Literature
Review
Susan
Connell
ED 690
Summer 2004
Uses for Social
Software in Education
Along with
the prevalence of distance education and increasing use of electronic
elements in traditional classroom teaching has come the realization
that human interaction is as important in the virtual classroom as
it is in the actual one. To respond to that need, a variety of software
- commonly called social software - has been developed to facilitate
student-teacher and peer-to-peer interaction. This literature review
examines current definitions, thinking, and qualitative research about
the various uses of social software in educational environments in
order to establish a foundational overview for determining best practices
for implementation and use of each type of software.
Defining
Social Software
In the broadest
sense any software that involves communication of ideas could be considered
social software. Getting more specific, generally accepted definitions
of social software focus on those that address the desire of individuals
to be pulled into groups to achieve goals and feature support for conversational
interaction between individuals or groups, support for social feedback,
and/or support for social networks. (Boyd, 2003) While the initial
focus of e-learning was on the technology that drove it, new social
software tools are being adapted from those used by teens and business
people to keep in touch and collaborate. (Kaplan-Leiserson, 2003)
The
specific software that falls into this category offers tools for
both synchronous and asynchronous communication (Goodwin-Jones, 2003)
and includes:
- E-Mail
and Listserves are first-generation electronic communication tools
that enable asynchronous communication between individuals and groups
who wish to share textual information as well as attachments that can
include graphic and even multimedia content. Listserves allow users
to easily establish and maintain defined groups for the distribution
of e-mail correspondence. (Goodwin-Jones, 2003)
- Instant
Messaging (IM) and Chat are types of Internet-based synchronous
text messaging software that have been used for years by teenagers
and are now being used increasingly for rapid, real-time interaction
in business and education. (Kaplan-Leiserson, 2003) Facilitated by
the expanding availability of broadband Internet connections, newer
generations of messaging and chat software are incorporating near-real
time audio and video components. Unless participants actively choose
to preserve a message interaction, there is no record of the discussion
when an exchange ends.
- Weblogs
(Blogs) are essentially online journals with specific themes that
can be developed collaboratively or individually and make extensive
use of hypertext to connect to other web-based resources with supporting
or related information. (Goodwin-Jones, 2003)
- Wikis are open-source tools that allow users to develop a website that
is created and revised collaboratively without users having to know
a programming language. They have been described as a "composition
system, a discussion medium, a repository, a mail system, a
chat room, and a tool for collaboration." (Kaplan-Leiserson, 2004)
- Discussion
Boards and Forums provide a dedicated space for asynchronous, online
text-based discussions characterized by topics, replies, and threads
(Wrede, 2003) that can be preserved and perused over long periods
of time.
- Course
Management Systems, Virtual Classrooms and Groupware constitute
a broad category of (frequently proprietary) tools that can incorporate
some of the preceding items in a dedicated, generally password protected,
space intended for collaboration and information sharing among
defined working groups. (Murphy, Cifuentes, & Shih,
2003) While related to the social software category, they are could really
be considered more of a structural tool to organize social, administrative
and logistical software components.
Current
Applications in Education
Use of these
software tools in educational applications is barely past its infancy.
E-mail is commonly used in student-faculty interaction because it offers
the ability to provide personalized feedback and the opportunity for
logistically appropriate structured dialogue. (Longhurst & Sandage,
2004) Students themselves have been using various chat
and messaging functions for years, though not always with educational
goals in mind. (Kaplan-Leiserson, 2003)
With newer
generations of social software, educators have been using the Web to
publish course descriptions and syllabi as well as building professional
development communities for some time. However, while the National
Council of Teachers of English supports the use of Web-based publishing
tools to share student writing, publishing student work is not
yet as widespread. (Kennedy, 2003) At the same time Oravec
has pointed out that weblogs can be used to enhance students'
critical thinking, literacy skills and ability to use the
Internet for research purposes. (2002) They allow for instant
publishing, sharing, and collaboration among multiple students
in a format that can be used in a many settings (in and out of
the traditional classroom) and for a variety of subjects. (Weller,
2003) More specifically, weblogs can be sub-categorized in genres
based on their use as: journals for individual expression, notebooks
for individual or group research, and filters for sharing ideas on a
specific topic or range of topics. (Brooks, Nichols, & Priebe, 2003)
Educators
have found a variety of creative applications for the wiki format based on
a constructivist foundation including: quick informational website publishing,
collaborative website posting, student assignments with peer review capabilities,
problem solving, focused discussions (forum-like discussions), case libraries
("Hall of Fame" and "Best
of..." compilations), interdisciplinary projects,
community building among students (Hot Lists, common
interests, adventure games), collaboration practice,
and more. (Synteta, 2002)
Prevalence
of Social Software Use
Clearly
the most basic form of social software, e-mail, is as ubiquitous in
educational venues as it is in the rest of the world. The use of messaging
and chat functions among students is almost as common, though it is
still not used as extensively for educational purposes. (Kaplan-Leiserson,
2003) In other areas adoption of these new tools has not
been as widespread, used more on an experimental or exploratory
basis and often not widely understood by educators. For
some, technical and logistical hurdles have slowed adoption
where computers or web space are not readily available.
