Kyle Roark's EME 6414 blog

 For the second article I took a look at this week for EME 6414 I decided to check out  Effects of group reflection variations in project-based learning integrated in a Web 2.0 learning space by Kim, Hong, Bonk, and Lim. The authors explore the use of Web2.0 in the classroom but from the specific lens of group collaboration. More specifically they are focused on the role of group reflection in the learning process in connection to Web 2.0. What is interesting about their approach is that they test three different methods of  reflection, namely self-reflection, group reflection, and instructor led reflection. This allows the authors both to understand the benefits of reflecting as a group and how the instructor presence also benefits that reflection.  The authors start by emphasizing the team nature that social media and new forms of technology such as smart phones allows. Through their common interests students can collaborate through apps such as Facebook or LinkedI...

 After spending some time exploring Hypothes, which I am still excited about, I decided to read the article from Gülbahar , Rapp , Kilis , and Sitnikova on social media use in higher education for EME6414. The authors of this article explore the acceptance of social media within a higher education setting both among students and among faculty.  Interestingly, although the authors found that students approved of using social media in the classroom, and faculty indicated that there were clear benefits to using social media even over the university's LMS, there had not been widespread use of social media in higher education practice.  I found it interesting that although few professors utilized this for their courses they did mention that they used social media platforms for their own personal research and learning often. In response to the lack of knowledge regarding social media, or better yet the lack of awareness of how to use this in a Higher Ed classroom, the auth...

 I started my week with EME6414 by exploring one of the tools for the week, namely Hypothes. I had never heard of this tool before this week and oh how I wish I had discovered this tool sooner in my life. To give a quick introductio, Hypothes allows you to tag and highlight directly on to web pages and othtr articles and resources you are exploring on the web. Thus it functions as both a way to tag content on the web and add annotations as the means that you use to search. While I have not used this tool yet for any official research project or anything it seems like it would be tremendously helpful. Here is a quick screenshot of what the interface looks like Currently when trying to keep track of my thoughts in relation to some topic that I am researching, and the articles connected to them I am forced to use multiple apps. For instance, I often use Zotero to keep track of citations for articles/books that I am reading or want to read, but then use Evernote to keep track of my tho...

 In my role at the FSU Career Center I manage our ProfessioNole Ready Pathways and Badging program and am always looking for ways to promote and improve the program. Thus I was excited to read this week several articles regarding microcredentialing and also microlearning, especially Dr. Dennen's article on Sharing Microlearning Materials as OER. The article points out how microlearning has openned up new avenues for instruction and that already in fields like tech professional development takes place through many channels both informala and formal that are influenced by microlearning. By breaking up larger units of instruction into microelements many of them can be reused in new environments for individuals just wanting to learn one particular skill or needing help in a particular area. These microlearning elements could also be curated and combined into a new instructional unit tailored to a persons unique learning goals.  In this context where units are being recombined and ...

 This week in EME 6414 I spent some time reading about the formation of online communities for the a paper we had for the class. One article that I found particularly interesting was from N.J. Foss How Context and Attention Shape Behavior in Online Communities. While Foss spent the article discussing the open software online communities surrounding popular technologies, one of the things that I found most interesting was the theory that he drew upon to understand the formation of heirarchy within these communities. Foss describes these communities as organized through a means of organized anarchy, where no one really knows how things are suppose to be organized but they find a way to organize anyway. Mostly this takes place through the conversation of energy and also the prestiget that comes with providing an answer to a question that is stumping the rest of the community. However, when someone already knows the answer to the question or has worked on something similar it is very l...

 I am excited this week to dive a little deeper into issues of intellectual property, specifically in relation to their use in a Web2.0 context in education. IP in general is an important topic that I wish I knew more about, and while I have learned a lot from other courses in the ISLT program that touched on this topic I have never approached it from the standpoint of social media use specifically.  I decided to start the weeks readings taking a look at Dennen's article on T echnology Transience and Learner Data . Dennen's work explores the complexity surrounding digital artifacts created by courses utilizing social media and the emerging safeguards and concerns that accompany changes in technology in this area.  As Dennen points out, one of the key challenges in this area is that people often are not overly concerned about issues of privacy around student data until something goes wrong or they hear of something bad happening to someone else.  It is particularl...

Since the article I was reading this week on Folksonomy was fairly long, I was finding a lot of interesting insights in it, and due to overall length of my post, I decided to use this final post for the week to spend a little more time with Folksonomy, particularly in light of the article A N APPROACH TO FOLKSONOMY-BASED ONTOLOGY MAINTENANCE FOR LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS.  AS I mentioned in my last post, in this article the authors are seeking to find ways to improve on folksonomy as an educational tool, focusing on providing initial scaffolding for the tagging system and a better visual layout to help with user interaction and understanding of that system.  An important addition to these ideas is that the authors also sought out a method for students to use external content following their preferred terminology for organization of the data. This provides greater flexibility to students, but I wonder if it could also bring back in some of the disorganization that this metho...

Since it is one of the key themes for the week, I thought I should take the chance in my second reading for the week to dive into Folksonomy a little bit. This is a new term for me and not one that I was previously familiar with so I was excited to get started with it. I decided to read  An Approach to Folksonomy-Based Ontology Maintenance for Learning Environments to get started. I have to admit that the language used initially seems very daunting. Ontology enhanced learning environments, measuring semantic relatedness, and software architecture are not the types of phrases that I normally throw around on a day to day basis. Although it seems to me upon initial glance that all of this really just refers to a sophisticated form of tagging, but I could be wrong. When viewed from the standpoint of how this system could improve the learning process, however, the authors argue that previous uses of folksonomy have been limited by their conceptions of learning that are based on a tutor...

 I began this week’s reading for EME6414 by diving into an article by Im and Dennen regarding the Diigo tool, which I had never heard of. Apparently, this is a method for booking marking data on social media sites, along with including some note taking functionality. What Im and Dennen are focused on in this article, however, is the ability for Diigo to help with collaboration and sharing across students in a course. I was not surprised to learn from the study that the tool was extensively used by a few members of the class but that many participated only minimally. I was also not surprised to learn that many who did participate were more engaged with the instructors content than that of other students.  The findings of Im and Dennen do not, I think, point to the overall effectiveness or ineffectiveness of Diigo, but instead to how students respond to new forms of technology when they are being asked to do so as part of a class. It was nice to hear those students who were ac...