1. Social exclusion or inclusion - the implications of social and participatory media on
education
Gráinne Conole
The Open University, UK
Keywords: Social exclusion, social networks, participatory culture, Open Education Resources,
Cloudworks, learning design
Introduction
In the last five years we have seen the emergence of a range of new social and participatory media.
These include blogs, wikis, social networks like Facebook, microblogging sites such as Twitter, and
media sharing repositories such as Flickr and YouTube. Many of these tools are free, and clearly
they offer new and exciting ways to support learning, and to enable learners and teachers to com-
municate and share. In parallel we have seen the emergence of the Open Source (Iiyoshi and
Kumar, 2008 )and the Open Educational Resource (OER) movement (Aitkins et al., 2007). and
there are now many high-quality digital resource repositories in a range of languages. Coupled to
this there has been a growth in user-generated content, enabling more learner-centred pedagogies.
This chapter will focus on the implications of this changing digital landscape for education and in
particular the implications for learners, teachers and institutions. It will begin by providing an
overview of these new technologies and their associated characteristics. It will then provide some
examples of the ways in which these technologies are being harnessed to foster different pedagogi-
cal approaches. It is evident that these technologies have immense potential to support more innova-
tive approaches to learning, enabling more personalised and learner-centred approaches. However
there is also a number of downsides to using these technologies, the chapter will outline these and
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2. suggest that a new digital divide is being created, between those who are able to be part of this new
participatory culture and those who are excluded. It will argue that we need to change the ways in
which we design, support and assess learning, to take better account of the affordances (Gibson,
1979) of these new technologies. It will provide three case studies that are attempting to do this: the
creation and use of Open Educational Resources and associated practices, Cloudworks, a social net-
working site for sharing and discussing learning and teaching ideas, and a new learning design
methodology which aims to help guide practitioners in creating learning interventions that make ef-
fective use of new technologies.
Social and participatory media
The range of social and participatory media now available is truly daunting. Conole and Alevizou
(2010) categorised these into ten types of tools: media sharing, media manipulation, chat, online
games and virtual worlds, social networking, blogs, social bookmarks, recommender systems, wikis
and syndication/RSS feeds. Reviewing the ways in which they are being used a number of common
characteristics emerge. Firstly, they enable new forms of interaction and communication. Secondly,
many provide functionality to enable users to peer critique each others’ content or dialogue. Thirdly,
there are now a range of tools that enable users to collectively aggregate resources, Fourthly, there
are many tools to enable user-generated content, that can be shared with others in a variety of ways.
Fifthly, they are participatory, enabling users to produce and share their own content and interact
with others. Sixthly, they are open and exploratory, users can undertake inquiry-based queries get-
ting access to rich resources and often near instant feedback from the social collective. Finally, there
is an evident networked effect, possible through the connection of millions worldwide sharing, dis-
cussing, aggregating and co-constructing knowledge. Within this context we are seeing a number of
trends:
•A shift from the Web as a content repository and information mechanism to a Web that enables more
social mediation and user generation of content.
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3. •New practices of sharing (see for example: images: Flickr; video: YouTube and presentation: Slide-
share), and mechanisms for content production, communication and collaboration (through blogs, wi-
kis and micro-blogging services such as Twitter). There are also social networking sites for connect-
ing people and supporting different communities of practice (such as Facebook, Elgg and Ning).
•A network effect is emerging as a result of the quantity of information available on the Web, the mul-
tiplicity of connectivity and the scale of user participation.
Much has been written about the characteristics of these new technologies and in particular so
called Web 2.0 practices (OReilly, 2005; Alexander; 2006; Anderson, 2007) but for the purposes of
this chapter I want to focus in particular on the following:
•Peer critiquing – the ability to openingly comment on other people’s work. This has become standard
practice within the blogosphere for instance and is being used in general society (for example many
journalists are now active bloggers, and traditional book writing is being supplemented by writers us-
ing blogs to invite potential readers to comment on the evolving plot), by academics (through self-re-
flective blogs on digital scholarship and research ideas) and in a teaching context (with students keep-
ing their own reflective blogs or contributing to a collective cohort blog).
•User generated content – there are now many free tools for creating content (ranging from those
which are primarily text-based, through to rich multimedia and interactive tools), meaning that the
Web is no longer a passive media for consumption but an active, participatory, productive media.
Sites such as YouTube, Flickr and Slideshare facilitate simple sharing of user-generated content and
embedded code functionality means this content can be simultaneously distributed via a range of
communication channels.
