki, but decisions about ways of working together were left to the students. Unless prepared, students may Students decided together on topics for the writing consider editing each other’s task and rapidly developed a sense of ‘ownership’ work as transgressing the of their individual pages (p. 109). They enjoyed norms of individual working in the wiki environment but only two assessment. students modified another’s entry and then only in minor ways. Nor did students participate in discussions around the content. They felt that their work was their own and did not see the task of editing as something positive. This may, however, have been an effect of the type of collaboration, that is, editing, which was invited, as it transgressed the norms of individual work to be completed for assessment purposes. In terms of knowledge-building, the researcher saw little evidence that new knowledge had been created. The task mirrored tasks required of the students for assessment and the audience was the teacher, which the researcher argued limited the potential for them to engage more deeply. At the same time, the newness of the task, both in terms of editing in the wiki and collaboration, meant that students required more explicit teaching to enable them to engage deeply. By contrast, an example of a successful task which involved learning about wikis and other Web 2.0 technologies is one from the higher education sector. The researchers explored the use of wikis with 346 pre-service education students primarily in the US but also with peers Experiential learning through in other countries, including Australia (Ertmer, using the application for an Newby, Liu, Tomory, Yu & Young, 2011). They authentic task builds skills and were aware that students used social media, confidence for future use of the often daily, in their everyday lives but that this technologies. use didn’t necessarily translate into effective use of Web 2.0 technologies in educational settings, including applications such as blogs and wikis. The researchers set out to investigate whether these students could gain confidence with wikis by requiring them to collaborate in teams to produce instructional guides to Web 2.0 technologies as wiki chapters, with a presentation event to an audience on completion. The teams included members from several countries who participated via email, Skype or Facebook. The results showed that students gained significantly in confidence in using wikis and also valued them more highly as a learning medium. The same applied to social networking more generally, including video applications. Students gained skills through using specific applications in the construction of their chapter and also in their collaboration with their international team members. For those applications which weren’t used, such as blogs and games, students perceived no gains in skills or confidence. While the process was not without difficulties, students learned through using these media, learned from others, and as future teachers, their repertoire of resources for teaching and learning was enriched.


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Social media technologies need to be chosen carefully to suit the task and to fit the pedagogical design, as many students and teachers may be unfamiliar with the application or with its use for learning in an educational setting (Grant, 2009). If the application chosen is unsuitable for the task, it will be difficult to achieve a successful outcome. Tasks utilising social media which elicited beliefs and opinions were less likely to result in valuable discussions (Joubert & Wishart, 2011) than tasks which were focused on enhancing content knowledge (e.g. Chandra & Watters, 2011) or building social relationships as a prelude to interaction (Maher, 2009). In other tasks, where collaboration is already an integral part of the classroom based activity, social media, while an adjunct, may be used more to afford support rather than to open avenues of collaboration for learning (Duncan-Howell & Lloyd, 2008). Pedagogical design is a key factor in enhancing the success of social learning initiatives. When the technology is integrated with a clear goal, it enables new opportunities and is both appropriate and purposeful in terms of the task in which students are actively engaged (Hastie et al., 2010). They learn from each other (Zhang et al., 2007) and they learn new skills, technical in terms of the media used (e.g. Wong & Hew, 2010) and new ways to work together to improve knowledge (Pifarre & Fisher, 2011). However, the incorporation of social media into collaborative learning has important implications for professional practice and we now turn to these.


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Social media use and the impact on professional practice Several key factors of social media use which impact on teachers’ professional practice emerge from the Effective pedagogical studies reviewed above. A corollary of the necessity integration of social media for thoughtful pedagogical design is increased requires preparation and workload for teachers, from mapping the tasks to be ongoing facilitation, often undertaken to developing the skills required to outside of school hours. implement collaborative social media use and monitoring what happens. Another is the greater demands on teachers’ time for interaction with students in out of school hours (Chandra & Watters, 2011). Teachers are urged to shift their focus to a more student-centred model (Austin Student-centred approaches can et al., 2010) but, at the same time, if alleviate teacher workload by they do not provide adequate legitimising peer feedback and support preparation for a task, the students may and reducing the expectation of gain little in the way of learning (Grant, teacher interactions. However, teacher 2009). Teachers’ interaction with their participation is still essential to guide students via social media stimulates and stimulate deeper thinking. them to think more deeply (Zhang et al., 2007), but it is also vital to encourage students to consider such spaces as not only legitimate but as part of educational practice (Joubert & Wishart, 2011; Mills & Chandra, 2011).

(a)

Changing practices

Studies have investigated the changes to teachers’ practice that have occurred through their use of social media and teachers’ perceptions of change. Teachers’ views about how effective social media are for collaborating with their counterparts and students in other schools were explored by Austin et al. (2010). The researchers draw on data from the Dissolving Boundaries programme which was established to connect teachers and students across schools in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. They report about data gathered from 71 teachers in the 150 primary and secondary schools which were involved in the program. The platform used was Moodle, which included a forum and a wiki for teachers and students to interact with their counterparts from another school, with the students participating in groups.

Effective online collaborative practices have a genesis in collaborative practices developed within classrooms.

More than half the teachers, with a bias toward primary teachers, felt that the main purpose of collaborative learning through social media was to improve students’ ability to develop relationships. By contrast, secondary teachers put more emphasis on the ability to learn content knowledge but still valued the ability to develop friendships. However, teachers’ perceptions shifted over time with many discovering


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after two years that effective online collaborative practices have a genesis in collaborative practices developed within their own classrooms. Once established in their classrooms, they could develop the relationship further in online interactions, both with other teachers as well as Teachers need to consider students. Initially, some teachers noted that such their own ICT competence interaction involved communication or and that of their students coordination, but that they could move to a more when considering social collaborative model over time. Trust was a vital media options as part of their element in achieving high levels of collaboration for both teachers and students and this was professional practice. achieved through socialising online, recalling Maher’s (2009) finding that online social chat between students fostered trust in the relationship. The experience of using the social media, however, was often one of frustration. The teachers were much more positive about the use of videoconferencing than the use of wikis and forums in Moodle, particularly wikis, which they found required more competence in ICT. The sense of frustration experienced by teachers as they use different social media is expressed by a teacher-librarian who assisted Year 7 history teachers in a Brisbane secondary school to use the presentation media, Discovery box (McEwan, 2010). The medium enabled students to research an assignment on ancient civilisations, display their findings within the space and invite other students to view and comment on their work. The students Teachers need to allow time enjoyed the activity and were able to share their to develop their own skills, work with others in the class but lacked sufficient their students' skills and to technological skills to use Discovery box easily or to complete the task which is achieve what they set out to do. Teachers were also likely to take longer as frustrated, unable to use the medium fully to achieve their learning objectives. They realised that students meaningfully they required new skills, which would be demanding engage with each other’s in terms of time, but they also needed to allocate contributions. more time to implement the project. How to assess the work presented challenges so the teachers developed a framework, but it did not include assessment designed to foster collaboration. Even with the support of the librarian, the time required to develop the skills to use the technology more fully was difficult to find. Further impact on teachers’ time can arise from students’ use of social media but also the desire of teachers to assist their students’ learning and engagement. In a study investigating studentTo manage workload initiated social media use, DeGennaro (2008) teachers need to consider examined the use of Instant Messenger (IM) in a establishing boundaries private school in the US in which four male around the out of school students communicated with their teacher over a times when they six-month period. These senior students were involved in an after-school technology club and communicate with students. their duties in the club and their work meant that they wanted to be able to contact their technology teacher, who agreed to their request to communicate via IM. This involved her in a substantial investment of time out of school through responding to students’ queries and trying to assist their learning. To manage this, she required the students to contact her only


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at certain times. Similarly, Chandra and Watters (2011) who instituted after school chat sessions for their physics students set a boundary around the time. Beliefs and perceptions about the value of social media shape the ways in which they are adopted by teachers and learners. For teachers, adoption of social media and other digital technologies is affected by their beliefs about the trade-off between potential gains and the work involved. A study in Taiwan into the possible adoption of blogs by teachers to communicate with students concluded that the perception of time and effort involved was a key factor that dissuaded teachers from establishing blogs (Lai & Chen, 2011). Of those who did use blogs in their teaching, an important motivating factor was the desire to help others. Philip and Nichols (2009), who introduced a group blog into a higher education drama unit, were motivated by the desire to deepen students’ reflective capacities through this collaboration. They chose their platform with care. Their early investigations showed that the majority of the students used Facebook, with very few familiar with blogs, but they chose the blogging platform rather than Facebook as they noted the need ‘to draw a boundary, to keep a level Social media, e.g. blogs, of privacy for both the teacher and the student’ (p. allow teachers to provide 698). Their findings demonstrated increased feedback during an activity engagement and greater analysis. The blog also not just after the final offered the teachers an opportunity to provide feedback as students progressed. On the other submission. hand, the project presented a number of management challenges, including extra workload. They suggest limiting the size of each group to around eight participants as a practical means to enable teachers to monitor and assess the work. The initial framing of the project included explicit guidelines that restricted students’ freedom within the blog so that all their entries could be retained for assessment purposes. Another important factor is the school environment and the support it provides for teachers to engage in innovative practice. Several studies have examined the changes that occur in professional practice at an individual level and the ways these can be facilitated by schools. Geer and Social media is best utilised Sweeney (2010) report on teachers’ experiences with digital technologies in two primary schools, one in small groups and studentin a middle SES area and the other in a low SES centred activities. area. One used Edublogs with a grade 6 class and another used a Moodle forum for students to interact with him. For each of the teachers, the process of introducing the applications into their classrooms involved changes in their pedagogy, with a greater emphasis on small group work and on students making decisions about how to tackle tasks, rather than the teacher setting directions. However, there was also a greater need to monitor students’ behaviour to ensure that their interactions were appropriate. Further, as in other studies, more time and effort were required of the teacher. But underlying the initiatives was a school structure which facilitated such innovation.


