Affordances of a scaffolded‐social learning network

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/ authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -This paper aims to examine the development and use of a scaffolded-social learning network (S 2 LN) called Remix World. The local aim is to increase understanding of how Remix World is integrated into programmatic and curricular structures as a way to support learning. The broader aim is to contribute to conversations about learning opportunities that S 2 LNs afford for participants.Design/methodology/approach -Remix World was integrated into the Digital Youth Network (DYN) in-school and after-school digital arts curriculum. DYN used Remix World to display and comment on media, artifacts and designs, and to post original work. Two of the authors were given accounts on Remix World, where they logged in to respond to comments and note site activities and conversations.Findings -The data suggest that students across the grade levels regularly used Remix World to post commentary, post media, and critique peers. Students used Remix World across ecologies (home, after school, and school day). Mentors' efforts to integrate the site into their classes increased the number of users and activities on Remix World.Practical implications -Integrating a media-based curriculum that encourages critique and production requires some formal feedback and guidelines. It is essential to explore how mentors and teachers pedagogically leverage the students' posts to reach curricular and programmatic learning goals.Originality/value -This study explores how features and affordances of social networking sites can be redesigned to intentionally support in-school pedagogical use that promotes transformative communication and the development of critical, new media literacies.A s access to, and use of, Web 2.0 technologies increases, an important analytic and design concern is better understanding of participants' literacy and learning opportunities and experiences within these spaces. When schools seek to leverage online learning spaces, tensions can emerge in negotiations between formal and informal knowledge that students may bring to Web 2.0 spaces. Previous research has focused on using social networks and social software as learning tools within classroom settings (McLoughlin and Lee, 2007;R...

The role of social networking sites (SNSs) in the January 25th Revolution in Egypt

“…The rapid adoption and use of SNS by many different users globally has raised many important questions regarding these social platforms, such as how, why, where, and by whom they are used. Much research has focused on various aspects of SNS, such as social relationships (Choi et al, 2011), the nature of connecting with friends (Agarwal et al, 2009;Boyd and Ellison, 2007;Boyd and Heer, 2006), structure and culture (Lewis et al, 2008), identity creation and management (Boyd and Ellison, 2007;Boyd and Heer, 2006), participation (Zhou, 2010;Thelwall, 2008), gender (Geidner et al, 2007), age (Gayen et al, 2010), education (Hew, 2011;Al-Daihani, 2009), learning (Zywica et al, 2011;Paganim and Hofacker, 2010), use in libraries (Dickson and Holley, 2010;Al-Daihani, 2009;Willett, 2009;Chu, 2008), employment (Gayen et al, 2010), benefits (Shu and Chuang, 2010;Lewis et al, 2008), interests (Johnson et al, 2011;Kanagavel and Velayutham, 2010), entertainment (Rothschild, 2011), and workplace (Bennett et al, 2010). Though, as Schwarz (2010) states, many questions remain, regarding how networking occurs online and what types of activists, movements, and organization are poised to best make use of such networking.…”

The Effect of Social Media on Researchers’ Academic Performance through Collaborative Learning in Malaysian Higher Education

“…Researchers can use the media to provide feedback and support to peers, and also share work with an audience beyond their teacher (Hastie et al, 2010). These same affordances enable teachers to monitor students' progress more closely as well as to provide timely guidance and feedback (Zywica et al, 2011). (Chandra and Watters, 2012) noted that the interactions through chat facility between teachers and students in their homes enabled the participation of those who might not normally do so in the classroom, although collaboration between students was more limited.…”

Remote working in construction: assessing the affordance of digitisation

“…Gibson (1977) defines affordances as the action possibilities of a perceived surface existing in an environment. This concept has been used in various areas such as 3-D Virtual Environments (Dalgarno and Lee, 2010), online social networks (Veletsianos and Kimmons, 2013), and scaffolded-social learning network (Zywica et al, 2011). Technological affordances have been widely discussed in education research, but little has been explored of this theory in the context of remote working in construction.…”

“…Gibson (1977) defines affordances as the action possibilities of a perceived surface existing in an environment. This concept has been used in various areas such as 3-D Virtual Environments (Dalgarno and Lee, 2010), online social networks (Veletsianos and Kimmons, 2013), and scaffolded-social learning network (Zywica et al. , 2011).…”