•Collective aggregation - hierarchy and controlled structures make little sense in an environment that
consists of a constantly expanding body of content that can be connected in a multitude of ways. Col-
lective aggregation refers both to the ways in which individuals can collate and order content to suit
their individual needs and personal preferences, as well as the ways individual content can be en-
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4. riched collectively (via tagging, multiple distribution, etc.). Social bookmarking, tag clouds and asso-
ciated visualisation tools, tagging, RSS feeds and embedding code all enable collective aggregation to
occur.
•Community formation – clearly the connectivity and rich communicative channels now available on
the Web provide an environment for supporting a rich diversity of digital communities. Boundaries of
professional and personal identity are eroding and the notion of tightly knit Communities of Practice
(Wenger 1998) are giving way to a spectrum of communities from individualistic spaces through
loosely bound and often transitory collectives through to more established and clearly defined com-
munities. See Dron and Anderson (2007) for a more specific discussion of collectives, networks and
groups in social networking for e-learning.
•Digital personas – each of us is having to define our own digital identity and how we present
ourselves across these spaces. The avatars we choose to represent ourselves, the style of language we
use and the degree to which we are open (both professionally and personally) within these spaces,
give a collective picture of how we are viewed by others.
Key questions
In this chapter I want to consider the following questions in relation to the impact of social and par-
ticipatory media on learning and teaching practices:
•How are new open, social and participatory media changing educational practice?
•What are the implications for formal and informal learning?
•How are learner and teacher roles changing?
•How should institutional structures and systems be adapted to accommodate these new technologies?
•What new digital literacies will learners and teachers need to make effective use of these new tech-
nologies?
•How can we design effective learning interventions and environments to harness the affordances that
these new technologies provide?
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5. •What social exclusion issues arise and how can we minimise these?
Technology trends
In terms of extrapolating the changing digital landscape I draw on a number of reviews of technolo-
gies and in particular their impact on both society generally and education in particular. These in-
clude the NSF cyber-structure report (Borgman, et. al., 2008), the IPTS review of e-learning 2.0
(Redecker et al., 2008), a recent review of Web 2.0 tools and practice in Higher Education (Conole
and Alevizou, 2010) and the Horizon reports on new technologies (NMC, 2011).
The latest Horizon report (NMC, 2011) predicts six new technologies that are likely to have the
most impact in one, three and five years time. E-Books and mobiles are cited as being likely to have
the most impact in the next year. Augmented learning and game-based learning are listed as being
most important within a three-year timeframe. Finally, gesture-based learning and learning analytics
are predicted as having the most impact within five year’s time. The report observes a number of
trends on how technologies are being used and their impact on practice. Firstly, it is increasingly the
case (certainly in the developed world) that people expect to be able to work and learn, anywhere
and anytime. This is a consequence of near ubiquitous access to the Internet and the increasing so-
phistication of mobile devices with the emergence of smart phones, e-books and hybrid devices like
the iPad. Secondly, the world of work is increasingly collaborative. People no longer work in isola-
tion, team work is becoming more common and interdisciplinarity1 is increasingly seen as a means
of addressing today’s complex and ‘wicked’ problems. Thirdly, technologies are increasingly cloud-
based (Katz, 2008) and many institutions are now outsourcing core technology services to third par-
ties. Fourthly, to harness the potential of these new technologies, individuals need to develop new
digital literacies (Jenkins et al, 2006, Jenkins, 2009). Fifthly, the nature of academic discourse,
scholarship and mechanisms for sharing knowledge are being transformed by new publication chan-
nels such as blogs and wikis (Weller, 2011). This is challenging traditional metrics for evaluating
1 See Conole et al. (2010) for a review of the nature of interdisciplinarity in Technology-Enhanced Learning.
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6. academic worth and value and traditional mechanisms for publishing via journals and books. New
evaluation metrics need to be developed to take account of this paradigm shift. Sixthly, the in-
creased prevalence of free tools and resources is challenging current educational business models
and new models will be needed to address this. Finally, both learners and teachers are finding it in-
creasingly challenging to keep abreast of the range of new technologies that are emerging. It is like-
ly that we will need to develop new learning pathways to guide learners through this complex digi-
tal landscape and new guidance to support teachers in designing and supporting effective learning
interventions and environments that make effective use of these new tools.