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Teachers require planning time that enables them to work together with colleagues and funded Teachers require a school professional development that addresses their culture that supports the needs, with leadership from the school principal pedagogical integration of to ensure that this occurs. As with ICT use more social media through the generally, key people are involved in developing allocation of time and human a school culture which supports teachers and resources to enhance their use which also entails changes within school of technologies. structures. The role of the ICT coordinator becomes more important in supporting teachers to embed their use of the technology within the curriculum (Tondeur, Cooper & Newhouse, 2010). Teachers learn through their engagement with peers and their collaboration with colleagues, whether it be the ICT coordinator (Tondeur et al., 2010), the teacher-librarian (McEwan, 2010) or ideas gained from other teachers who are willing to share them (e.g. Pluss, 2011). The growing number of teachers who are confident users of social media has the benefit of reducing their isolation as it enables them to connect to and interact with other teachers. As Vavasseur and MacGregor (2008) remark, ‘teachers are in many ways the most isolated of professionals’ (p. 519). A study by Hur and Brush (2009) investigated self-generated online communities of teachers in the US, conducting research into three communities which used Teachers can connect with interactive websites, including blogs and online others through social media forums. The researchers note that reasons for such as online forums, teachers’ participation varied, but sharing the reducing isolation and emotional burden of teaching with others in the enabling them to gain support profession was important. The option of anonymity from others in the profession. in the online community provided a safe place where teachers could share anxieties or difficulties related to their teaching, whereas in schools or research settings, they might be judged by other teachers as incompetent or unprofessional. The researchers note that there were few ways for teachers to share the emotional labour involved in teaching but that this labour is an important and often overlooked element of the job teaching. A sense of belonging to a community and a building of relationships with others was also important. As a number of the studies demonstrate, workload can increase significantly when social media are employed, for teachers who already have high workloads (e.g. Chandra & Watters, 2012; Geer & Sweeney, 2010; Hastie et al., 2010). The requirement for careful and integrated pedagogical design adds to that load, as does the necessity for ongoing learning with new technologies (McEwan, 2010). Developing strategies for developing and monitoring students’ behaviour in interactive spaces is a recurring theme in many of the studies (e.g. Geer & Sweeney, 2010; Liu et al., 2011; Maher, 2010; Vavasseur & MacGregor, 2008) and the understanding that new complexities between openness and flexibility need to be negotiated. Student and teacher blogs, for instance, which can be accessed by parents, have the potential to create tensions (Geer & Sweeney, 2010). Amongst the strategies employed to mitigate the additional workload, particularly that imposed by out-of-class contact, setting boundaries around the time and length of a mediated contact period is seen to be important (Chandra & Watters, 2012; DeGennaro, 2008). Working in teams with colleagues to develop new approaches is another means to lighten the load, to share experiences and to evaluate and refine approaches (McEwan, 2010). Professional learning which is appropriate, timely and relevant for teachers is an important means of connecting teachers with others and enabling them to develop skills and confidence in a supported environment.


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(b)

Professional learning

Professional learning is recognised as an integral component of teacher practice (Moyle, 2006) and best considered as a process through which teachers gain knowledge which may lead to new outcomes. Such learning can take place not only in formal professional development courses but also in informal contexts through teacher networks. This conception of professional learning encompasses a range of different activities in which teachers are involved, including reflective practice, which extends their own learning in ways that contribute to the enhancement of practice. At the same time, such learning leads to identity renegotiation (Henderson, 2007). The demands of teaching and learning with new technologies have long been recognised as requiring more concerted professional development to provide opportunities for teachers to acquire higher levels of skill and proficiency (e.g. Lankshear, Snyder & Green, 2000; Moyle, 2006). The use of digital interactive spaces is itself professional learning for teachers, through which they gain skills and understanding of new media and the ways in which they can adapt these in their teaching and learning (Lankshear et al., 2000). Different forms of social media can be used to facilitate professional learning in a variety of ways: to connect participants in particular programs across educational settings (Carr & Chambers, 2006); for the delivery of disciplinebased content (Renninger, Cai, Lewis, Adams & Ernst, 2011) or for accreditation purposes (Fasso, 2010); and for imparting skills with digital technologies through experiential learning (Vavasseur & McGregor, 2008). Several studies have been selected to illustrate differing types of programs, the varied nature of professional learning and the potential benefits derived. A study into the professional learning of teachers in an online community in two American secondary schools examined whether participation in a collaborative community encouraged teachers to adopt technologies in their teaching and learning and to develop a greater sense of ‘self-efficacy’ (Vavasseur & MacGregor, 2008, p. 520). A new curriculum had been instituted at the state level which mandated technology use, creating pressure for the teachers to make greater use of technology in their teaching, which had previously been low. The Social media can provide professional learning programs implemented were professional learning based on the view that teachers’ learning was best opportunities and enhance achieved in supportive communities of practice within which principals played a leading role. In the professional relationships for two schools, principals and teaching staff took part teachers working in the same in an online community and face-to-face training, school. as part of a program to encourage teachers to use digital technologies in their teaching. Both means involved online discussions each week about content-related material, with the assistance of prompts for steering. The results of the study showed that teachers gained technical competency and felt more positive about using technology in their teaching. They also shared ideas and provided support and encouragement to others.


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The researchers suggest that the online discussions facilitated the teachers’ professional learning. The principals’ role in each of these schools was important, lending authoritative weight to the program. One principal, however, was regarded as more supportive and keen for Teachers’ use of social media teachers to learn for their own benefit and for for professional learning can their students. In the other school, while the lead to enhanced skills, teachers felt the principal to be supportive, the confidence and greater teachers felt under pressure to perform. understanding of ways However, these teachers produced better quality technologies can be used with plans for technology integration than in the first students. school, where the principal was more engaged. Vavasseur and MacGregor suggest several principles which could frame professional development that aims to integrate technology. These are: (1) the involvement of teachers and the principal in the development of the program (2) the principal opening the program and The role of the principal in expressing support and enthusiasm (3) structured supporting and participating weekly online discussions with prompts to steer in online professional learning participants who could also access technical communities is important. support (4) principals and teachers sharing discussions about how to achieve desired goals. Teachers gained skills and confidence through using the online discussion medium. They gained ideas about how to integrate the medium into their teaching through the exchange of ideas and resources with others. After completing the program, they wished to extend their online communities to other networks of teachers. A study which focused on content-based professional learning examined the experiences of 164 maths teachers in the US through their use of an ‘unmoderated online workshop’ (Renninger et al., 2011, p. 229). The researchers note that online interactive spaces have increasingly been seen as a medium for professional development for teachers but that they are not straightforward. Such spaces can present a threat to teachers’ perceived sense of competence and the uneven abilities of participants may mean a higher drop-out rate. The participants in the study were involved in Math Forum workshops and the researchers hoped to gain information about why they participated and the degree to which they learned in this environment. Each workshop comprised about 20 teachers and was designed to extend participants’ mathematical knowledge. It involved participants using an online forum to discuss maths and maths teaching, with discussion focused by ‘prompts’ (p. 233) which directed them to particular topics. Not all teachers completed the course. An important factor was whether the workshop met their needs. For some teachers, the content was less sophisticated than they expected, resulting in their disengagement.

The inclusion of others through social media can sustain teachers' professional learning.

Teachers in the moderated group were more likely to engage in discussion and more likely to complete the course than those in the unmoderated group, as the support of a facilitator appeared to assist them to better understand the mathematical concepts. Matching teachers


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with others who taught at the same level supported completion. The researchers recommend a hypermedia discussion facility as it has the potential to accommodate the varying strengths and abilities of the participating teachers through affording ‘multiple representations’ (p. 246). This approach can enable different topics to be extended or chosen depending on individual teachers’ needs. A survey of 98 teachers in three different online communities, two in Australia and one international, conducted by Duncan-Howell (2010), considered the respondents’ professional learning activities, both within the online space and outside it over a 12-month period. Most respondents had participated in organised professional development such as workshops or conferences, with some required by their employer. Requirements for continuing professional development specify a certain number of hours for many teachers, although these vary according to teachers’ jurisdictions and locations. Many of the respondents had to pay for their own professional development and Duncan-Howell suggests that participation in an online community may be a means to gain professional development without the costs imposed in other forms. This does not mean that participation was not valued: the majority of respondents spent at least an hour a week taking part in their online community, with 62 per cent doing so to share with and learn from other professionals and 38 per cent for ‘emotional Online professional learning with support’ (p. 338). Teachers gained a greater social media may provide sense of control over their professional learning teachers with a cost efficient, because they were able to access it when they timely and flexible option for wished and on topics of their choice, with nearly their needs. 87 per cent of participants considering the online community space as providing opportunities for valuable professional learning. This ‘just-in-time learning’ was noted too by Vavasseur and MacGregor (2008, p. 519) as a feature valued by teachers. Brass and Mecoli (2011) report on the failure of a teacher-generated initiative to develop an online community of like-minded teachers who had just completed a master’s course at a university in the US. Based around a wiki, the initiative failed after a short life of about one month. The research into its failure suggested a number of contributing factors: Online professional learning teachers who were not confident using wikis opportunities need to be balanced or preferred to speak face to face; editing against risks to professional others’ contributions in the wiki worked reputation, depending on the against existing teacher conventions on degree of privacy of the online professional collaboration; the overtly political environment. nature of the wiki, which argued against the shift to standards-based education in the US, created concerns for some teachers about risks to their reputations and possibly to their employment, and simply didn’t interest others. Importantly, a number of the teachers already used Facebook and had their own personal networks with whom they preferred to interact. These studies suggest that using social media to facilitate professional learning offers new ways of learning for teachers and affords different learning experiences, although there are factors which work to enhance or limit these. The inference that can be drawn from Vavasseur and MacGregor’s (2008) study suggests that mandatory involvement at the individual school level in professional development and the exercise of authority by the principal leads to participation despite individual concerns over technological competence.


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So too does the requirement for teachers to complete a specified amount of professional learning annually (Duncan-Howell, 2010). Teacher concerns over their proficiency with the technology is a recurring theme, but there are some who are confident users, engaging in online interactions of their own accord (e.g. Brass & Mecoli, 2011; Hur & Brush, 2009). As they use the technology in particular situations, they gain confidence in its use in the classroom, so that the use itself functions as an important means of professional learning (Vavasseur & MacGregor, 2008). Brass and Mecoli (2011) note the involvement of teachers in personal and professional interactions via social networking such as Facebook. Teachers’ gains in confidence through experiential use of such media suggests this may lead to them considering similar applications for educational purposes (Mills & Chandra, 2011). In networks created by institutions, there were issues around trust in interactions with strangers as well as lower levels of participation (Carr & Chambers, 2006). Yet when teachers were free to choose their preferred medium to communicate online, as well as their preferred companions, they were often enthusiastic participants, using the media to exchange information as well as to provide support and encouragement (Hur & Brush, 2009). Social media affords teachers something that cannot always be gained in their schools or through formal professional development: the opportunity to escape from institutional and professional norms that determine the qualities of a ‘good’ teacher and to find support and encouragement from those who understand the demands of the profession. As teaching is a relational practice, such support and encouragement is valued by the profession, but often undervalued in formal professional development. There were, however, some concerns about possible damage to reputation and potentially employment when social media are host to politically charged topics, which made some teachers reluctant to participate (Brass & Mecoli, 2011). The studies into teachers’ professional learning draw on a wide field in which a number of factors have been identified which facilitate professional learning. These include the principal’s involvement and commitment, teachers learning together in teams, openness to teachers’ input, linking new ideas with potential classroom applications and addressing technology needs through a content-focused model rather than a skills-based approach (Vavasseur & MacGregor). The research studies reviewed above, focused on social media and its role in professional learning, suggest that social spaces can play a significant role in professional learning. They offer the opportunity to access professional learning that is appropriate to individual teachers and their needs at a time of their choosing. They enable connections at a system level but also amongst networks of other teachers, affording different kinds of learning: through sharing ideas, forging supportive relationships, accessing and exchanging varied digital resources, and building repositories of professional knowledge over time which are available to others. Involvement in these communities appears to build ICT skills through experiential learning, which encourages teachers to use digital technologies in their teaching.


