Understanding Informal Group Learning in Online Communities Through Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Since informal learning occurs outside of formal learning environments, describing informal learning and how it takes place can be a challenge for researchers. Past studies have typically oriented to informal learning as an individual, reflective process that can best be understood through the learners' retrospective accounts about their experiences. Although reports on the individual lived experience represent the privileged way of understanding social reality (including informal learning), the linguistic/discursive turn of the 1980s proposed a shift in our view of the function of language as creating rather than representing versions of the world. Accordingly, we propose resituating informal learning from a reflective process occurring in an individual mind to the meaning making that occurs in group conversations. We present an exploratory analysis of a single thread from an online hiking community to introduce discourse analysis as a framework to study informal learning as a group meaning-making process.

Conversational Moves That Matter

“…Examples include how storytelling supports meaning making (Ziegler et al, 2014), action planning in organizational learning (Abma, 2003), and creating learning conversations in the context of negotiation (Stone, Patton, & Heen, 2010). Examples include how storytelling supports meaning making (Ziegler et al, 2014), action planning in organizational learning (Abma, 2003), and creating learning conversations in the context of negotiation (Stone, Patton, & Heen, 2010).…”

“…Interventional frameworks such as Toulmin's (1958) model for argumentation or Gibbs's (1979, 1983) transactive discussions are illustrative examples. Finally, there are types of participatory exchanges found to stimulate conflict and controversy in ways that influence learning outcomes (Bouton & Garth, 1983;Soller, 2001;Webb & Palincsar, 1996) and that support knowledge generation and meaning-making in groups (Gunawardena et al, 1997;Ziegler et al, 2014). Finally, there are types of participatory exchanges found to stimulate conflict and controversy in ways that influence learning outcomes (Bouton & Garth, 1983;Soller, 2001;Webb & Palincsar, 1996) and that support knowledge generation and meaning-making in groups (Gunawardena et al, 1997;Ziegler et al, 2014).…”

“…These emergently coded categories provide empirical evidence about a distribution of conversational moves in learning conversations among global executives and reflect aspects of the broad types of conversational contributions found in the extant literature on learning conversations. S. Brown & Duguid, 1991;Ziegler et al, 2014). In the literature, these types of contributions are often broadly characterized (i.e., "statement," "agree/disagree," etc.)…”

Developing, using, and interacting in the flipped learning movement: Gaps among subject areas

“…Bishop and Verleger (2013, p. 5) Additionally, online information providers such as TED have offered an important research area for informal learning. Ziegler, Paulus, and Woodside (2014) pointed out that previous studies on informal learning often relied on learners' retrospectively self-reflective reports. With the popularity of various online learning communities (e.g., YouTube, TED), researchers are able to collect data from those communities.…”

Analyzing Social Media And Learning Through Content And Social Network Analysis: A Faceted Methodological Approach

“…Thus, social media amplify and expand the informal learning opportunities available to learners. Ziegler, Paulus, and Woodside (2014) note that research on informal learning has largely relied on retrospective accounts of learning from the learners themselves, through interview or survey data. However, asking people what they have learned, and how they have learned it, can be problematic as respondents often lack awareness of their own learning, and regard it as part of their own general capability rather than something learned (Eraut, 2010).…”