Harnessing new technologies and mapping to good pedagogy
The previous section, looked at technological trends and associated characteristics generally. This
section will focus in on how these technologies can be harnessed to support different approaches to
learning. In their conclusion to the review of Web 2.0 tools and practices, Conole and Alevizou
(2010) reflect on the implications of how these tools are being used in Higher Education as follows:
Effective use of new technologies requires a radical rethink of the core learning and teaching
processes; a shift from design as an internal, implicit and individually crafter process to one
that is externalised and shareable with others. Change in practice may indeed involve the use
of revised materials, new teaching strategies and beliefs - all in relation to educational inno-
vation.
Table 1 considers a number of commonly used pedagogical approaches and shows how these can be
supported through use of a range of social and participatory media. What is notable is the way in
which the affordances of these technologies can be used to promote what are considered to be good
pedagogical approaches; such as constructivist and socially situative pedagogies. However to
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7. achieve these effective practices, as Conole and Alevizou (2010) observe, will require a rethinking
of the ways in which learning interventions are designed and supported.
Table 1: Mapping of different pedagogical approaches to tools
Pedagogical approach Tools
Personalised learning Ability to customise tools to create a personal digital
learning environment, use of RSS feeds
Situated, experiential and problem-based Location aware devices, 3D-worlds like SecondLife
learning
Role play and inquiry-based learning Search engines, online resources, social networking
and micro-blogging sites
Resource-based learning User-generated content tools, media repositories,
Open Educational Resources
Reflective, dialogic and peer-based learning Blogs, wikis and e-portfolios
Positive and negative aspects
Table 2 looks at five common effects associated with new technologies and suggests some of the
consequences or paradoxes that arise as a result.
The first is the fact that there are now many free tools, resource and services; leading to an ever ex-
panding body of knowledge. Digital technologies amplify this body of knowledge, by providing
easy access to information, new ways of aggregating resources and multiple ways of disassembling
and recombining information. In a world of increasing complexity and knowledge, it is no longer
possible to know everything about a domain. Whereas a century ago a professional Chemist could
have a pretty good grasp across all the main sub-domains of Chemistry; today’s Chemist struggles
to keep up with their own area. Some celebrate this expansion, arguing that it means everyone had
the potential to be a ‘just-in-time’ expert and to be able to access and use knowledge for different
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8. purposes. There is a vast array of information available online on medical conditions, so arguable
before seeking the advice of a doctor individuals can look up information on symptoms from the
Web. Surowiecki coined the term ‘wisdom of the crowds’ (Surowiecki 2004) arguing that collective
aggregation of information can lead to better decisions than those any individual might make. Oth-
ers caution against this, lamenting the death of expertise. Keen in particular cautions against the
‘cult of the amateur’ (Keen 2007), arguing that the Web 2.0 revolution is not providing more depth
of information, rather it is leading to superficial observations and judgement. He talks of the ‘sheer
noise of a hundred million bloggers; simultaneously talking about themselves’ and argues that we
are decimating our ‘cultural gatekeepers’ (critics, journalists, editors, etc.).
On the positive side, these tools mean that leaners have access to a rich set of resources, which they
can adapt and personalise. The abundance of tools and resources also means it is possible to support
niche specialist disciplines, the so called long-tail effect (Anderson, 2004). On the negative side, in
a world where tools, resources and services are increasingly free, what is the role of formal educa-
tional institutions? What should be the balance of institutionally supported services verses free
ones? Institutions are increasingly seeing learners picking and mixing the tools they use and they
are no longer solely reliant on institutional systems.
Change Positive impact Negative impact
Free tools, resources and ser- Access and personalisation, abil-Raises questions about the role
vices ity to support niche specialisa- of institutions and increasing ev-
tions - the so called ‘long tail’ idence of a lack of institutional
phenomenon control
Ubiquitous access Technologies as core tools for A narrower, but deeper digital
learning and teaching divide
Multiple communication and Increasing opportunities for Fragmentation and no central
distribution channels peer, tutor and expert dialogue, repository or sole learning path-
beyond the confines of the for- ways
mal course boundaries
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9. Change Positive impact Negative impact
Rich media representation New forms of sense making Learners and teachers not
equipped with the necessary new
digital literacy skills
User-generated content Increasing variety and forms of Quality assurance issues in terms
knowledge and more opportuni- of the validity and worth of these
ties for leaner control materials, issues in terms of
whether learners and teachers
have the right skills to make ef-
fective evaluation judgments
about these materials
Social profiling and networking Increased opportunities for Inappropriate digital voices and
knowledge sharing and commu- potential fragmentation of identi-
nity build, a network of dis- ty
tributed communities possible
Table 2: The positive and negative aspects of new technologies
Secondly, ubiquitous access is becoming the norm, learners and teachers are expecting to be able to
access tools and resources from anywhere, and hence be able to learn and teach anywhere, anytime.