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Social learning Social learning is premised on the belief that ‘at its heart learning is a social process’ (Owen et al., 2006, p. 11). From this perspective, learning is seen to be enhanced through collaboration and communication amongst groups of learners working together. It has been argued that by enabling easier and faster connections to others, social media offer the potential for the technologies to be used in ways that leverage learning for children and young people in schools. As the review of research in the previous sections demonstrates, there have been empirical studies investigating the nature and type of use in educational settings around the world but they have tended to be small-scale and limited in scope. In this section we pose two questions: To what extent can we talk about ‘social learning’ when social media are used? What can we learn from the research that suggests how social media are being used in ways that might support a shift to social learning? Several studies are selected as examples of the possibilities and pitfalls. Belief in the social nature of learning motivated a South African teacher/researcher in a university setting to draw on the existing practices with social media in her study of preservice education students (Reid, 2011). With a specific concern over literacy levels of undergraduate students, Reid undertook research into the use of Facebook as a way to enhance students’ critical literacy. Students were offered a closed Facebook space in which they could communicate with their tutors and their peers on a voluntary basis, as well as a blog which was a compulsory component. Students’ use of Facebook in their lives outside university was ubiquitous and they had developed different language uses within this space which contrasted sharply with the academic literacy practices required in the university. Reid argues that the closed Facebook site enabled safety and security for the students and, at the same time, permitted them to explore and express new ideas in a language with which they felt comfortable. Their use of the site was highly interactive, with many students participating, gaining new insights which assisted them in their studies, sharing these with others, as well as providing peers with emotional support. Their language use enabled a shift in the power dynamics, as the tutors were not as familiar with the language they chose. The use of Facebook also assisted students to develop ways of attaining new literacies that worked with their ‘out-of school literacy practices’ rather than denying them (p. 78). In this study the students Social media allows teachers to participated enthusiastically in the Facebook participate in interactions with community even though it wasn’t linked to their students in ways that build on assessment. The researcher attributed this their existing practices. high level of participation to the active involvement of their tutors, who moderated the language use in ways that accommodated, although didn’t mirror, that of their students, and was vital in encouraging and valuing students’ contributions. In this study we see some important means of facilitating social learning: first, the involvement in the same space of the teachers who retained authority while interacting with the students as they too learnt new practices and second, building on existing practices to provide a bridge to new concepts. Another example from the higher education sector suggests a different role for assessment in relation to social media, making it a compulsory component in contrast to the Facebook


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space used in Reid’s study (2011). Mills and Chandra (2011) examined the use of microblogging (short messages of 140 characters) in an Australian study with 166 Bachelor of Education students undertaking a compulsory unit in ICT. They used microblogging with Edmodo, a secure platform developed in the US for educational purposes, which has similar characteristics to Facebook. Their purpose was to enhance students’ understanding of digital literacy in an educational setting and also to introduce them to new literacy practices which they could take with them into the teaching profession. The students’ microblogs were included in their assessment. They were set the task of writing stories collaboratively in tutorial groups for an audience of primary students around 10 years old. The stories comprised individual microblogs of 140 characters in relay mode, with each student required to add to or adapt the story until it became a coherent whole. Students wrote and responded quickly and students scaffolded others’ work. In this instance, the microblogging was adapted from a social practice which existed outside the educational setting, transferred to an educational setting, with facilitators involved in content monitoring. The authoritative position of the teachers was reduced, although not eliminated. The researchers concluded that the aims were successfully achieved: students’ understanding of literacy practices were enhanced through their social interactions and their ability to use microblogging for social learning could be transferred to their future school setting. Linking assessment to the completion of the microblogging task also worked to validate it as a learning activity. The approach of bringing together students’ in- and out-of-school practices to enrich learning and to build on the established connections students shared was examined by Zywica et al. (2011). Their paper reports on research into the use of a specific social network, Remix World, in the Digital Youth Network (DYN) of three charter schools in Chicago. The researchers describe this network as a scaffolded social learning network to reflect the nature of the network as one that is open only to students and ‘mentors’ within the schools but also the learning theories that informed its development. The learning purposes in this space were to enhance media literacy. The network was accessible outside school but was linked to courses of study within the schools. It was designed to resemble those that students were already familiar with such as Facebook. It brought together students and ‘mentors’ and encouraged posting of student-generated material which was integrated with existing curriculum but also which went beyond it. The focus of the research was the way students and mentors used the sites, its affordances and how mentors were able to encourage student learning. Students conducted a number of different types of activities both in and out of school, including discussion, sharing content, blogging, commenting on others’ posts and submitting homework. The use of the site by Involvement of mentors in mentors was designed to encourage students to social learning is crucial to think more deeply and to do more than simply post but to generate more thoughtful material. The encouraging students to link researchers argue that the integration of the out of participation to learning. school with the in-school experience fostered more meaningful interaction. The involvement of the mentors was crucial to encouraging students to link participation to learning.


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Another study illustrates how social learning can be facilitated or impeded and draws out some of the connections that need to be made. Wishart and Triggs (2010) review the implementation of a project across five European countries which aimed to connect 27 schools and their Social media can be used in students with a rich heritage of cultural artefacts in international collaborations museums, art galleries and other similar institutions. with students and teachers The project was based on the notion of field work recording, sharing and cowhich is memorable for students and on which teachers can build in class to further their learning in a constructing together. collaborative way. During their visit, students were to take photos of items or artefacts with phones or cameras. Back in the classroom, they were to work in groups to prepare a presentation using a web tool, ‘Evolution’, into which they would incorporate their images as well as text, following research and discussion through the medium, mostly with their teachers, although for some, also with their family and friends. They would International collaborations then use this to present their work to the class. using social media need to Outcomes varied considerably across the five consider the different countries. The most significant factor in the curricula to ensure that the successful implementation of the project was whether activity is meaningful. it aligned with the school curriculum, which occurred in Portugal and also in Austria. In the other three countries, Lithuania, Germany and the UK, the visits or preparation for the visits had to take place outside the school day, creating significant extra work for teachers and, to some degree, for students. The majority of students enjoyed visiting the Students need longer to museums. The project as a whole was affected by difficulties with the technology, which frustrated complete tasks when social students, with the web-based tool presenting the media is involved. At the greatest challenge. Students had to develop new same time, the task should skills to enable them to work independently but also be spread over time in to work in groups. For teachers, the project involved shorter sessions. thoughtful planning and preparation, but also time. Students needed longer to complete their work. The timetabling of the activities also affected completion of the work, with the most successful again in Portugal, where time was allocated in shorter sessions across the year. By contrast, Tan’s (2009) doctoral research demonstrates factors which actively impede social learning in her exploration of a student-generated Web 2.0 learning platform, the Student Media Centre. It was developed to allow for whole-school digital learning in an independent secondary school in Queensland with a reputation for the achievement of outstanding results. The centre was created and maintained by 30 senior students in Years 10, 11 and 12 who were regarded by the school as talented and ‘highly aspirational’ (p. 81). While apparently student-generated, the impetus for the centre came from the school leadership, which selected the group of students. The centre, based on the content management system, Joomla, and hosted on the school’s intranet, began in 2007. It included an online forum, polls and space for moderation to ensure appropriate content. This moderation was expressly confined to the student team, which was organised with specified roles and a chief editor, with editing rights strictly limited. Overall, other students in the school


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felt that the digital centre ‘was useful-in-principle but useless-in-practice’ (p. 291, emphasis in original). The centre was not used at all by 24 per cent of the students, only occasionally by 38 per cent and another 15 per cent used it about once every two weeks. Only one per Social media needs to be cent used it more than once a week, using all implemented in relation to the seven of its features. In this case, while instigated by the school leadership, the online curriculum or else it will be initiative was not core to the curriculum, in ‘useful-in-principle but useless-infact, it sat outside it. It was in an uneasy practice’ (Tan, 2009, p. 291). relationship, located within the school on its intranet and officially sanctioned, but intended as a learning space. With no relationship with curricular learning and tightly controlled, it was an adjunct which seemed to have limited purposes to the majority of students. Perceptions of extra work involved in the use of social media in educational settings are not limited to teachers. Students experience extra burdens on their learning if they work with unfamiliar applications. Moreover, if this extra burden is perceived as not intrinsically related to the task it will result in completion of only the minimum work required (Joubert & Wishart, 2011). Students’ attitudes to learning are also a factor. Those motivated to do only what is necessary are less likely to make the effort to master new skills (Chan & Chan, 2011). Tan’s (2009) study also points to the importance of orientations to learning in the adoption of social media by students. Those most likely to adopt digital technology use were students who were curious and keen to learn. This reinforces the importance of pedagogical design in ensuring that all students have the skills to participate online with scaffolded tasks to enable active learning. Social identity within schools also plays a role. In Tan’s (2009) study, students interpreted the digital centre in terms of their relationship to it and to their peers: it was ‘either “cool” There could be a powerful or “uncool”’ (p. 292, emphasis in the original). The role for social media members of the student team in charge of the centre students can support their were perceived by other senior students as nerds and peers and offer therefore ‘uncool’, making support of the initiative less likely. But one factor that led to students adopting encouragement. social media was a desire to support their peers and offer encouragement (Duncan-Howell & Lloyd, 2008; Tan, 2009). With social media increasingly becoming sites of identity construction outside schools (e.g. Mallan, 2009), their adoption in learning contexts requires careful consideration that frames their use for educational purposes in ways that are inclusive. In the majority of the studies reviewed, students enjoyed working with social media in their schools, even when teachers or researchers considered the outcomes to be unsuccessful. Chandra & Watters (2012) report that students felt they had more control over their learning and the multiple Social media can facilitate ways that concepts could be presented in the online a sense of student environment catered to different learning styles. DeGennaro (2008) notes the value of the authentic ownership or control over learning experience which students gained through learning. working on real problems, even though it was outside of school time. Similarly, Desilets and Paquet (2005) report on the enjoyment primary school students experienced when working together on a collaborative wiki in an after school hours care setting.


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For social media to achieve the goal of social learning, at least three things are required: clear links between the learning activity and the curriculum; careful attention to planning by At least three things are required: teachers; and clarity about the assessment clear links between the learning tasks in relation to the activity (Owen et al., activity and the curriculum; 2006). As the studies reviewed above careful attention to planning by suggest, a number of other factors also facilitate social learning. A student-centred teachers; and clarity about the model is likely to be more effective than a assessment tasks in relation to teacher-centred one. If teachers are the the activity. primary audience or collaborator, they can only provide a limited amount of time to each student. Blogs, for instance, are well suited to providing students with a platform to write to a larger audience, soliciting feedback and discussion about postings, facilitating reflection, self-editing and If teachers are the primary setting new goals. Approved social networking audience or collaborator, services which enable students to coordinate their they can only provide a work and collaborate on projects are also valuable. limited amount of time to Students working together in small groups rather than large ones is conducive to social learning each student. A studentbecause students form trusting relationships centred, collaborative which facilitate risk taking. Large groups with too environment counters this many active collaborators can mean that students problem. may be marginali Students working together in sed or silenced. It is also important to allow sufficient time as well as flexibility, as some forms small groups rather than large of social media such as blogs, wikis and forums ones is conducive to social are asynchronous, which means that students learning because students need to take turns if they are to engage form trusting relationships meaningfully with each other’s work. Also, which facilitate risk taking. sessions need to be stretched over a period of time, particularly if the collaborators are in other schools or even overseas, when timetabling or different time zones mean that responses cannot be made speedily. While the studies demonstrate that considerable efforts are being made to advance social learning with social media, clearly there remains some way to go.