(Kennedy, 2003)
In 2003,
there were an estimated 4.1 billion weblogs on blog-hosting sites alone
(McFedries, 2003) including more than one million on the most popular
hosting site, Blogger.com. (Brooks et al., 2003) Started in 2001, one
popular wiki site, Wikipedia, receives more daily hits than the venerable
Britannica.com and currently contains more than 312,572 articles in
the English language edition. Yet academia has been moving at a somewhat
slower pace to fully embrace these new components of information technology
for reasons relating to access, budget, understanding, and intellectual
property questions, (Gurak & Duin,
2004) as well as simple human factors like lack of time or motivation to
learn about new software. (Wrede, 2003)
Potential
Benefits of Social Software
Although
the full gamut of social software is still not used extensively in
an educational context, educators and students alike are beginning
to recognize the benefits that include: giving and receiving rapid
feedback and critique (Longhurst & Sandage, 2004), stimulating
creativity (Weller, 2003), facilitating collaborative study
(Lunsford & Bruce,
2001), providing a real audience for student
work (Kennedy, 2003), fostering the development of critical thinking skills
(Oravec, 2003), establishing a platform for academic discourse (Wrede, 2003)
and improving more mundane situations like time conflicts,
remote access or location considerations. (Dabbagh, 2002)
Conclusions
Social
software is a technological development that is still in its formative
years that clearly offers great promise in many areas of education
as well as for society at large. However, even
for the most willing participant, rapid developments
and the proliferation of the software and its variants
make it difficult to keep track of available technologies
and how to best to use them. When implementing
new technologies it is important that instructors
chose appropriate technology that meets pedagogical
goals with minimum disruption (Longhurst & Sandage, 2004), but determining
what is appropriate can be a daunting task.
While there
is no shortage of literature about the general topic of social software
or the various individual software tools available, there is no comprehensive
research that provides a comparative "birds-eye-view" of
these tools. Clearly no single type of
software is ideal for every situation. Educators could be well served by research
would clarify the features, benefits and shortcomings of the primary categories
of social software. Questions remaining to be addressed include:
- Which
software tools correlate best with a selection of common learning goals?
- How can
available software best be used to foster a sense of community?
- Which types
of software more useful in solo versus group learning endeavors?
References
Boyd,
S. (2003). Are You Ready for Social Software? Retrieved July 3,
2004, 2003, from http://www.darwinmag.com/read/050103/social.html
Brooks,
K., Nichols, C., & Priebe, S. (2003). Remediation, Genre,
and Motivation: Key Concepts
for Teaching with Weblogs. Retrieved July 2, 2004, 2004, from http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/remediation_genre_pf.html
Dabbagh,
N. (2002). Using a Web-Based Course Management
Tool to Support Face-to-Face
Instruction. The Technology Source(March/April
2002).
Goodwin-Jones,
B. (2003). EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
Blogs and Wikis: Environments for On-line Collaboration. Language
Learning & Technology,
7(2), 12-16.
Gurak, L.
J., & Duin, A. H. (2004). The Impact of the Internet
and Digital Technologies
on Teaching and Research in Technical Communication. Technical Communication
Quarterly, 13(2), 187-198.
Kaplan-Leiserson,
E. (2003). We-Learning:
Social Software and E-Learning.
Retrieved July 2, 2004,
2004, from http://www.learningcircuits.org/2003/dec2003/kaplan.htm
Kaplan-Leiserson,
E. (2004). We Learning: Social Software and E-Learning, Part II.
Retrieved July 23, 2004, 2004, from http://www.learningcircuits.org/2004/jan2004/kaplan2.htm
Kennedy,
K. (2003, February 2003). Writing With Web Logs. Retrieved June 20,
2004, 2004, from http://www.techlearning.com/db_area/archives/TL/2003/02/blogs.html
Longhurst,
J., & Sandage, S. A. (2004). Appropriate Technology and
Journal Writing:
Structured Dialogues That Enhance Learning. College Teaching, 52(2),
69-75.
Lunsford,
K. J., & Bruce, B. C. (2001). Collaboratories: working
together
on the Web. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 45(1),
52-58.
McFedries,
P. (2003).
Blah, Blah,
Blog. IEEE
Spectrum, 40(12),
60.
Murphy,
K. L., Cifuentes, L., & Shih, Y.-C. D. (2003). Online Collaborative
Documents
for Research and Coursework. TechTrends, 48(3), 40-44.
Oravec,
J. A. (2002).
Bookmarking
the world: Weblog
applications
in education.
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 45(5), 616-621.
Oravec,
J. A. (2003). Blending by Blogging: weblogs in blended learning initiatives.
Journal of Educational Media, 28(2/3), p225 229p.
Synteta,
V. (2002, July 3, 2002). What is a Wiki? Retrieved July 24, 2004, 2004,
from http://tecfa.unige.ch/guides/tie/html/wikis/wikis-2.html
Weller,
G. (2003). Using Weblogs in the Classroom. English Journal, 92(5),
73-75.
Wrede, O.
(2003). Weblogs and Discourse. Retrieved July 2, 2004, 2004, from http://weblogs.design.fh-aachen.de/owrede/publikationen/weblogs_and_discourse
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