In particular mobile devices make it easier to access information and communicate online. Users are
using a range of communication channels to connect with others all over the world. Learners are
able to access expertise beyond the confines of their formal courses. The downside of this is that
those that either choose not to connect or are unable to connect are becoming increasingly isolated;
the digital divide is narrower but deeper (Norris, 2001; Warschauer, 2004).
9

10. Thirdly, there are now numerous communication and distribution channels available for learners
and teachers. Content can be accessed, shared and discussed through a variety of mechanisms.
Users are posting across inter-related sites such as blogs, Twitter and facebook. Users are using a
range of communication channels to connect with others all over the world. Learners are able to ac-
cess expertise beyond the confines of their formal courses. However this is also leading to learner
confusion and to fragmentation of voice.
Fourthly, there are a rich range of multimedia and ways of representing content. This can be har-
nessed by learners to view ideas and concepts in different ways. There are also now a range of inter-
active sensemaking tools - such as concept mapping and argumentation tools that learners can use
to make sense of their understanding and to connect and represent ideas (Okada et al., 2008). But to
effectively use these representations and tools learners and teachers need appropriate new digital lit-
eracies skills, which arguably many do not have at the moment.
Fifthly, there is now a critical mass of Open Educational Resources, as well as tools for the creation
of user-generated content. This means that learners can augment their course materials with related
materials developed elsewhere. They can compare and contrast these resources to triangulate their
understanding of new concepts. But finding and making effective judgements on the worth and rel-
evance of materials is non trivial. Furthermore there can be quality assurance issues as many of
these resources are not quality assessed for accuracy and relevance.
Sixthly, there are opportunities for social networking and profiling. This means it is possible for
learners and teachers to be part of global, distributed communities and to actively participate and
co-construct knowledge and understanding. A key feature of social and participatory media is the
power of the collective; the potential to tap into a collective mass. This suggests ‘expertise at one’s
fingertips’ as well as a collective endeavour to tackle problems, where the ‘sum will be greater than
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11. the individual parts’ – why tackle an issue with one mind, when one can use hundreds or thousands,
with different perspectives and different types of expertise? This gives rise to the concept of ‘col-
lective intelligence’ (Lévy, 1997) i.e. a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collabora-
tion and competition of many individuals. Although this is a well-established field of enquiry, the
sheer capacity of the Internet means that huge numbers of people can now work together on a
shared problem, as the same time utilising the vast quantity of information and tools available on
the Internet. Lévy for example, predicted as far back as 1997 that new communications technolo-
gies could profoundly effect the range of social bonds (Levy, 1997: 40).
However this social collective co-exists with what Wellman and Gulia termed ‘networked individu-
alism’ (Wellman and Gulia, 2001), i.e. the notion that there is a shift away from tightly bound
groups to loosely knit networks of individuals. Furthermore, these networks are also complex and
can lead to confusion in terms of digital identities.
The general increasingly complex digital landscape is challenging our existing vocabularies and
means of description. The very terms digital spaces and landscapes hark back to a time when the di-
gital was considered as a mere extension of the real. Terms such as ‘virtual universities’ and ‘virtual
cafés’ give the impression of the digital as a ‘bounded place’. Whereas the kinds of patterns of be-
haviour we are now seeing in the digital realm, the distribution of content and tools, the multi-fa-
ceted and inter-connected nature of the digital means that the vocabulary of ‘time’ and ‘space’ is no
longer adequate. We need new vocabularies and metaphors to describe what is happening. I have ar-
gued previously that:
There is a need for new approaches to help navigate through the digital environment and
also to help make sense of it and the impact it is having on our lives. Simplistic descriptions
of the digital environment replicating physical spaces are no longer appropriate, it is neces-
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12. sary to take a more holistic view and describe technologies and users together emphasising
the connections between them (Conole, 2008).
Finally the apparent utopian drive towards an Internet where tools and content are free, and where
open source principles, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and mash ups appear to offer an
evolving, collectively improved set of content and tools, which can be used in a multitude of ways,
may not be all that clear cut. Such practices challenge existing ideas around quality and ownership
and do not fit in with current business models for commoditising knowledge. This suggests there is
far more to do in terms of understanding these and redefining our ideas around ownership, quality
and business models.
