Social media for distance teaching and learning

Open Content and Open Educational Resources: Enabling universal education...

In which the authors argue that distance education making use of Open Educational Resources might "change distance education's role from one of classroom alternative to one of social transformer."

Macdonald, J., & Poniatowska, B. (2011). Designing the professional development of staff for teaching online: an OU (UK) case study. Distance Education: Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 119-134.

Presentation for a workshop at the 'Next generation learning' conference in Brussels on November 23rd 2011, organised by the SVEA project: 'SVEA - Promoting web...

These slides are part of a keynote speech delivered to staff at Massey University in Palmerston North and Wellington, in New Zealand on 24-25 November, 2011.

Anderson, T., Poellhuber, B., & McKerlich, R. (2010). Self-paced Learners Meet Social Software: An Exploration of Learners’ Attitudes, Expectations and Experience. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 13(3).

Social networking and communications tools have become widely used in entertainment and social applications and there is growing interest in their use in formal education applications. Distance education and especially those types that are based on self-paced programming models may be the biggest beneficiaries of the use of these new tools to provide previously unavailable capacity for student-student and student-teacher interaction. However, little is known about students’ interest, expectation and expertise using these tools.

Croft, N., Dalton, A. and Grant, M. (2010) Overcoming isolation in distance learning: Building a learning community through time and space. Journal for Education in the Built Environment, 5 (1). pp. 27-64. ISSN 1747-4205 (Online)

A study of four non-cohort distance learning programmes in the West of England leads to a number of recommendations:

Recommendations are generated for building a learning community on a non-cohort asynchronous programme of study. These include: providing service level agreements to clarify expectations; designating ‘staging points’ to encourage and motivate; developing student generated content as footprints ‘buried’ in the material; humanising the material; and introducing mechanisms to provide students with their peer’s thoughts/views on course material.

Poellhuber, B., & Anderson, T. (2011) Distance students’ readiness for social media and collaboration. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 12 (6).

In recent years, there has been a rapid growth in the use of social networking tools (e.g., Facebook) and social media in general, mainly for social purposes (Smith, Salaway & Caruso 2009). Many educators, including ourselves, believe that these tools offer new educational affordances and avenues for students to interact with each other and with their teachers or tutors. Considering the traditional drop-out rate problem documented in distance courses (Rovai, 2003; Woodley, 2004), these tools may be of special interest for distance education institutions as they have potential to assist in the critical “social integration” associated with persistence (Sweet, 1986; Tinto, 1975). However, as distance students are typically older than regular on-campus students, (Bean & Metzner, 1985; Rovai, 2003) little is known about their expertise with social media or their interest in harnessing these tools for informal learning or collaborating with peers.

Anderson, T. (Ed.) (2010). The Theory and Practice of Online Learning (2nd ed.) Athabasca University Press. (Free e-book).

A nice 'How-to' site for beginners.