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Findings and recommendations for future research (a)

Findings

The findings of the report demonstrate that teachers and students use social media widely in their everyday lives and are beginning to use them in classrooms in a variety of ways. However, while teachers and students are experimenting with educational uses of various interactive applications, their use for collaborative purposes for social learning is limited. The findings suggest that the practices associated with social learning can only be characterised as emerging at this point in time and understandings about their possibilities preliminary. The examination of difficulties encountered in a range of educational settings is more frequent than those which discuss how social media have been used effectively for learning. However, clear indications arise from the literature about the factors which enhance and inhibit the use of interactive media in classrooms. The key findings from this report are as follows:

1. To maximise the potential for effective social media use, students must not be assumed to be effective and sophisticated users of interactive technologies, despite the widespread use of social networking in their everyday lives. Students’ use of digital technologies is characterised by difference and diversity. Familiarity with any one application and its use in an educational setting cannot be assumed. Further, those applications more likely to be used in a classroom are those with which students are least familiar, in particular, blogs, microblogs and wikis. An initial assessment of students’ skills with a particular medium is warranted and explicit teaching in how to use interactive applications necessary. 2. The majority of students’ use of social media is at home. Those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to be sophisticated users which means that schools need to provide appropriate technologies and support to enable all students to gain skills in inclusive ways. 3. Students’ use of interactive media in their everyday lives has shaped their orientations to them so that they view social media as primarily affording communication and a means to coordinate their activities with each other. They do not consider these media forms relevant to education. Thus their use in education requires different pedagogical practices incorporating purposeful activities which are valued within the school setting and which acknowledge, but do not diminish, the students’ existing practices. 4. Social media for collaborative learning should be integrated into a pedagogical design which has clear goals and for which the media afford new opportunities rather than being grafted onto existing tasks or introduced into an environment where collaboration is already high. Uses which take advantage of these affordances include: (a) contact with outside experts (b) an audience beyond the teacher (c) meaningful contact between students working on the same activity in out of school hours (d) ways for students to view the work of others in their group or class and


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build on those ideas through adding their own (e) purposeful interaction between students in different schools, levels or classes across time frames and distance (d) facility for timely feedback from teachers and peers (e) a means to enhance the participation of all students. 5. Careful preparation should precede collaborative work. Within schools, individual work which is completed for assessment is the norm, even when students work in small groups. The skills for and understanding of the purposes of collaboration for learning should not be assumed, as working with others can involve risks for students. Preparation for collaboration should include: (a) an explanation of the purpose for the collaboration and how it benefits all students (b) explicit processes developed for working together collaboratively such as agreeing on ways of talking to each other (c) collaboration through small group work, as the trust required to work together effectively takes time to develop through the slow process of relationship building (d) teachers allowing students to make more decisions about their learning (e) teachers monitoring interaction to ensure that collaboration is inclusive and that behaviours within interactions are appropriate and not hurtful or damaging (f) teachers encouraging all students to participate, although with awareness that their participation may be higher at some stages than others. 6. Students need careful preparation and familiarisation with the interactive media chosen for an activity, with the teacher ensuring that the media application should be appropriate for the activity. Students require explicit teaching of the technical and social skills required for the application and for the learning activity. Teachers need to demonstrate commitment to the activity and to participate in the interaction. As well as moderating the use of the media, teachers’ interactions legitimise the practice as educational, value the interaction and shape it purposefully. Students gain confidence and skills through experiential learning with the medium. 7. It should be recognised that all students are hesitant to interact through the media with people whom they have not met before. They can feel exposed to risk through sharing work with those they don’t know and haven’t met face to face. Time needs to be allocated to socialising, more than is the case when students know each other, and it should not be considered as wasting time. Social chat is a means to build trusting relationships with others whom students have not met face to face and whom they recognise as having the potential to deceive or abuse them. The use of video in media interaction between students and others who are separated by distance is highly valued as it enables trust to be built through visual and auditory cues. 8. The tasks for which social media are used need to be appropriate and purposeful. Tasks which facilitate effective use of social media for students offer: (a) clear links with the curriculum and explicit guidelines about assessment (b) an authentic learning experience (c) greater potential for collaboration (d) the preservation of students’ original work as this reduces their level of task anxiety, meaning that they will be more likely to comment on or modify another’s work (e) the opportunity to track their changes and to consider their progress (f) the opportunity for teachers to stimulate new lines of inquiry and provide feedback and encouragement (g) extended time for an activity which can be developed in stages and continue over a number of sessions. Where students and teachers are working together with interactive media with which they are unfamiliar, time needs to be allocated within the task plan for them to become familiar. As exchanges are often made through asynchronous media, the time taken for responses is longer and needs to be catered for.


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9. Social media implementation benefits from a shift to a more student-centred model which enables students to make more decisions about their learning. Collaborative small group work with social media provides a means for teachers to give feedback to groups rather than to individuals. The goal of the feedback should be to stimulate students to think more deeply and to engage with each other meaningfully, not simply to produce a summative comment on progress. 10. Teachers’ beliefs about the greater workload involved when social media are incorporated into their practice can inhibit willingness to adopt them for classroom use. The use of social media does involve more work in the early stages, particularly when teachers require new skills in specific applications and when their use means that they may be required to interact with students or colleagues in out-of-school hours. Encouraging teachers in the use of social media needs to be more than simply technical training. Critical discussion also needs to occur regarding the affordances of the media and their relationship to learning goals and learning needs, as well as the implications of their use such as the need to develop strategies for reducing workload. For example, after hours contact can be limited by setting boundaries to the time of contact and the means, and what students can expect from that contact. At the same time, the affordance of most social media as a persistent record means that teachers can review student progress at any time, as well as over a period of time, and they do not need to rely on students maintaining a hardcopy portfolio of evidence or handing in assessments. 11. This new openness also brings with it consideration of risks to perceived competence, reputation and employment. Teachers need to be fully aware of risks when using interactive media, including those to their sense of identity and professionalism, and their obligations to maintain the highest level of standards. Scenarios which explore the risks and model appropriate conduct would be an effective adjunct to the DEECD’s Social Media Guide and should be widely distributed. 12. Teachers vary considerably in their skills and confidence with interactive media for educational uses. Teachers often encounter technical difficulties working with new technologies and applications which can cause them to disengage. This review has revealed that an effective strategy to encourage teacher learning with new applications is to involve teams of teachers working together, or collaborations between teachers and researchers, with appropriate support from technical staff. 13. Teachers need time to plan and share experiences with their colleagues. This can be achieved through working in teams, participating in funded professional development, and being provided with time release. Teachers’ use of social media in their everyday lives provides a framework of existing practices on which to build educational ones. The ability to share these with colleagues in their schools and outside networks stimulates new ways of thinking about their potential use in classrooms. As with students, when teachers interact with those online whom they do not know and have not met face to face, time is needed to develop trusting relationships. Socialising is an important part of this interaction which, in the initial stages, may involve more coordination than collaboration. 14. New skills are gained by teachers learning new media applications through using them for content-based, facilitated interaction in their school environment, working


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together with other teachers whom they know and trust. The involvement of the principal in developing a shared vision of the use of social media for social learning and participating as a peer in interaction is vital. Through experiential learning, teachers gain new skills and confidence, but their significant concerns about the potentially permanent nature of their digital interactions needs sensitive and thoughtful acknowledgement. 15. Teachers’ commitment to the implementation of new media in their classrooms will be enhanced by state-based frameworks which encourage such use. Professional development which goes beyond technical skills training as a requirement for accreditation and which is delivered through social media encourages teachers to use these media in ways which are purposeful.

(b)

Recommendations for further research

The report has revealed a limited research base, particularly in Australia and especially in terms of finely grained empirical studies that reveal both the social complexity and pragmatic instrumentalism afforded by social media in the lives of students and for the purposes of learning. The majority of studies investigating the use of social media in classrooms are small-scale and focused on first uses of social media by teachers or researchers in one or small numbers of classrooms. The few large-scale or longitudinal research studies suggest changes in teachers’ and students’ attitudes and practices over time as they collaborate with social media but generally do not reveal significant understanding of how the media can be implemented in other contexts or influence learning outcomes. In addition, a critical issue repeatedly highlighted in the literature review is that what works in one school won’t necessarily work in others. Consequently, there is a need for future research to clarify the contextual issues of use. There is a need for in-depth research which explores students’ learning (not just attitudinal change) in and out of classrooms with social media. A large-scale empirical study is recommended in which students and teachers from a diverse range of schools engage in a series of purposeful applications of social media according to the principles outlined in this report. The study research design needs to collect data of student progression over time along with in-depth data of how affordances of social media (which transcend specific social media applications) are used, shape and are shaped by students in and out of school. The outcome of the research would initially be the development of exemplar stories (preferably multimedia) that could be used by schools, teachers and professional learning coordinators. A longer term outcome would be the development of models (not just strategies) demonstrating how social media affordances can be identified and aligned with pedagogical designs, content and learning outcomes. As the role of social media in shaping learning outcomes is unlikely to be direct, it is important to undertake a comprehensive study that takes account of key contextual factors that influence the impact of social media. A smallscale single-intervention study could not build a sufficiently robust understanding of the complex ways in which social media interact with the social milieu of students’ and teachers’ lives, the educational enterprise and ultimately ways of knowing and doing.


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Lankshear, C. and Snyder, I. with Green, B. (2000). Teachers and techno-literacy. Crows Nest NSW, Allen and Unwin. Lee, M. & McLoughlin, C. (2010). Beyond distance and time constraints: Applying social networking tools and Web 2.0 approaches in distance education. In G. Veletsianos (Ed.) Emerging technologies in distance education (pp. 61-87). Edmonton: AU Press. Lenhart, A., Madden, M., Macgill, A. & Smith, A. (2007). Teens and social media. PewInternet: Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://pewinternet.org (10 January, 2012). Lenhart, A., Purcell, K., Smith & Zickuhr, K. (2010). Social media and mobile internet use among teens and young adults. PewInternet: Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://pewinternet.org (10 January, 2012). Liu, C.-C., Liu, K.-P., Chen, W.-H., Lin, C.-P. & Chen, G.-D. (2011). Collaborative storytelling experiences in social media: Influence of peer-assistance mechanisms. Computers & Education, 57 (2): 1544-1556. Livingstone, S. & Brake, D. (2010). On the rapid rise of social networking sites: New findings and policy implications. Children and Society, 24: 75-83. Livingstone, S. & Haddon, L. (2009). EU kids online: Final report. LSE, London: EU kids online. Retrieved from http://www2.lse.ac.uk (23 July, 2010). Lomicka, L. & Lord, G. (Eds). (2009). The next generation: Social networking and online collaboration in foreign language learning. San Marcos, Tx: CALICO. Luckin, R., Logan, K., Clark, W., Graber, R., Oliver, M. & Mee, A. (2008) Learners’ use of Web 2.0 technologies in and out of school in Key Stages 3 and 4. Coventry: Becta. Luckin, R., Clark, W., Graber, R., Logan, K., Mee, A., Oliver, M. (2009). Do Web 2.0 tools really open the door to learning? Practices, perceptions and profiles of 11-16-year-old students. Learning, Media and Technology, 34 (2): pp. 87-104. Lund, A. (2008). Wikis: A collective approach to language production. ReCALL, 20 (1): 3554. Maher, D. (2009). The importance of elementary school students’ social chat online: Reconceptualising the curriculum. Computers & Education, 53: 511-516. Maher, D. (2010). Supporting students’ transition from primary school to high school using the Internet as a communication tool. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 19 (1): 17-30. Mak, B. & Coniam, D. (2008). Using wikis to enhance and develop writing skills among secondary school students in Hong Kong. System, 437-455. Mallan, K. (2009). Look at me! Look at me! Self-representation and self-exposure through online networks. Digital Culture and Education, 1 (1): 51-66. Margaryan, A., Littlejohn, A. & Vojt, G. (2011). Are digital natives a myth or reality? University students’ use of digital technologies. Computers & Education, 56 (2): 429-440. Marttunen, M. & Laurinen, L. (2007). Collaborative learning though chat discussions and argument diagrams in secondary school. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 40 (1): 109-126. McEwan, M. (2010). Adventures in Web 2.0: Discovery box. Scan, 29 (3): 15-18. Mills, K. & Chandra, V. (2011). Microblogging as a literacy practice for educational communities. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 55 (1): 35-45. Minocha, S. (2009). Role of social software tools in education: A literature review. Education & Training, 51 (5-6): 353-369. Mirny, A., Wiske, M., Joo, J., Cunningham, G., Daniels, D., Farid, A., Gordon, F., Madani, R. & Nissen, S. (2010). Global networked learning: A new form of collaborative action research. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Denver, CO. Moyle, K. (2006). Leadership and learning with ICT. Voices from the profession. Canberra: Teaching Australia.