Social inclusion and exclusion
The previous section highlighted some of the paradoxes which can arise as a result of new social
and participatory media. This section will focus on how these relate specifically to notions of social
inclusion and exclusion. It provides a definition of the terms and considers the ways in which new
social and participatory media can result in certain groups being excluded, but also how these tech-
nologies can be used to enable inclusion. It will provide some case study examples of how this is
being achieved. One definition of social exclusion is that it is
‘a multidimensional process of progressive social rupture, detaching groups and individuals
from social relations and institutions and preventing them from full participation in the nor-
mal, normatively prescribed activities of the society in which they live’.2
This can include lack of access to earnings, education, technology, community or simply basic hu-
man rights. Cullen et al. (2009) define it as the:
2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_exclusion
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13. process whereby individuals are pushed to the edge of society and prevented from partici-
pating fully by virtue of their poverty of lack of competences and lifelong learning oppor-
tunities or by discrimination.
They go on the define social inclusion as the:
process that ensures that those at risk of poverty and social exclusion gain the opportunities
and resources to participate fully in the economic, social and cultural life.
Clearly social and participatory media can result in social exclusion in a number of respects; indi-
viduals may not have access to the technologies, they may lack the necessary digital literacy skills
to use them or they may be prevented in some way from accessing them. However, Cullen et al.
(2009) also suggest that there are two ways in which Web 2.0 technologies can be used to promote
social inclusion, namely by: i) preventing digital exclusion and ii) by exploiting new technologies
for better inclusion.
They describe eight case studies which have attempted to use new technologies to support different
pedagogical approaches and types of learners (Table 3). It is interesting to see the ways in which
each of the case studies harnessed new technologies in particular contexts; utilising blogs, wikis, e-
portfolios and virtual worlds to meet the needs of particular excluded groups, coupled with imple-
mentation of different pedagogical approaches, such as story telling, peer coaching and open, col-
laborative pedagogies. The examples are drawn from across both formal and informal learning con-
texts and demonstrate how technologies can be used to support learners of different learning levels,
needs and in different contexts.
←
Case study Description
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14. Notschool Online school for drop outs
www.notschool.net Constructivist pedagogy, peer buddy system
Assistive technology wiki Supports knowledge creation around assistive
abilitynet.wetpaint.com ‘Routes of desire’ pedagogy model
Mundi de Estrellas
Aimed at young people in hospital, shared stories
www.juntadeandalucia.es
ALPEUNED
Students with disabilities at the Open University in Spain
adenu.ia.uned.es/alpe/
Conecta Joven
eSkills for at risk and excluded groups
www.conectajoven.org
MOSEP
Self-esteemed through e-Portfolios, learning companions
www.mosep.org
Schome Park Gifted kids and those with autism, in SecondLife, open
www.schome.ac.uk pedagogy based on collaboration
BREAKOUT
Offending and drug prevention, a life-swapping model
www.breakoutproject.odl.org
Open Educational Resources and Practices
Having defined social inclusion and exclusion, this section will consider ways in which the Open
Educational Resource movement (Atkins et al., 2007) is fostering more open and socially inclusive
practices. I draw in particular on the work being undertaken by the Olnet3 and OPAL4 initiatives, but
3 http://olnet.org
4 http://oer-quality.org/
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15. also broaden this to discuss how this work sits within a wider context of adopting more open prac-
tices.
The Olnet initiative is being funded by the Flora and William Hewlett foundation and is a partner-
ship between the Open University, UK and Carnegie Mlelon in North America. It aims to provide a
global social-technical infrastructure to promote the use and reuse of OER. The focus is on ensuring
that OER research findings are translated into practice through fostering a dialogue and exchange
between researchers and users or OER. The rationale behind the initiative is the realisation that de-
spite the plethora of high-quality resources now available, evaluation studies show that they are not
being used as extensively as might have been hoped by teachers and learners and they are being re-
purposed even less (McAndrew et al., 2009). The hypothesis is that if we can better understand how
OER are currently being created, used and reused then we are likely to be able to develop strategies
to help teachers and learners use them more effectively. A central argument around the promotion of
OER is that education should be viewed as a fundamental human right and that therefore resources
should be made freely available. However the focus to date has primarily been on the creation of
OER repositories with the naïve assumption that if resources are made freely available learners and
teachers will use and repurpose them.
