Ett lärande bortom tid och rum med hjälp av sociala medier

Mark J.W. Lee och Catherine McLoughli har skrivit i mycket positiva ordalag om de sociala mediernas potential i distansundervisningen ("Beyond Distance and Time Constraints: Applying Social Networking Tools and Web 2.0 Approaches in Distance Education", publicerad i Veletsianos bok Emerging Technologies, 2010, s 74). Här kommer några exempel på de möjligheter som de tar upp:

Man kan skapa sociala nätverk där man bland annat kan lära känna såväl andra som sig själv lite bättre, känna gemenskap, ställa frågor, diskutera, testa sina idéer och utveckla sina tankar och sin sociala kompetens:

"Social networking /.../ enable the creation of social capital, which refers to the capacity of people to build links and call upon others to help, test, and confirm ideas and co-create knowledge. This concept is essential to understanding why connectivity is important in distance education. The building blocks of social capital are similar to the requirements for social presence and require trust, engagement, connection, openness to others’ views, and a willingness to collaborate and share ideas. Social software tools allow individuals to acquire both social and communicative skills, and at the same time become engaged in the architecture of participation of Web 2.0. Using these tools, users engage in informal learning and creative, expressive forms of behaviour and identity seeking, while developing a range of digital literacies." 

Man har möjlighet att, tillsammans och bortom tid och rum, skapa och dela med sig av nytt material och nya kunskaper:

"Web 2.0 emphasizes the pre-eminence of content creation over content consumption, whereby learners can create, assemble, organize, and share content to meet their own needs and those of others. Open content initiatives and copyright models such as Creative Commons (2008) are helping fuel the growth of learner-generated content and changing the old paradigm of distance education to give learners more autonomy and scope for creativity. Wikis and other collaborative writing tools enable distributed individuals to work together to generate new knowledge through an open editing and review structure."

Utifrån sina egna intressen och behov kan man enkelt söka kunskaper från olika källor och göra egna sammanställningar som svarar mot ens egna eller kollegors intressen och behov:

"The large uptake of RSS, as well as related technologies such as podcasting and vodcasting, is indicative of a move to collecting material from many sources and making it available for personal needs. Hilton (2006) describes these technologies as part of a move from “producer push” to “demand pull,” whereby students are now accustomed to obtaining and consuming content “on demand.” There are also trends towards the unbundling of content (Hilton, 2006) and the rise of “micro-content” (Lindner, 2005, 2006; Leene, 2005), i.e., digital content in small fragments that are loosely connected and which can be “mashed-up,” re-mixed, and re-formulated by individuals to produce new patterns, images, and interpretations."

Om vi som lärare och elever använder oss av sociala medier i vårt arbete, innebär det alltså att vi automatiskt blir både konsumenter och producenter av kursens studiematerial. Inte illa, eller hur?!