Online Social Networking on Campus

The use of Facebook and other social networking tools continues to grow on campuses and now there is a book that provides advice and guidance on how postsecondary institutions should respond to this trend. Ana M. Martínez Alemán, chair of educational administration and higher education at Boston College, and Katherine Lynk Wartman, resident director at Simmons College and a Ph.D. candidate at Boston College have written, Online Social Networking on Campus: Understanding What Matters in Student Culture (Routledge). One of their more interesting obsverations:
"Social networking among students (SNS) will become an instructional tool soon. Facebook has already partnered with a course management system; some faculty have begun to use Facebook groups to foster peer learning, conduct group projects, etc. Computer mediated communication technologies have already made it necessary for academic faculty to modify or simply transfer traditional modes and norms of real-life academic and pedagogical communication online. It’s just a matter of time before we see a SNS as a “classroom” experience."

Read an inteview with one of the authors, Ana M. Martínez Alemán, about the book in Inside Higher Ed.

Using Online Communication to Reduce Language and Cultural Barriers

Language and cultural barriers often prevent non-native speakers of English from integrating into their educational community which can have a negative impact on their learning, socialization and their ability to be fully participating citizens.

With the help of the Learning & Teaching Centre and as part of a TEK Applied Educational Research project, BCIT Communications instructor, Nargis Abraham implmented an innovative approach to overcoming this issue that encouraged student collaboration and communication and the development intercultural competence. As part of her first year Communications course at BCIT, student teams used a wiki and online forum to write reports collaboratively. Abrahm then investigated the relationship between students’ online participation using the wiki and online forum, and their communication skills and intercultural competence.

The findings of the study suggest that while communication skills improved over the period of the project, participation in online writing assignments is not necessarily related to communication skills nor to intercultural competence skills.

It also found that the technology can motivate students to develop collaborative writing skills (as reported by the students), and that the guided tasks and activities that the technology facilitates can lead students to improve on these skills.

The full research paper was presented at the International Conference on Information Communication Technologies in Education in July 2008.

Unusual Use of LMS

I troll the BCIT library's new book display for wisdom on a variety of topics, including educational technology. I discovered this very unusual use of an LMS in a recent book by Lisa Dawley entitled "The Tools for Successful Online Teaching" (2007, published by the Idea Group).

From page 37 of the chapter on Content Areas: Syllabus, Notes, Lesson Plans, and Documents:

"Some LMSs use Document storage areas as a suppository for uploading learning objects that are integrated in other sections throughout the course."

Good heavens! What will they think of next?