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16. In trying to tackle the issue of why this is not the case, Olnet ran a series of workshop with teachers
to get them to explore and discuss OER and in particular to consider how they can be designed for
use in a new context, namely to support collaborative learning (Conole, et al., 2011). Evaluation of
the workshop discussions identified a number of issues. Firstly, that an OER has an associated in-
herent design, which is not normally made explicit. Therefore a teacher looking at whether or not an
OER is relevant for their context of use has to first attempt to make this design explicit and then re-
design for use in a new context. It was evident that many teachers do not have the necessary skills
to do this and also that the design can be represented in a range of ways, to foreground different as-
pects of the resource and its associated pedagogical design. Participants reported that they had a lot
of difficulty understanding the OER in their raw state and felt they were missing important informa-
tion. They were also unsure of the quality and provenance of the OER. It was therefore evident that
deconstruction and subsequent reconstruction of OER is complex. Conole et al. (2011) identified
four layers that need to be considered to make most effective repurposing of an OER:
1.Visual representation of the design – how can the implicit OER design be made more explicit
and hence shareable?
2.Opinion of goodness – how appropriate is the OER for different contexts?
3.Transferability through pedagogical patterns – how can generic patterns be applied to specific
contexts?
4.Layer of discussion, critique and contextualisation – how can social and participatory media
act as a supporting structure to foster debate between those using the same OER?
16

17. In addition to having difficulty in deconstructing OER, participants also had problems in terms of
repurposing for a new context. Conole et al. (2011) provided a set of collaborative pedagogical pat-
terns (Hernández et al., 2005, Hernández et al., 2010) as a means of structuring and guiding the re-
design process. Participants reported that these did help them think about how to repurpose the
OER for a new collaborative learning context. Participants cited a number of ways in which the use
of these patterns were useful: i) only a few patterns are needed to get started and to help think about
how a collaborative learning element might be introduced, ii) the patterns were generic enough that
they applied to many different learning situations, iii) they encourage thinking at different levels
and iv) they encouraged a fresh view of the resources.
Building on the experience of Olnet and in particular the importance of understanding the context of
the design and use of OER, I will now go on to consider a related, complementary initiative, OPAL.
The OPAL initiative's focus is on the articulation of dimensions of OER practice, with the hope that
through this we can better understand how to support the use and reuse of OER. OPAL identified
OER practices by analysis of 60 case studies of OER initiatives. Open Educational Practices (OEP)
are defined as a set of activities and support around the creation, use and repurposing of Open Edu-
cational Resources (OERs).Through this eight dimensions of practice were identified initially:
1.Strategies and policies
2.Quality Assurance (QA) models
3.Partnership models
4.Tools and tool practices
5.Innovations
6.Skills development and support
7.Business models/sustainability strategies
8.Barriers and success factors
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18. These were then validated with the user community through a series of workshops and an expert
panel, leading to the refinement of the dimensions to four: strategies and policies, tools and tool
practices, skills development and support, and barriers and success factors. It is evident, that each
of these dimensions of practice might either promote social inclusion or negate it. For example if
policies are in place to provide for funding to support the development of OER this will lead to an
increase in the availability of high quality OER. Similarly, staff development activities and support
can be put in place to help address the kinds of digital literacy skills described earlier in terms of ef-
fect design and repurposing of OER. Articulation of barriers can help to put in place policies and
practices to alleviate them. Similarly identified success factors can be replicated in different con-
texts. Finally, innovative use of social and participatory media can lead to fostering more discus-
sion and engagement amongst practitioners on the use of OER.
The dimensions have been used for the creation of a OEP quality model5 that can be used by organi-
sations and individuals to self assess their level of OEP maturity (Figure 1).
5 This was developed by T. Koskinen for the OPAL project.
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19. Figure 1: The OPAL OEP maturity cube
Therefore an organisation that had in place effective OER policies might be placed in 2AX at level
of maturity defined. Similarly an individual who uses uses social and participatory media to organ-
ise and share OER might be placed in 1CX level defined. This model has now been translated into a
set of guidelines for OER stakeholders (learners, teachers, institutional managers/support staff and
policy makers). Figure 2 shows a conceptual overview of the different aspects of the guidelines that
each of the stakeholders need to consider, representing a metromap metaphor to emphasise that the
guidelines provide a structure trajectory for stakeholders to develop their OER practices.
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20. Figure 2: The OPAL OER practices represented as a metromap6
Promoting communication and discussion
The previous section discussed how OER might be used to promote social inclusion. This section
will consider the ways in which practitioners can share and discuss learning and teaching ideas and
hence be part of a global network of scholars. When teachers are asked what would most help them
make more effective use of technologies in their teaching, the overwhelming answer is ‘show me
examples of what others have done and give me access to others with similar interests that I can talk
to’ (Clark and Cross, 2010, Wilson, 2007). The social networking site, Cloudworks7, was created to
provide such a site. It amalgamates a range of typical Web 2.0 functionality (such as RSS feeds, fa-
vouriting, following, activity streams, aggregation of resources, and activity streams) to provide a
social space where teachers can share and collectively improve learning and teaching ideas, re-
sources and practices. Conole and Culver (2009) provide background details to the development of
the site and the underpinning theoretical perspectives and in a related paper they describe some of
the initial design and evaluation of the site (Conole and Culver, 2010).