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Moyle, K. & Owen, S. (2008). Students’ voices. Learning with technologies. Students’ expectations about learning with technologies: A literature review. Canberra: University of Canberra. Moyle, K. & Owen, S. (2009). Listening to students’ and educators’ voices : the views of students and early career educators about learning with technologies in Australian education and training : Research findings. Canberra: Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. Owen, M., Grant, L., Sayers, S. & Facer, K. (2006). Social software and learning. Bristol: Futurelab. Philip, R. & Nicholls, J. (2009). Group blogs: Documenting collaborative drama processes. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 25 (5): 683-699. Pifarre, M. & Fisher, R. (2011). Breaking up the writing process: how wikis can support understanding the composition and revision strategies of young writers. Language and Education, 25 (5): 451-466. Pluss, M. (2011). January 2011: Learning using Twitter. Geography Bulletin, 43 (2): 16-18. Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants Part 1, On The Horizon, 9 (5): 1-6. Reid, J. (2011). “We don’t Twitter, we Facebook.” An alternative pedagogical space that enables critical practices in relation to writing. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 10 (1): 58-80. Renninger, K., Cai, M., Lewis, M., Adams, M. & Ernst, K. (2011). Motivation and learning in an online, unmoderated, mathematics workshop for teachers. Educational Technology Research and Development, 59: 229-247. Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful web tools for classrooms. London: Sage Publications Ltd. Riddle, M. (2008). ICTs in the daily lives of Australian students. Paper presented at Ascilite, Melbourne. Riddle, M. & Howell, C. (2008). You are here : students map their own ICT landscapes. Paper presented at Ascilite, Melbourne. Scardamalia, M. & Bereiter, C. (2006). Knowledge building: Theory, pedagogy, and technology. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.) Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences. (pp. 97-118). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Singh, P., Mallan, K.& Giardina, N. (2008). Just Google It! Students constructing knowledge through internet travel. Paper presented at the Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education, Brisbane. Stergioulas, L. & Drenoyianni, H. (Eds). (2011). Pursuing digital literacy in compulsory education. New literacies and digital epistemologies. New York: Peter Lang. Sweeney, T. & Geer, R. (2010). Students’ use of ICT in the early years. In D. Gron & G. Romeo (Eds) ACEC2010: Digital diversity. Conference Proceedings of the Australian Computers in Education Conference 2010, Melbourne 6-9 April, Carlton, Vic: Australian Council for Computers in Education (ACEC). Retrieved from http://acec2010.acce.edu.au. Tan, J. (2009). Digital kids, analogue students : a mixed methods study of students' engagement with a school-based Web 2.0 learning innovation. PhD thesis, Queensland University of Technology. Thomas, M. (Ed.). (2009). Handbook of research on Web 2.0 and second language learning. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Tondeur, J., Cooper, M. & Newhouse, C. P. (2010). From ICT coordination to ICT integration: A longitudinal case study. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26: 296-306. Topsfield, J. (2010). Digital natives restless. The Age, 21 August. Trinidad, S. & Broadley, T. (2008). Using Web 2.0 applications to close the digital divide in Western Australia. Education in Rural Australia, 18 (1): 3-11. Valk, A., Atticks, A., Binning, R., Manekin, E., Schiff, A., Shibata, R. & Townes, M. (2011). Engaging communities and classrooms: Lessons from the Fox Point oral history project. Oral History Review, 38 (1), pp. 136-157.


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Van den Beemt, A., Akkerman, S. & Simons, P. (2010). Pathways in interactive media practices among youths. Learning, Media and Technology, 35 (4): 419-434. Van den Beemt, A., Akkerman, S. & Simons, P. (2011). Patterns of interactive media use among contemporary youth. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 27: 103-118. Vavasseur, C. & MacGregor, S. (2008). Extending content-focused professional development through online communities of practice. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 40 (4): 517-536. Walsh, C. (2009). 21st century digital literacies for teachers. In C. Durrant & K. Starr (Eds) English for a new millennium: Leading change (pp. 175-232). Kent Town, SA: Wakefield Press. Wankel, E. (Ed.). (2011). Educating educators with social media. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Ltd. Wishart, J. & Triggs, P. (2010). MuseumScouts: Exploring how schools, museums and interactive technologies can work together to support learning. Computers & Education, 54: 669-678. Wong, R. & Hew, K. (2010). The impact of blogging and scaffolding on primary school pupils’ narrative writing: A case study. International Journal of Web-based Learning and Teaching Technologies, 5, 2, 1-17. Zhang, J., Scardamalia, M., Lamon, M., Messina, R. & Reeve, R. (2007). Socio-cognitive dynamics of knowledge building in the work of 9- and 10-year-olds. Education Technology Research and Development, 55: 117-145. Zywica, J., Richards, K. & Gomez, K. (2011). Affordances of a scaffolded-social learning network, On the Horizon, 19 (1): 33-42.


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Appendix A - Selected works: Annotated bibliography 1. Australian Research Schools, students, teachers Chandra, V. & Watters, J. (2012). Re-thinking physics teaching with web-based learning. Computers & Education, 58, 631-640. The paper reports on research in an Australian secondary school with senior level physics students, noting that students typically experience physics as demanding and lessons as often boring. The aim of the study was to investigate whether students’ learning could be improved by incorporating Web 2.0 technologies with a pedagogical model that was built on the notion of ‘cognitive apprenticeship’ (p. 633). A website, Getsmart, was designed for this purpose by a teacher, the first author of the paper. It incorporated scaffolding for students through ‘emails, chats, online quizzes, and use of hypertexts’ (p. 633). The study was conducted with Year 12 students, although the number of students isn’t provided. A quasiexperimental model was adopted, with one group undertaking several units in the usual way and the other, using the website. Two teachers were involved, including the researcher. There is a lack of clarity around the numbers of students and the ways in which the two groups were taught. A written pre-test and post-test were administered and surveys on completion of the units. These were then subjected to statistical analysis. Log in data and chat transcripts were also collected. Students used the website, with most doing so after school. Chat sessions were set in an after school period with interactions between teachers and students from their homes on aspects of the subject matter. These enabled some to participate who may not normally have done so in class but also involved considerable work for the teacher. The different ways concepts were presented on the website enabled students to learn in a variety of ways. Seventy-two per cent of the students believed their results had improved because of their use of the website and felt they had more control over their learning. For those who felt that it made no difference, one reason given was a dislike of computers. Overall, students felt they had benefited and the researchers concluded that there is potential for such an approach. Maher, D. (2009) The importance of elementary school students’ social chat online: Reconceptualising the curriculum, Computers & Education, 53, 511-516. The paper reports on research carried out with 22 grade 5/6 students and their teacher in Sydney over a 12 month period. The students were aged between 11 and 12. The class had access to networked computers and the teacher wanted to use the internet. The researcher spent one day a week in the classroom as teacher/researcher with the other teacher and with students, and also conducted interviews with the teacher and students. For data analysis,


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grounded theory was used. The research was focused on students’ interactions. Earlier research suggested that amongst young people interacting via the internet in schools, their interactions could be characterised as ‘social talk’ or ‘domain talk’, which linked to the learning task (p. 512). The researcher determined that in this set of interactions, four categories could be discerned: ‘the technical content; the navigational content; the social content and; the curriculum content’ (p. 512). In the social category, these could be further broken down into ‘opening/closing’ and ‘topic talk’ (p. 512), the subject of this paper. One of the units was for primary students to communicate with high school students as part of a transition activity. The primary students were set a scene from a play, with the high school students set another. They were to discuss these online using a Messenger-type program in preparation for a joint performance. Eight 40-minute lessons were set aside for the interactions. The theoretical framework was sociocultural, drawing on Wertsch and Vygotsky. The researcher noted that ‘opening/closing’ took up considerably more time than in face to face classrooms as students needed to establish their identities with strangers when there were no visual or auditory cues. He notes that such social chat precedes discussion of learning contact. He points out that this contrasts with the classroom when teachers aim to minimise social chat. He concludes that social chat should be considered as integral to online interactions and important to develop relationships so that time should be allowed by teachers for such chat. Maher, D. (2010). Supporting students’ transition from primary school to high school using the Internet as a communication tool. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 19, 1, 17-30. In a study which forms part of the one summarised just above, the researcher reports on the secondary students involved in the study. These were the eight Year 7 students who interacted online with the Year 6 students of the earlier study. The platform was a modified ‘asynchronous guestbook’ which then allowed synchronous interactions (p. 20). As in the previous study, there was considerable social activity but there was also discussion about the high school situation. Language practices demonstrated in this space by one Year 6 child were clearly recognised as not permitted in the secondary space and the Year 7 student response reflected this. There were also challenges. Some students adopted others’ names, meaning that trust was undermined. Technical issues with the design of the space created other problems, although the researcher noted that newer sites had developed in ways that would overcome both of these issues. He concluded that the online discussions, supported by other activities, were helpful in assisting transition. Singh, P., Mallan, K. & Girardina, N. (2008). Just Google it! Students constructing knowledge through internet travel, AARE Conference, December 2, 2008. The conference paper reports on an ARC-funded study which investigated young people’s construction of identities and social relationships both offline and online. The study involved four secondary schools in Queensland which promoted technology use. The participants were approximately 170 students between 12 and 17 and the data were gathered through


