Design is the New Black - How to integrate thoughtful learning design in social media for higher education and beyond

Stella LeeBlended Learning Leader, Global Learning TeamGolder Associates, Inc., Canada

Today’s outline

• Social Media Trends and Usage in Canada

• Implications for Higher Education/Workplace Learning

• UX and LX

• Learning Design for Social Media

• Discussions and Sharing

Where is Canada?

What is Social Media?

1.systems - e.g. Flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us

2. technological approaches - e.g. collaborative filtering, recommender, shared tagging

Social Media Trends and Usage

Social media trends and usage

• Canada has the world’s highest social networking penetration - 49.3% (2011)

• 47% of Canadians use Twitter (18% of all Twitter accounts)

• 58% have blogs

• In 2011, 50% of online Canadians visited a social media site at least once a week

• 35% visited every day

• 18-34 years old heaviest users

• daily access to email declined 28%

source: comscore’s December 2011 report: http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Presentations_Whitepapers/2011/it_is_a_social_world_top_10_need-to-knows_about_social_networking

source: http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/infographic-asia-pacific-social-media-statistics-stats-facts/

Implications for Higher Ed and Workplace

Learning

So, what are the implications for higher ed?

• marketing and communication

• teaching and learning

• professional development

• research

PhD Chat

#PhDChat

A “DIY” model

• A lot more amateurish effort (Shirky, 2008)

• It is scattered all over, many overlapping effort

• It is organic/self-organizing

• A sub-culture movement (not officially supported by institutions)

Some social media usage at Golder Associates

• Yammer

• Facebook

• Twitter

• Jam

Yammer - private social network

Jam - social learning

Some social media usage at Athabasca University

• Flickr

• Facebook

• Twitter

• the Landing

Facebook

AskAU

The Landing

Group feature in the Landing

User Experience (UX) vs. Learner Experience

(LX)

UX vs. LX

• What is UX?

• What is LX?

• How can we incorporate the two?

UX

• Can be specified and measured:

• 95% of first-time students locate the course syllabus for COMP201 in Blackboard within two minutes without technical support

• 90% of the students clicked on the Twitter link embedded in the course website

• Students completing Intro to Philosophy course gives the course Facebook website an average of 4.0 rating on a five-point Likert scale for ease of use

LX

• measures learner perception and satisfaction with content/learning activities

• actual learning, measured via tests

Learners’ Experience (Smulder, 2002)Smulders, D. (2003). Designing for Learners, Designing for Users, retrieved Feb 23, 2012 from http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=best_practices&article=11-1

Learners’ Experience Strongly disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree

The content allowed for deep reflection

The learning material made me stop and think

The activities provided ways for trial and error

The information provided was open to interpretation, discussion, and feedback

Learning Design for Social Media

FIVE design principles

1. Balancing LX and UX

2. Scalability/evolvability

3. Allow rooms for both producers and spectators

4. Multiple ways to share/link/connect

5. The power of “undo”

Balancing LX and UX

source: David Smuldershttp://elearnmag.acm.org/index.cfm?section=best_practices&article=11-1

Scalability/Evolvability

• v

Allow rooms for producers and spectators

Multiple ways to share/link/connect/

The power of “undo”

Digital Literacy

•“The most important critical uncertainty today is how many of us learn to use digital media and networks effectively, reasonably, credibly, collaboratively, civilly, humanely. This difference is a matter of literacy.”

- Howard Rheingold, 2010

Digital literacy

• Attention

• Participation

• Critical consumption

• Cooperation/collaboration

• Network awareness

source: http://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/howard-rheingold-keynote-speech-social-media-participative-pedagogy-and-digital-literacies/

Attention

source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fs999/3508277416/

Participation

source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/angelinux/2643517944/

Critical consumption

source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/karola/3623768629/

Cooperation/Collaboration

source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmsmytaste/90648278/

Network awareness

source: source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sjcockell/4684828794

References

• Coates, T. (2005). An Addendum to a Definition of Social Software. Retrieved April 9, 2012, from http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2005/01/an_addendum_to_a_definition_of_social_software/

• Rheingold, H. (2009). Collab Tech 2010 Keynote: Social Media, Participative Pedagogy, and Digital Literacies. Retrieved July 8, 2011, from http://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/howard-rheingold-keynote-speech-social-media-participative-pedagogy-and-digital-literacies/

• Shirky, C. (2008). Here Comes Everybody. New York: The Penguin Press

• Smulders, D. (2003). Designing for Learners, Designing for Users. Retrieved March 23, 2012 from: http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=best_practices&article=11-1

Thank you!

• Email: stella_lee@golder.com, stellaylee@gmail.com

Twitter: @stellal

• LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/stella-lee/1/588/a32