6 Thanks to Inge Richter for producing the metromap
7 http://cloudworks.ac.uk
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21. From our evaluation data we can see that the site is promoting a range of practices, providing prac-
titioners with different ways in which to communicate and interact. It has been used effectively to
support real and virtual events (conferences and workshops), virtual reading circles, open reviews
and expert elicitation, and is also been used in some instances to share the design of new courses or
by students as a space to share and discuss their learning. The site appears to provide a niche social
space and complements established sites such as Facebook, Twitter and personal blogs. The distinct
feature of the site is that it is based around ‘social objects’ (Engeström, 2005) called ‘Clouds’,
which can be anything to do with learning and teaching (such as a discussion about a tool or re-
source, details of a particular learning intervention or discussion about a particular pedagogical ap-
proach and how technologies can be used to foster it). Clouds can be discussed and also can be col-
lectively improved by the community, through addition of more content (including embedded multi-
media) and by inclusion of relevant links or references. Clouds can be grouped into Cloudscapes.
The site now has a vibrant self-sustaining community of users from around the world and demon-
strates how such sites can promote social inclusion, not only through the sharing of ideas, but also
by breaking down barriers between different educational sectors. Teachers and learners from across
the formal and informal educational spectrum are participating.
Learning design
Finally this section will describe a new learning design methodology that has been developed to en-
able practitioners to make more effective use of technologies in the design of learning interventions
and resources for their students. The methodology is fundamentally socio-cultural in nature and is
based on the notion of the creation of a range of Mediating Artefacts to support design practice. It
aims to help teachers shift from an implicit, belief-based approach to the creation of learning inter-
ventions to one that is explicit and design-based. As part of this methodology we have created a
range of visual representations, which teachers can use to create and document their design activit-
21

22. ies. These range from a task swimlane representation that can be used to map learning activities
which take place over a few hours up to a holistic whole course map view. In the task swimlane
view, the roles of those involved in the activity (for example learner, tutor etc.) are represented as
lanes of individual tasks (such as read a book, participation in a forum, etc.) and for each task any
associated resource, tools or outputs are connected. The course view map enables the practitioner to
articulate against four aspects of the course: guidance and support, content and activities, commu-
nication and collaboration, and reflection and demonstration. In addition, keywords are used to de-
scribe the nature of the course and a short summary of the course is provided. Three other views
have also bee produced: a pedagogy profile view (which articulates the types of activities the lean-
ers are expected to undertaken, a course dimensions view which gives more details against the four
headings described for the course view map (such as the extent to which the course is tutor or
learner-centred, the degree of formative or summative assessment, the extent to which Web 2.0
tools or Open Educational Resources are used, etc.), and the learning outcomes maps, which en-
ables the practitioner to ensure that the learning outcomes are achieved either through the activities
the learners undertaken or via the assessment.
Recommendations
This section puts forward a number of recommendations to overcome some of the barriers to using
social and participatory media cited in this chapter; for learners, teachers, institutions and policy
makers.
For learners it is important that we provide support and guidance in terms of the development of the
digital literacy skills they need. We should encourage more learner-centred approaches, which
match the affordances of new media. We need to encourage new active and participatory forms of
communication and collaboration, both within formal cohorts and beyond. We need to shift from a
focus on content to activities.
22

23. For teachers we need to develop new approaches to the design of learning interventions (Conole,
forthcoming). Teachers will need to adopt more explicit and reflective teaching practices. The best
way for teachers to engage with these new technologies is through technology immersion, learning
by doing in other words. We should continue to encourage the creation of a networked educational
community of teachers and learners, to enable them to share and discuss learning and teaching
ideas.
At an institutional level, we need to ensure that strategies and policies are in place that reflect the
changing context of learning. We need to ensure there are appropriate resources and support to fa-
cilitate the shift in practice needed. Strong leadership is likely to make all the difference, institution-
al leaders who have a clear understanding of the issues (technical, pedagogical and organisational)
and who have the power to revision structures and infrastructures.