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online profiles, focus groups and interviews. Around 150 students participated in the focus groups across the schools over five sessions with ten in each group. In this paper, the data is drawn from focus groups. Each of these students used computers both at home and at school and more than half used the internet five or more times weekly. Data were analysed for themes. Nearly all groups made mention of Wikipedia and Google, particularly in the context of school assignments. Not all thought of themselves as technologically fluent, although they considered themselves more so than either their parents or their teachers. Yet the internet and particularly Google was the first place many of them turned when looking for information, because of its speed. The fact that it returned many hits also seemed of value. However, they did not accept everything at face value and corroborated their sources against better known and apparently more authoritative sources, like books in school libraries. The legitimacy of the site was also evaluated, partly with reference to the suffixes in domain names. The researchers suggest that young people move readily between the on and offline worlds, with much of their how-to knowledge developed out of school and from their peers. Tan, J. (2009) Digital kids, analogue students : a mixed methods study of students' engagement with a school-based Web 2.0 learning innovation, PhD, Queensland University of Technology. Tan’s (2009) doctoral research was conducted in an independent secondary school in Queensland with a reputation for the achievement of high results. Her study explored a student-generated Web 2.0 learning platform, the Student Media Centre, which was developed to allow for whole school digital learning. The centre was created and maintained by 30 senior students in Years 10, 11 and 12 who were regarded by the school as talented and ‘highly aspirational’ (p. 81). While apparently student-generated, the impetus for the centre came from the school leaders, who selected the group of students. The centre, based on Joomla and hosted on the school’s intranet, began in 2007. It incorporated multimedia presentations of school events but also allowed for other content. It included an online forum and polls, as well as space for moderation to ensure appropriate content. This moderation was expressly confined to the student team, which was organised with specified roles and a chief editor, with editing rights strictly limited. The pedagogical framework behind the initiative was primarily ‘social constructivism and situated learning’ (p. 88). Tan adopted a case-study methodology using a mixed methods approach. She employed a questionnaire to gauge students’ interest in and use of the centre, the results of which were subjected to statistical analysis. She also undertook focus group interviews with 60 students. The results showed that 24 per cent did not use the centre at all, 38 per cent occasionally and used few features and about 15 per cent used it once every two weeks or more and used more features. Only about 1per cent used it more than once a week and used all of the features. Students generally did not support it and did not consider it useful. The factors that were most influential in predicting use were: the social, ‘Peer Support’ (p. 288), the ‘technological factors Perceived Ease of Use and Usefulness’ (p. 288). For individual factors, ‘Learning Goal Orientations and Cognitive Curiosity’ were particularly significant in explaining SMC usage among students’ (p. 289). ‘Students who reported the lowest levels of SMC usage experienced low levels of peer support, considered the SMC complex to use and lacking in usefulness, and were characterised by low levels of curiosity and learning goal-


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orientations but high performance goal-orientations’ (p. 289). Tan concludes that Web 2.0 technologies require ‘peer endorsement’ for them to be adopted in the social environment of the school (p. 290). Overall, students felt that the centre ‘was useful-in-principle but useless-in-practice’ (p. 291). Powerful institutional and social values meant that they interpreted the centre in terms of their relationship to it and to their peers: it was ‘either “cool” or “uncool”’ (292). The members of the student team were perceived as nerds and therefore uncool. The authoritarian nature of the school militated against it, with students afraid of the consequences of expressing real views. Another important pressure was that placed on ‘academic performance’ (p. 294) with the centre seen as not relevant to this. 2. Overseas Research School-related: Schools, students, teachers Austin, R., Smyth, J., Rickard, A., Quirk-Bolt, N. & Metcalfe, N. (2010) Collaborative digital learning in schools: Teacher perceptions of purpose and effectiveness. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 19, 3, 327-343. The paper considers how collaboration is being promoted within and between schools using ICT but notes that while teachers are important, little is known of their understandings of collaboration. The researchers employ data from the Dissolving Boundaries programme established to connect schools in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Their data were gathered between 2006 to 2008 when there were 150 schools in the programme. The platform used was Moodle, including a forum and a wiki for students to interact with others from another school. The students were assigned to groups. The study used a mixed methods approach: an online questionnaire for teachers via Moodle, that achieved a response rate of 42 per cent of 71 teachers from both primary and secondary schools; focus group interviews; individual interviews with four teachers; and data from Moodle. The focus was on teachers’ perceptions of collaborative learning. More than half the teachers felt that the primary purpose of collaborative learning was to improve students’ ability to develop relationships, particularly for primary teachers, although secondary teachers put more emphasis on the ability to learn content knowledge while still valuing the ability to develop friendships. There was also greater understanding of the way collaborative learning worked in practice and that it needed to begin within a teacher’s classroom and from there with other teachers as well as students. They also distinguished between collaboration and communication or coordination. They noted that there were tensions between collaboration and competition, but also that there were difficulties for students commenting on others’ work when they were in another school. The researchers also identified types of wiki use from the least collaborative to the most, and determined that of the schools involved in the programme, 56 per cent in 2006-07 created one and 24 per cent could be identified as the most collaborative form. This increased in the following year, but the nature of the increase is unclear in the paper. Trust was an important element in collaboration. They note that ‘it is very difficult for teachers and their classes to reach the highest levels of collaborative learning without regular social interaction’ (p. 337).


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However, they also note that if a learning unit has been established for a specific purpose with clear goals, topic and task, that the importance of social interaction between students is minimised. The researchers compare videoconferencing with Moodle, with positive comments from teachers on videoconferencing but more mixed comments on wikis and forums in Moodle, which required more competence in ICT. The researchers comment that ‘teacher professionalism’ (p. 341) is the most important factor in developing successful partnerships with other schools. As these researchers were all leading the Dissolving Boundaries programme, this involvement may have influenced their findings. Chan, C. & Chan, Y-Y. (2011). Students’ views of collaboration and online participation in Knowledge Forum, Computers & Education, 57, 1445-1457. The paper is focused on collaborative learning in computer supported learning environments, drawing on Scardamalia and Bereiter (1994, 2006). The researchers note that there is little known about students’ views of collaboration and whether it is linked with learning. They also point out that earlier research into discussion forums shows that students’ comments are often socially motivated or relatively scant. The researchers undertook a quantitative study, using a questionnaire to ascertain students’ beliefs about collaborative learning and its relationship to their use of Knowledge Forum. Two questionnaires were administered to 521 secondary school students between the ages of 12 to 17 in Forms 1 to 6 from eight schools in Hong Kong, who were already taking part in research involving using computers. There were 322 male and 199 female students, with approximately even numbers of students from high- and low-band schools. Data were also gathered on student use of Knowledge Forum. Statistical analysis was conducted. Their findings suggest that if students believed that collaboration enhanced their learning, they participated more in Knowledge Forum. Surface beliefs about learning are not aligned with learning behaviours within online discussion posts. An important issue raised in this study is that ‘these findings are consistent with the idea that online forum participation involves metacognitive and epistemological dimensions (Tsai, 2009)’ (p. 1454). They note the limitation of self-report. DeGennaro, D. (2008). Learning designs: An analysis of youth-initiated technology use. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 4, 1, 1-20. The paper reports on a study involving the use of Instant Messenger in a specific schoolrelated context, but one which occurs out of school time in a private school in the US with four male students communicating with their teacher over a six month period. These senior students were from a high SES background in Philadelphia and involved in an after school technology club. Their duties in the club and their work meant that they wanted to contact their teacher, who agreed to their request to communicate via IM. This was an unusual case of students initiating contact. The researcher was invited by the teacher, whom she knew, to conduct the study through observation as a ‘lurker’ rather than a participant. The IM transcripts, with the students’ consent, formed part of the data, and they were collected by the teacher. Other data included interviews, journals and records of the communication times with the teacher.


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She approached the data from an interpretivist perspective within a socio-technical framework. Her focus was on the patterns of interaction, attitudes and values, which she then discussed with the participants, proceeding in a dialogical way. She identifies three themes in particular related to interactions between the participants: ‘Negotiated Goals, Co-Constructed Problem Solving and Collaborative Argumentation’ (p. 8). She suggests that these have implications for learning designs using interactive technologies, pointing to the importance of both the technology and the social: the technology permits certain kinds of actions but these take place within a social context in which values and purpose are important. For the students, they were gaining authentic learning which allowed them to progress in ways that might not otherwise have been possible and to have their learning recognised by their teacher. It also gave some students ‘voice’ (p. 15) whose expertise may not be valued in their everyday classrooms. The teacher set the limits in the initial stages, requiring students to initiate contact and only within certain times. The researcher noted ‘a unique affordance of IM ... IM does allow both teacher and student who work across different physical spaces that are situated within different patterns of practice’ (p. 16). The researcher also notes the difficulty of incorporating IM into a regular classroom, suggesting instead that it be used with groups of students to communicate with each other and for a leader to communicate with the teacher. She also notes that IM is often banned in schools but sees some potential for its use. Nevertheless, as she reports, her study is an unusual one as it was carried out in a very focused and specific environment. Gomez, M., Schieble, M., Curwood, J. & Hassett, D. (2010). Technology, learning and instruction: Distributed cognition in the secondary English classroom. Literacy, 44, 1, 20-27. The paper reports on a study involving secondary students and trainee teachers in online discussions in the US to examine whether they represented ‘distributed cognition’ (p. 20). Their theoretical framework draws on Vygotsky but also on new literacies approaches, a socio-cognitive approach. The study involved groups of trainee English teachers using Moodle in three semesters between 2006 and 2008. There were different groups each semester taking a unit in adolescent literature. They interacted online with a secondary class from a nearby school, assisting them to conduct research or post to a forum, as they studied texts. This participation was conducted over three weeks, with the teenage students tasked with contributing twice a week to the online discussion space. After completion and grading, interviews were conducted with volunteers. Posts and trainee teachers’ papers formed part of the data, as did focus groups with the secondary students and trainee teachers. Data were coded and analysed for themes. They adopted an approach to considering the technologies as part of the means through which distributed thinking takes place, but refracted through the individual’s resources. They consider the process of making meaning from a particular text as the result of the use of multiple resources and identify three which they believe were key: the student teacher education unit which used a critical literacy framework; the resources already embedded in the online space by the trainee teachers including a presentation from the author of the text; and the predominantly white middle class culture within the teenagers’ school. The researchers briefly examine the post of one male teenage student and how his interpretation is shaped by his background. They note that the trainee teachers, while having previously elicited further comment on the text from the student, do not identify his response as an opportunity to challenge his views in a different way. They argue that the positioning of


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the trainee teachers as themselves learning precluded this. However, the online space meant that more resources of different kinds were available to assist in new ways of creating meaning but they require a thoughtful teacher to maximise their benefits. There are few details provided beyond these included here and little about the secondary students. They are used as an example to support a theory of distributed cognition. Grant, L. (2009). “I DON’T CARE DO UR OWN PAGE!’ A case study of using wikis for collaborative work in a UK secondary school. Learning, Media and Technology, 34, 2, 105117. The paper begins with an overview of wikis and notes that wikis are seldom used in schools. The researcher situates the theoretical framework as ‘communities of practice’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and ‘knowledge-building networks’ (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994). She points out that the collaboration involved in building a wiki does not necessarily lead to learning but may simply be a means of coordination. She employs the concept of ‘collective cognition’ (Lund & Smørdal, 2006) to describe the process of learning which occurs when a group of people gain new knowledge through working together which would not have been achievable when working individually (p. 107). She conducted a case study which was focused on the collaborative learning involved in a wiki, particularly through students editing another’s work, as involving higher order thinking on both the part of the editor and the writer of the original work. Three Year 9 ICT classes in a British secondary school participated in the research. Students were selected by their teachers to participate in groups of six to nine and given a separate wiki. The wikis were made available only to the students and teachers of the groups and the researcher. From the three wiki groups, six students were interviewed in a group, with the ICT teacher interviewed before the research and then following it. Students’ wikis also formed part of the data set and were read by the researcher. Students decided on topics themselves. Students enjoyed working in the wiki environment but only two students modified another’s entry and then in minor ways. Nor did students participate in discussions around the content. They felt that their work was their own and did not see the potential for editing as being something positive. The researcher argues that students have internalised the norms of school practice which involves the completion and assessment of work individually and have brought these practices to the wiki. This may, however, have been an effect of the type of collaboration, that is, editing, that was invited. In terms of knowledge-building, the researcher saw little evidence that new knowledge had been created. The task mirrored tasks required of them for assessment and the audience was the teacher, which the researcher argued limited the potential for these students to engage more deeply. She also noted that it was the first time that wikis had been used in the school. Hastie, P., Casey, A. & Tarter, A-M. (2010). A case study of wikis and student-designed games in physical education. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 19, 1, 79-91. The paper reports on research within a physical education subject area in a secondary school in England. It was a compulsory subject and classes were segregated by gender. The teacher was interested in incorporating technology but only in a way which had an authentic learning purpose for his subject area. Participants in the research were the physical


