Harnessing the power of new media
for learning, teaching and research
Gráinne Conole, Leicester University
12th June 2012, UNISA

Outline
• Characteristics of
new media
• Harnessing the net
for research
• A new approach to
design
• Reflections and
implications

Activity
• What are the
characteristics of new
technologies?
• What are their
implications for
learning, teaching and
research?

New media
Characteristics Implications
Conole and Alevizou, 2010

Learner experience
• Technology immersed
• Learning approaches: task-
orientated, experiential,
just in time, cumulative,
social
• Personalised digital
learning environment
• Mix of institutional systems
and Cloud-based tools and
services
• Use of course materials
with free resources
5
Sharpe, Beetham and De Freitas, 2010

EDUCAUSE study
• Students drawn
to new
technologies but
rely on more
traditional ones
• Consider
technologies
offer major
educational
benefits
• Mixed views
ofLMSs
http://www.educause.edu/studentsAndTechnologyInfographic

Game changers
• Harness the power of new
media
• Need to rethink education
• How can we reach more
learners, more effectively?
• Impact of free resources,
tools and expertise?
• New business models?
• New digital literacies?
http://www.educause.edu/game-changers

Activity: What’s your digital
network?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/factoryjoe/195492568/

My network

Activity: fb love it or hate it?
Pros Cons
• Overseas family, fun, quick • In your face, not sharing
updates, time zones, search everything, not preferred
on names!!, snooping, tool for many things, friends
contact with people you reunited, inappropriate,
wouldn’t be in touch with quality vs. quantity,
otherwise overload, emotional
outbursts,

Activity: using new media for research
• How would you use the following for research (i.e. data
collection, dissemination, discussion)?
– Blogs
– Facebook
– Google+
– LinkedIn
– Academia.edu
– Twitter
– Flickr and Youtube
– Diigo
– Mandeley
– Dropbox
– Others?

What tools do you use for research?
• TereseiTunesU analysis
of tweets about
iTunesU in different
languages

Blogs
• Of the moment
reflections
• Digital archive
• The power of peer review
e4innovation.com
• Record of events, reviews
and resources
• Wider audience reach
and hence profile
• Link into facebook and
Twitter
• Complements traditional
publication routes
gconole.wordpress,com

Bloggers worth reading
M. Weller
G. Siemens
T. Anderson

Using facebook

Twitter
Ideas for harnessing Web 2.0?

Twitter and facebook #fb

Blending real and virtual
• Think about strategies to make the most of each
of the following and then think about how you
can do this both in a face-to-face and virtual
context
– Conferences
– Networking
– Publishing

Conferences A personal example
• Purpose:presentation & feedback
• Network, network, network!
• Potential collaborators & bid partners
• Put in a symposium of experts
• Expertvalidation workshops
• Put papers/presentations online
• Follow upcontacts afterwards: email, fb,
Twitter, blogs, etc.
• Work up into aresearch paper
• Work the hashtag
• Live blog or follow conference-related
blogs

Networking
• Build links with
international colleagues
• Get on national-level
committees
• Invite key researchers in
your field to be involved in
a joint research activity
• Invite people to give
seminars at your
institution
• Build connections online
via Twitter, facebook, etc.
• Participate in online events
• Leave comments on blogs

Publishing
• Write books - edited or single authored (post drafts)
• Become an editor for a special issue of an online
journal
• Keep publication list up to date in your research
repository
• Set up a writing group or workshop (real/virtual)
• Co-write with lots of different people (using a wiki)
• Disseminate publications via Tweet, fb etc
• Post up drafts for comment on blogs etc
• See Twitter, blogs, journals, books as complementary
GO OPEN!!!!

Conclusion
• Structured guidance to think
about design
• The power of visualisation
• Beyond content to activities
and experience
• Iterative, creative and messy
• Making designs explicit
• Social media to foster
communication and
collaboration

Final thoughts
• Participatory and social media enable new forms of
communication and collaboration
• Communities in these spaces are complex and
distributed
• Learners and teachers need to develop new digital
literacy skills to harness their potential
• We need to rethinkhow we design, support and assess
learning
• Open, participatory and social media can provide
mechanisms for us to share and discuss teaching and
research ideas in new ways
• We are seeing a blurring of boundaries:
teachers/learners, teaching/research, real/virtual
spaces, formal/informal modes of communication and

http://www.slideshare.net/GrainneConole/conole-workshop-jtelss
Conole, G. (forthcoming), Designing for learning in an open world, New York: Springer
Chapters available on dropbox
grainne.conole@le.ac.uk