Finally nationally (and indeed internationally) we need to move to the creation and support of high
quality Open Educational Resources, along with the description and sharing of case studies of good
practice. Appropriate strategies, policies and funding should be introduced to help teachers and
learners make more effective use of these media and resources. Professional networks and com-
munities should be encouraged to promote scholarly discourse, and there needs to be an ongoing
horizon scanning of technological changes to feed back into what is happening at both an individual
and institutional level.
There is no doubt that new social and participatory media enable new forms of communication and
collaboration, but communities in these spaces are complex and distributed. Teachers and learners
need to develop new digital literacy skills to harness their potential effectively and are likely to need
support to be able to achieve this. Part of this is that we need to rethink the ways in which we
design, support and assess learning interventions. New social media sites such as Cloudworks can
23

24. provide mechanisms for teachers to share and discuss learning and teaching ideas and hence im-
prove their practice. Finally we are seeing a blurring of boundaries: learners/teachers,
learning/teaching, content/activities and real and virtual spaces. This is the reality of the context of
modern education. The opportunities are exciting and potentially transformative, the challenges are
significant.
Addressing the challenges of social exclusion/inclusion
A series of questions were listed at the beginning of the chapter in relation to social exclusion/inclu-
sion and technologies, these are each now briefly discussed.
•How are new open, social and participatory media changing educational practice?
As this chapter has described, it is evident that new open, social and participatory media have the
potential to transform educational practice, however to date the impact of these technologies has not
been significant. There are a range of reasons for this, not least that teachers and learners need to
develop new digital literacies skills in order to harness the potential of these technologies. Effective
support in terms of more widespread use of Open Educational Resources and guidance such as the
learning design methodology articulated in this chapter are mechanisms that make help address this.
•What are the implications for formal and informal learning?
New technologies offer a variety of ways in which learners can access and represent information
and ways in which they can communicate and collaborate. New technologies enable learners to be
part of a global distributed network of peers and experts and effectively are blurring the boundaries
of formal and informal learning.
•How are learner and teacher roles changing?
Roles are blurring, teachers are becoming learners and vice versa, learners and teachers participate
in these new technologies in a more equal fashion than was possible in more formal learning con-
texts of the past.
•How should institutional structures and systems be adapted to accommodate these new technologies?
24

25. New technologies have significant implications for institutional structures and systems. In particular
institutions need to take account of the fact that learners and teachers are increasingly using non-in-
stitutional systems. They also need to consider how to best integrate the use of institutional Learn-
ing Management Systems (LMSs) and cloud-based services.
•What new digital literacies will learners and teachers need to make effective use of these new tech-
nologies?
To the 11 digital literacies that Jenkin et al. (2006) list, I would add creativity. Learners and teachers
need to develop these skills in order to effective navigate around online spaces and to make effec-
tive judgments about the value of different online resources.
•How can we design effective learning interventions and environments to harness the affordances that
these new technologies provide?
Adoption of more design-based research approaches to the development of learning environments is
one way of ensuring that new technologies are used effectively, as well as enabling the designers to
adopt an agile and responsive approach based on user needs and behaviours. The learning method-
ology described in this chapter aims to guide and support practitioners in creating more effective
learning activities and environments that make effective use of new technologies.
•What social exclusion issues arise and how can we minimise these?
Despite the evident benefits and potential of new technologies for learning, some learners and
teachers will be excluded. This may be because they lack the necessary digital literacies skills to
harness their potential or may be due to lack of technical access. There may also be issues in terms
of learners and teachers not having enough time to engage and experiment with new technologies
and hence get a feel for how they can be used in an educational context.
Conclusion
The chapter has considered the implications of new social and participatory media to promote social
inclusion. It has described three instances; namely the use of OER and associated practices, the pro-
motion of communication and interaction through new social media, and application of a new learn-
25

26. ing design methodology. As stated earlier the digital divide is still evident and as social and particip-
atory media and users behaviour continue to co-evolve it is only likely that the divide between those
who are able to use social and participatory media and those who cannot will increase. It is import-
ant for us to be aware of this and to continue to develop mechanisms to promote social inclusion in
learning and teaching.
To return to the central question posed at the beginning of this chapter: can social and participatory
media support social inclusion?’ The answer is yes in that these media can provide rich multimedia
representations and multiple communication channels, enable learning opportunities to be accessed
from anywhere and provide mechanisms for storing and sharing an abundance of free educational
resources. However the answer is also no, in that these media are resulting in a new kind of digital
divide, the digital environment is increasingly complex and many learners and teachers lack the ne-
cessary digital literacy skills to navigate and effective use this space.
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