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education teacher, the librarian and 28 boys from two classes, Years 10 and 11, between 14 and 16 years of age. The teacher was taking part as a teacher/researcher as part of his doctoral studies. An American university professor was also involved as an expert to provide additional advice on games to the teacher and avenues for students to gain feedback from the wikis from some of his students. In three teams of four to five, students were allocated a wiki with one as its manager. Each group was set the task of designing an ‘invasion game’ (p. 81). Data gathering involved the teacher’s journal completed after each session, analysis of the wiki and interviews with students, teacher and librarian by the professor. Data were analysed for themes. Students showed considerable interest in the wiki, posting comments on it outside of school hours. This added to the teacher’s workload although he welcomed their increased interest. He was able to monitor progress through the emails he received when changes were made and provide feedback. He felt that the games were better than those done before. Students benefited from comparing their work with others after class and suggestions from the American students could be considered and adopted or discarded, extending a ‘community of practice’ (p. 86). The outside audience was perceived as a positive benefit and exciting for the students. It also enabled less athletic boys to participate positively. The researchers note that ‘almost 100 iterations of the wikis were completed within the first week of the project’ (p. 89). However, wiki managers asserted their rights to editing. This project, unlike some of those in other studies, did not form part of assessment. Critical factors appear to be the involvement of a higher SES community, the involvement of outside experts and a task that was interesting for students. Heafner, T. & Friedman, A. (2008). Wikis and constructivism in secondary Social Studies: Fostering a deeper understanding. Computers in the Schools, 25, 3-4, 288-302. The paper reports on a study involving the use of wikis in a secondary social studies program in the US based on constructivist principles. The researchers together with a social studies classroom teacher of eleventh grade students created a course component which required a wiki to be constructed by the students, explaining World War II. This unit was taught to one class using the wiki and another class was taught the same unit without a wiki. The researchers collated primary source material and placed it on the wiki. They presented initial sessions on using wikis and assisted throughout the class, although in the other class, conducted observation only. Their data consisted of observations, interviews with teachers, marks on tests, and questionnaires administered to students. Eight months after the project was completed, interviews were conducted with a total of 10 students, five from each class. The researchers report that the method employed by the teacher of the group using wikis had been teacher-centred with little use of technology by students. The students engaged with the wiki, with the topic and with each other through their comments, although it should be noted that it seemed these occurred more during their class group work than on the wiki itself. The paper doesn’t supply much information on this. The climate of testing worried the teacher of the wiki class who felt they were underprepared for their tests and in fact the control group scored higher on these tests. Nor did the students appear to have demonstrated any learning gains beyond the norm on the usual assessment administered. On the interviews eight months later, students in the wiki class reported higher levels of ‘content retention’ (p. 298) than students in the control class.


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The researchers suggest that the wiki students benefited from the collaborative nature of the wiki but also note that three teachers in the class may also have assisted. They present little data which would assist in evaluating the quality of their research design or their data interpretation. Hur, J. & Brush, T. (2009). Teacher participation in online communities: Why do teachers want to participate in self-generated online communities of K-12 teachers? Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 41,3, 279-303. The paper reports on research into online communities of teachers which have been generated by teacher interest as opposed to those created for teachers by particular bodies, noting that more teachers participate for longer periods of time in these self-generated networks rather than in those created for research purposes. The theoretical framework is that of Communities of Practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), Social Learning Theory (Putnam & Borko, 2000) and Emotional Sharing. They argue that these networks are more popular and thus an important source to discover what professional development teachers need. The researchers used a case study methodology, employing a number of different criteria to choose online communities, including that there should be at least 1000 members and be self-generated. It was also ‘Web-based, not an electronic mailing list’ (p. 284). Three communities were selected. All the websites used allowed for uploading of material and online discussion, one employing blog technology, the other two ‘structured forums’ (p. 286). Twenty-three members from the three communities participated in the research, with a range of backgrounds, ages and frequency in terms of online participation. Data were gathered from phone and email interviews, posts, the guidelines for the online communities and the profiles of members. Data were coded and analysed for themes. The researchers identified five reasons for participation: ‘(a) sharing emotions, (b) utilizing the advantages of online environments, (c) combating teacher isolation, (d) exploring ideas, and (e) experiencing a sense of camaraderie’ (pp. 290-1). The anonymity of the online community provided a safe place for sharing the difficulties that teaching involved. In schools or research settings, it was possible teachers could be judged as incompetent or unprofessional. The researchers noted that there were few ways for teachers to share the emotional labour involved in teaching and it was an important factor which was often overlooked. A sense of belonging to a community and a building of relationships with others was also important. They suggest that these have implications for professional learning. Joubert, M. & Wishart, J. in press (2011). Participatory practices: Lessons learnt from two initiatives using online digital technologies to build knowledge. Computers & Education, doi: 10.1016/j.compedu.2011.09.024. The paper begins by noting the paucity of research into schools and their use of Web 2.0 tools from a knowledge building perspective, drawing on Scardamalia and Bereiter (2006). From this perspective, the cultural setting in which learning takes place is critical to successful knowledge building. The culture of schools, where students work often singly on the same task is at odds with that of more advanced knowledge cultures where different aspects will be worked on to produce a collective result. Their paper reports on two separate


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studies, building on findings from the research literature to design initiatives with digital tools that they believed would foster trust and enable collective knowledge building. In the first, six teachers from six schools took part in a unit which was designed to enhance science students’ ability to advance an argument and to gain knowledge of ethics. Following a day’s professional development, and over a period of six months, the teachers conducted discussions with their students on three occasions, one that was face to face, another online with their students and another online with students from two or more different classes. A total of 134 students took part. Data were gathered from these discussions and from questionnaires to both students and teachers. The second study involved researchers with the intention of developing a research vision for the STELLAR network and the tool chosen was a wiki. The students in the first study had a low level of posts, with many making only the minimum of one required by their teachers. Few commented on others’ posts. The pattern of the researchers was similar. Few contributed. For both groups, posts were short, for the school students, no more than two sentences. Students generally expressed beliefs and opinions, reinforcing these with emoticons. The researchers note that ‘it is not usual in schools for students to build on one another’s work; it is much more common for them to work in parallel’ (p. 8). For the researchers, accustomed to working together on a text, the lack of ability to see changes in the text of the wiki or to claim authorship may have been inhibiting factors. The type of knowledge to be built is also a factor, with the authors suggesting that statements of belief, as with the students, or the construction of a vision, as with the academics, may be more difficult to produce collaboratively. The tools themselves also presented technical difficulties in both cases. Preparation for the students by their teachers for the task was limited and for the researchers, the wiki was set up with text already added. This affected the interpretations of the task for both groups. Their key finding is that in neither case did participants share in the goals and therefore had no commitment to their achievement. They stress the role of building support for shared goals as an important first step. Lai, H-M. & Chen, C-P. (2011). Factors influencing secondary teachers’ adoption of teaching blogs. Computers & Education, 56, 948-960. The paper reports on a quantitative study in Taiwan into the adoption of blogs by teachers to communicate with students, employing a framework drawn from Rogers’ (1995) Innovation Diffusion Theory. They discuss the educational affordances and benefits of blogs and consider some reasons why teachers may be reluctant to adopt them, for instance, the time and effort involved and the perception that they are giving knowledge away. They also suggest that there may be positive reasons for why they do adopt them, including enhancing their reputation, satisfaction from assisting others, displaying their knowledge and presenting themselves as innovative. They consider a number of other aspects related to the ease of technology use and also the school culture, drawing from these a number of hypotheses to test in their study. Their sample was drawn from teachers in Taiwan, from those already blogging and the others from a random sample. They received a total of 325 responses, with a slight majority of males and the majority between 31 and 35 years old. The number one factor in preventing teachers from establishing blogs is the perception of time and effort involved. An important factor in motivating teachers to use blogs was the desire to help others, but enjoyment of


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blogging and easy to use platforms were also significant. The authors note that many of their replies were from teachers who had not used blogging before.

Liu, C-C., Liu, K-P., Chen, W-H., Lin, C-P. & Chen, G-D. (2011). Collaborative storytelling experiences in social media: Influence of peer-assistance mechanisms. Computers & Education, 57, 2, 1544-1556. The paper reports on a study into collaborative storytelling using social media. Informed by a view that collaboration is an important way for young people to learn, but that school cultures tend to value individual over group work, thus valorising the individual product, it adopts the use of hypermedia in a social media environment to preserve the original work of the student while at the same time encourage collaboration. They note that currently social media provide for either a linear option or a non-linear hypermedia approach. The researchers developed a hypermedia storyboard to enable students to create, share, amend and produce stories. The study involved 57 primary school students about 10 years old in Taipei, Taiwan. One class undertook the Hypermedia approach and the other, the Linear. The study was conducted for 40 minutes a week in an eight week period with the focus on collaborative storytelling in the environment of a computer lab. Each computer had a sketchpad and microphone. Students were initially introduced to the software and produced an individual book then worked together on a more collaborative project. Data gathered included logs of students’ activities, screen captures and a questionnaire administered at the end of the study. These were subjected to statistical analysis. Their data suggested to them that students in the hypermedia group, whose original stories were preserved, were more comfortable with collaboration and produced more episodes of collaboration with others, whereas those in the linear group, whose original stories were not preserved, were in part distracted by the effort to preserve their own work, and experienced more tension, with less collaboration. The researchers draw attention to the design of the social media used, as students can feel less safe if their own work is subject to modification without backup. If working in a linear storytelling approach, cognitive load is greater as students attempt to fit in with the one storyline. Working in the more flexible hypermedia environment allowed students to create new stories. The authorship of individuals was also preserved in the hypermedia environment. Luckin, R., Clark, W., Graber, R., Logan, K., Mee, A. & Oliver, M. (2009). Do Web 2.0 tools really open the door to learning? Practices, perceptions and profiles of 11-16-year-old students. Learning, Media and Technology, 34, 2, pp. 87-104. This paper begins with a discussion of technology use amongst young people and suggests that such use is low in schools due to a number of different factors. They approach the study with an interest in how students are using Web 2.0 and how useful they find the media in both in- and out-of-school contexts. The researchers conducted a ‘guided’ (p. 89) survey of 2611 students from 27 schools in Years 8 and 10 in the UK. They chose two groupings, one which included 15 schools as representative of the types and range in the UK and 12 others which were considered those


