Learning in the Wild: Coding Reddit for Learning and Practice

Abstract

This paper introduces a 'learning in the wild' coding schema, an approach developed to support learning analytics researchers interested in understanding the different types of discourse, exploratory talk, and conversational dialogue happening on social media. The research examines how learner-participants ('Redditors') are leveraging subreddit communities to facilitate selfdirected informal learning practices on the social networking site. The coding schema is tested and applied across four 'Ask' subreddit communities ('AskHistorians', 'Ask_Politics', 'askscience', 'AskAcademia'). The research brings attention to how knowledge, ideas, and resources are being shared and supported outside the confines of traditional education and professional environments.

"I run the world's largest historical outreach project and it's on a cesspool of a website." Moderating a Public Scholarship Site on Reddit: A Case Study of r/AskHistorians

“…Through its rules and norms, r/AskHistorians extends existing models of public scholarship that focus on information dissemination, open access, and knowledge translation to an instructional model of information literacy that builds readers' skills, such as learning historical methods. The community also teaches readers how to identify and account for bias in source material [25], and the discussions in which users read and engage provide rich opportunities for learning in the wild [29,41].…”

Learning with Comments: An Analysis of Comments and Community on Stack Overflow

“…Studies form a social learning analytics perspective have built on [37] to explore online interaction as a step toward automated analysis. For example, one study developed codes for interaction in MOOCs with categories of challenge, evaluation, extension and reasoning [35]; Another [18,20] coded more generally for interaction and argumentation in Q&A posts in four 'Ask' subreddits, identifying eight categories of posts: Explanation (with disagreement, with agreement, and with neutral presentation); Socializing (with negative or positive intent); Providing References; Information Seeking; and Community Rules and Norms.…”

“…Engagement on SO is an example of 'learning in the wild' [20], i.e., an informal and non-formal selforganizing learning environment where crowds of participants ask, answer, comment, correct, argue, and make the effort to present information in informed and accessible ways, while also monitoring content, value, and appropriate behavior. While based on crowd participation, these environments are also communities: epistemic communities, based on a common orientation to a particular knowledge domain [44]; discourse communities, understanding and employing particular language and genre of communication [45]; and communities of practice, with common goals and orientations [34].…”

She's Reddit: A source of statistically significant gendered interest information?

“…Content or thematic analysis are suitable for analysing Reddit posts. For example, an assessment of comments posted to four question-based subreddits in 2015/2016 found that explanations with disagreements accounted for about half of the r/ask_Politics comments, whereas neutral explanations accounted for about half of the comments in the remaining subreddits (askAcademia, askScience, askHistorians) (Kumar, Gruzd, Haythornthwaite, Gilbert, Esteve del Valle & Paulin, 2018). Less common activities included socialising, information seeking and providing resources.…”