Peer Learning in Social Media Enhanced Learning Environment

Abstract

TUT Circle, a dedicated social media service for students at Tampere University of Technology (TUT), was used as a learning environment for the purpose of enhancing students‘ collaboration, communication and networking skills required in business and working life and for promoting peer learning in small groups. Unfortunately, active conversation was limited. The students intensively read content created by other students, but they did not actively present their opinions, arguments or comments. Another reason for the lack of real conversation was procrastination. The students seemed to need more encouragement to comment on or question the ideas of others, more support to promote intergroup interaction and more assistance with time management

Students' Participation in a Social Media Enhanced Learning Environment

“…Submitting answers during the last few hours before the deadline also limits opportunities for learning through observation [3] [17]. Students have also reported negative feelings, such as pressure and a sense of superficial learning related to procrastination [17]. However, students have individual differences in their abilities to manage time, and in the ways they participate in learning processes.…”

“…If the majority of students submit their answers to a course question just before the deadline, this gives them little time to discuss or develop a shared understanding of a subject, which makes true conversation impossible. Submitting answers during the last few hours before the deadline also limits opportunities for learning through observation [3] [17]. Students have also reported negative feelings, such as pressure and a sense of superficial learning related to procrastination [17].…”

“…However, the procrastinators were not a totally homogeneous group. Some of the students seemed to make a conscious decision to procrastinate, whereas others seemed to fail to complete their tasks on time due to indecision and lack of motivation [17] [20].…”

“…The development work of the TUT Circle is based on results of the earlier studies conducted by the IISLab. Among other things, the IISLab has studied quality factors of the social media enhanced learning environment, students' motivation to use that kind of environment, and possibilities to support peer-to-peer learning and networking among students through social media [14] [15] [16] [17]. A significant part of that development work has been the development and research of methods for analyzing and visualizing log data collected from the TUT Circle in order to make students' actions visible.…”

Visualizations of User Data in a Social Media Enhanced Web-based Environment in Higher Education

“…Also, at the Intelligent Information Systems Laboratory (IISLab) at Tampere University of Technology (TUT), we have studied the use of social media enhanced environments in a higher educational context from several different viewpoints, such as the quality factors of social media enhanced web-based environments, students' motivation to use that kind of environment, the possibilities of supporting peer-to-peer learning, and networking among hypermedia students, as well as the collaboration between students with two different academic backgrounds [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]. The results of these earlier studies were utilized to develop the TUT Circle 1 , a content management framework built on Drupal.…”