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where Web 2.0 activity was occurring. The survey was followed by 60 focus groups in 22 schools for between 25 minutes to one hour. This paper focuses on data drawn from a random sample of 24 groups but illustrative data is chosen to exemplify students’ views rather than to give a picture of a typical practice. Seventy-four per cent of students reported using social media, with more in those schools which used Web 2.0 technologies. The most common use was to upload photos and the most common purpose was to keep in touch with friends. IM was used by 55 per cent of students in the previous 24 hours although email was used for student to teacher contact. Students used Google and Wikipedia for searching. Few students wrote blogs, although numbers read them. Games were popular but polarising. Few students used online forums or discussion boards. The researchers note that the majority of students were engaged in ‘consuming’ rather than ‘producing and publishing’ (94). They categorise students as learners using Web 2.0 technologies into three groups, as ‘researchers’, ‘collaborators’ and ‘producers and publishers’ (p. 94). The majority used Web 2.0 tools in low-level ways for socialisation, although there were reported instances around task collaboration and gaining information on school tasks. They were not seen as useful for learning. At home, 98.4 per cent had some access to a computer and 96.6 per cent could access the internet. In school, there was limited use of technology and the researchers comment that it could be affected by school policy which made available some sites and not others. Students’ use of technology was largely uncritical and the researchers point to examples where students’ learning with both the tools and the tasks was scaffolded by teachers as leading to enhanced engagement. They suggest different pedagogical practices which enable teachers to integrate and model different technologies and their purposes. Lund, A. (2008) Wikis: A collective approach to language production, ReCALL, 20, 1, 35-54. The paper employs theoretical perspectives, a brief literature review and reports from an ongoing research project involving wikis in a second language learning class in a secondary school in Norway. It discusses the collaborative nature of wikis and the theories underpinning their use in learning, drawing on a sociocultural perspective. The research was longitudinal and ‘design-based’: ‘the wiki is an intervention intended to support as well as articulate collective knowledge advancement’ (p. 42). The focus of the research was one class of 31 students of around 17 years of age. Data collected included audio and video tapes, the wiki content and questionnaires completed by 27 students. The students were learning English and together with the teacher, developed a task based on a set topic over a period of two weeks but with relative autonomy as to its shape. The researcher focused on the degree of collaboration between and among students working in pairs. Initially, the students worked together in their pairs. It wasn’t until the first part of the task had been completed that students began to look at the wider wiki and create links that reached out to the wider project. Lund describes the first part, the pair work, as ‘typical’ of school group work (p. 49), but the second, with the addition of links, as new, with the links forming ‘invitations’ to collaboration (p. 49). In the wiki as a whole, ‘production, revision and control’ are maintained by a distributed community’ (p. 49). He notes that movement to such a collective space involves trust but also creates difficulties. He points out that ‘schooling has cultivated mostly an individual approach’ (p. 50) and that a shift to collaborative practices means that individual work can no longer be recognised as such, with implications for the construction of tasks and for assessment.


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The paper reports on aspects of the research only. There are few details on the research design apart from those given above. Mak, B. & Coniam, D. (2008). Using wikis to enhance and develop writing skills among secondary school students in Hong Kong, System, 437-455. The paper reports on a pilot study using wikis with Year 7 students in Hong Kong who had recently begun learning in an English-only secondary school. The aim was to write collaboratively to enhance the writing process. Participants were 24 students, divided into groups of four by their teacher to collaborate to produce a brochure on the school, with each group given a different topic, over a period of six weeks. The project was introduced, as too was the wiki. Initially, the students produced material for the topic, moving gradually to elaboration. The extent of their comments on each other’s work varied but as they became more confident, the amount they wrote increased. They also revised and reorganised their work, although the degree of collaboration is difficult to ascertain from the paper. The students enjoyed the project and the researchers commented that their writing output was longer, detailed and complex than was usually the case. The school was to expand the program in the following year. Pifarre, M. & Fisher, R. (2011). Breaking up the writing process: How wikis can support understanding the composition and revision strategies of young writers. Language and Education, 25, 5, 451-466. The researchers report on a study with 25 students aged between 9 and 10 which used a wiki to improve their writing processes in a low SES area of a city in Spain. Students worked at a computer in pairs or for collaborative purposes, in groups of six. They had not used a wiki before. The writing of two groups of six students was analysed. Before this, scaffolding for the activity took place over three class sessions. The students were given preparation for the wiki task which included the collaborative nature of it and the task was completed over six sessions. The first page invited students to negotiate their ideas and the group page is where the task was collectively written. Data were gathered from the wiki and analysed according to a taxonomy. The researchers argue that writing in the wiki and the discussion that took place enhanced their understanding of the writing process. They also learned from the comments and changes made by others. The preservation of changes was also important for the teacher to judge each student’s participation and progress. Wong, R. & Hew, K. (2010). The impact of blogging and scaffolding on primary school pupils’ narrative writing: A case study. International Journal of Web-based Learning and Teaching Technologies, 5, 2, 1-17. The paper reports on research involving primary school children in Singapore where they learn English and must be able to write narratives for assessment purposes, something that is difficult for many students for whom English may not be their first language. They provide an overview of blogs and the ways in which blogs are interactive and note the scarcity of


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studies related to blogs in primary schools. They frame blogging as a means of scaffolding writing. The study involved 36 students aged between 10 and 13 in a government primary school where some of the English teachers were experimenting with blogs and writing guides as a strategy to improve students’ narrative writing in English. The students had not used blogs before. The study was conducted over a three-week period, preceded by a pre-test of narrative writing. Students were taught to use ‘Blogger’ and invited the other participants to comment, closing the blogs to outside use. The teacher conducted a number of learning activities beforehand and students drafted, redrafted and posted their blogs, with others commenting on their use of grammar and the development of ideas, each of which was incorporated into the final version. Each student’s blog attracted three to five comments from other students. A post-test was administered with two markers whose scores were subjected to statistical analysis. Students were also asked to answer a brief questionnaire at the end of the study followed by interviews with six students. The results showed that students’ scores on language improved but that on narrative content, there was limited improvement. This is undermined to some degree by the fact that no details of earlier lessons were provided, so the degree to which any benefit can be attributed to blogging or to possibly more drafting than usual cannot be ascertained. Nor is it known if they normally used computers though the references to paper and pen suggest that it may have not been the norm. Student responses showed that they mostly enjoyed the experience, but that it was more enjoyable if students could type. Analysis of student comments showed that they were mostly of the language correction kind. Zhang, J., Scardamalia, M., Lamon, M., Messina, R. & Reeve, R. (2007). Socio-cognitive dynamics of knowledge building in the work of 9- and 10-year-olds, Education Technology Research and Development, 55, 117-145. The authors report on a study with 22 Grade 4 children at the Institute of Child Study at the University of Toronto using Knowledge Forum to study science and geography over a threeyear period. This paper examines a period of four months from that study when the students were working on optics. The theoretical framework is that of knowledge building based on the work of Scardamalia and Bereiter (2006), which emphasises collaborative work to improve conceptual development and privileges less teacher-directed approaches. The aim of the study was to determine whether these fourth grade students were able to be responsible for their learning in a less directive environment. The design of Knowledge Forum, the digital platform, is based on socio-cognitive principles and is a space which is at once a repository, an authoring and editing facility, and which incorporates scaffolding for tasks. The teacher aimed for his students as much as possible to have responsibility for their learning, beginning with discussions and in groups, developing working ideas together and, with the teacher’s encouragement, recording them in Knowledge Forum. The page views in Knowledge Forum formed the data for the analyses as well as teacher interviews. In the four month period, 287 notes were created by the children. Each was coded and grouped according to the following themes: ‘idea improvement... real ideas, authentic problems... community knowledge... and constructive use of authoritative sources’ (pp 126-7). Pre- and post-tests were also employed.


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The teacher interacted with the children online, providing feedback, suggesting lines of inquiry and asking questions designed to stimulate higher-order thinking. Students communicated with each other in the online space, offering suggestions but also trying to move the collective project ahead. They understood the difference between personal comments to an individual and additions designed to further the collective project. Statistical analysis of results showed that students’ individual knowledge building was enhanced through reading others’ contributions in the collective space. The researchers attribute this to the pedagogical design of the teacher, which was focused on enhancing students’ ability to think deeply and to discover answers and connections. They could then test these ideas against other sources. Their post-tests of students showed significant gains in their scientific knowledge and they argue demonstrated that students in the fourth grade could take responsibility for their knowledge building with the support of their teacher. Zywica, J., Richards, K. & Gomez, K. (2011). Affordances of a scaffolded-social learning network. On the Horizon, 19, 1, 33-42. The paper reports on research into the use of a specific social network, Remix World, in the Digital Youth Network (DYN) of three charter schools in Chicago. This network has been termed a ‘scaffolded-social learning network’ by the authors to reflect the particular nature of the network as one that is open only to students and ‘mentors’ within the schools but also the underpinning learning theories which are based in part on the concept of learning networks but also Gee’s (2005) ‘affinity spaces’. The learning purposes in this space were to develop enhanced media literacy. The network was accessible outside school but was also linked to courses of study. It was designed to resemble those that students were already familiar with, for instance, Facebook. It linked together students and ‘mentors’ and encouraged posting of student-generated material which was linked with existing curriculum but also which went beyond it. The focus of the research was on the way students and mentors used the sites, its affordances and how mentors were able to encourage student learning. The research involved tracking interactions and activity, online and classroom observation as well as planning meetings, and quantitative counts of numbers of users and activities over an 18month period in 2007 and 2008. During the period of data gathering, there were 252 registered users and 4,833 separate visits. Numbers of different types of activities were conducted both in and out of school. These included discussion, sharing content, blogging, commenting on others’ posts and submitting homework. The use of the site by mentors was designed to encourage students to think more deeply and to do more than simply post but to generate more thoughtful material. The researchers argue that the integration of the out of school with the in-school experience fostered more meaningful interaction. The involvement of the mentors was crucial to encouraging students to link participation to learning. The researchers, however, give no details about the mentors and whether or not they were teachers, nor of student participants and details of the study beyond those noted above. They do note that they could not observe students’ out of school experiences.


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Appendix B- Search details Search terms: Dates: 2005 to 2012 All fields, title and keywords: social networking +education, +school, +teach, +learn, +child social media +education, +school, +teach, +learn, +child web 2.0 +education, +school, +teach, +learn, +child Databases searched: A+ Education LISA APA-FT Social Services Abstracts Trove Sociological Abstracts Scopus CSA Linguistics and Language Behaviour Abstracts Emerald Proquest ERIC Expanded Academic BHI ARROW IBSS EditLib Monash University Library Catalogue Journals searched electronically: 2005-2011 Alt-J American Educational Research Journal Children & Society Cognition & Instruction Computers in the Schools English in Education Journal of Adult & Adolescent Literacy Journal of Children & Media Language & Education Linguistics & Education Literacy Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research Journals searched by issue: 2005-2011 Australian Educational Computing Australasian Journal of Educational Technology British Journal of Educational Technology Computers & Education EDUCAUSE Review EDUCAUSE Quarterly


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Journal of Computer Assisted Learning Journal of Research on Technology in Education Journal of Online Learning and Teaching Learning, Media & Technology New Media & Society Technology, Pedagogy & Education


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