Jenny S. Wakefield

LEARNING AND TEACHING AS COMMUNICATIVE ACTIONS: TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING

Transmedia – a single experience that spans across multiple forms of media – is still a new media in the educational landscape and therefore may pose a challenge to educators wanting to create opportunities for interactive media communications in their classrooms. In this chapter, we share an instance in which a university professor introduced transmedia to support graduate student learning to encourage inquiry, critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, contemplation, and critical discourses. Further, we examine how two of the graduate students took their learning a step further by designing and creating a model transmedia lesson tailored for the 6th grade Social Studies classroom. This chapter provides a theoretical framework within which transmedia may be used: Learning and teaching as communicative actions theory – LTCA.

Learning with Social Media: Measurement Tools for Understanding Information Behavior in Technology Pervasive Environments of the 21st Century

This research reports findings from a study on information behavior for technology pervasive information environments in the 21st century. Social media users (n=147) completed an online Learning Preference survey battery that included the Social Media Learning (SML) scale, the Technology Affinity Survey (TAS), the Computer Attitude Questionnaire (CAQ), and the Information and Communications Technology Learning (ICTL) survey. Findings revealed that 23% of the variance in information seeking behavior, as measured by the Information and Communications Technology Learning survey, can be explained by a linear regression model including the SML scale, creativity and school attitude scales (CAQ), and TAS. Participants with higher ICTL scores for Information Seeking had greater preference for learning with social media, more positive attitudes toward school, higher self-reported creative tendencies, and lower preferences for immersive/always-on attachments to, or affinity for, modern information and communication technologies. Implications of these findings and future research directions are discussed.

What do they really think? Higher education students’ perceptions of using Facebook and Twitter in formal higher education learning

Our mixed methods multiphase research reviewed the pros and cons of implementation of social media in formal higher education learning from students’ perspective. Student-expressed concerns and preferences are shared. On the positive side we found that social media may facilitate a sense of social learning community and significantly more so (p < .001) if students are already familiar with and using the social media tool. Social media also helps shy students get voice in the classroom. Many students had concerns with privacy if Twitter or Facebook were to be used in the classroom. In particular Facebook was seen as a ‘private’ outlet; however, if either of these tools were to be used, Facebook was preferred. Through the students, we also found that our communicative actions – our language and the way we write – are changing as dictated by social media.

iCAMP: building digital information curation curriculum

The iCAMP (Information: Curate, Archive, Manage, and Preserve) project is developing a curriculum in digital curation and data management. The project will design and implement four courses using a competency-based curriculum approach. It also integrates principles of sound pedagogy, instructional design, and a learning environment that emphasizes practical training. This paper summarizes the goals and guiding principles behind the curriculum development and instructional design framework.

Instructional Design Frameworks for Second Life® Virtual Learning

This chapter discusses two instructional designs that sought to leverage the multiuser virtual environment Second Life to support learning and instruction with both undergraduate and graduate students at two different universities. We examine each of these curricular developments in depth and provide findings from research conducted with each. Using data collected from students and faculty, we describe 11 research-based virtual world design principles that emerged from each experience that include such suggestions as Create opportunities for sustaining virtual community beyond a task and Expect your learners to go off-task. These principles may be used by readers to guide future designs that use virtual worlds to support learning.

Affect in Online Discourse: The Case of the United Nations Millennial Development Goals Topics

Instructors at a southwestern U.S. university sought to foster critical student discourses in sections of a hybrid/online course. Narrative-seeking activities challenged students to crisscross various online platforms in transmedia navigation—a form of seeking and sharing information and media over multiple platforms. One assignment asked learners to explore global problems related to the United Nations Millennial Development goals of HIV/AIDS and environmental sustainability. Students sought solutions to these multifaceted problems through peer discourse tied to current real-world events as shared through posted relevant news articles. Initially, students expressed only surface-level reflections with little emotional ties to the content; however, throughout the semester, deeper thinking and affective connections became evident, along with a nascent, liberating critique and understanding of the systems responsible for the ill-structured problems to which they were exposed.

Student-Driven Classroom Technologies: Transmedia Navigation and Tranformative Communications.

This research explores middle school students’ attitudes toward learning with technology and proposes a design-based approach to formulating instruction that includes innovative classroom technology use with computers and communications technologies placed in the hands of students. The intent of this study was to inform practice and theory on sustainable, student-driven use of information and communications technology (ICT) that goes beyond the implementation of school technologies for word processing, delivery of lessons, and data processing. The focus of the recommended approach is teaching and learning that provides classroom opportunities for discourse and student choice in the selection of traditional and technology-based media for transmedia navigation. The authors contend that transmedia navigation will create avenues for classroom innovation and encourage students to think, interact with instructional content, and engage in transformative communications.

Chapter 8 – Affective Impacts of Learning on Facebook: Postsecondary Students’ Voices

Abstract The use of Facebook as a formal classroom tool continues to increase as educators innovate and experiment with its implementation. Most research studies describe Facebook incorporation in the higher education classrooms where it has been used as a learning management system or a discussion board. But what are student perceptions of using Facebook in formal learning, and what emotions and meaning arise as students think through such an experience? We asked 60 students to share their perceptions through a reflective process concerning the use of Facebook as a learning tool in coursework. Looking through the philosophical lens of phenomenology, the researchers made meaning of the social media reflections and arrived at the essence of students’ emotional experiences. At the core is the fear of giving up individual human rights of choice within one’s personal life.