Category: PhD

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Facebook versus VLE

A collection of links and materials that i’m collating for a section on loss of control – in particular the way that more student interaction may be taking place in social networking sites rather than in institutional owned VLEs. Is this something to worry away, or does it create trust and ownership issues?

imprisoned by your vle (has a link to the delightful analysis referring to Bentham)

Panckhurst, R.; Marsh, D. (2008). Communities of Practice. Using the Open web as a
collaborative Learning platform. iLearn Forum, Paris, France

Selwyn, N. (2007). Screw Blackboard… do it on Facebook! an investigation of students’
educational use of Facebook. [Available at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/513958/Facebook-
seminar-paper-Selwyn, accessed: 17.04.2008]

Naidu, S. (2003). Trends in faculty use and perceptions of e-learning

Good Practice and Innovation, Effective Use of Virtual Learning Environments (2006). JISC
Infonet.

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My Personal Learning Environment workflow – from the cloud to Papers

PLE workflow
PLE workflow

I’m currently sourcing journal articles on Social Capital, looking for links to learning, learning communities and social networks. Finding these either involves Google Scholar or Lancaster Universities meta-lib which is a web based search engine that collates results from a variety of online journals and the other ‘consolidation’ portals that are out there.

No matter where the journals come from they all end up in Papers, which is effectively iTunes for PDFs. It offers collections (which are like playlists), embedded notes and perhaps most importantly a match facility to get meta information (title, authors, dates, journals etc.) from a variety of online sources automagically. A fantastic piece of software which is a must buy for Mac users doing research.

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Social Capital by John Field

Social Capital by FieldI’m currently working my way through the second edition of Social Capital by John Field, which is in the Routledge Key Ideas range. Chapter one covers the history of the term and idea, mentioning the work of Hanifan (1916), through Dewey to the three contempory writers who have shaped most of the modern thinking on the concept – Bourdieu, Coleman and Putnam.

Bourdieu’s work seems to be routed in problems deriving from the European class system and social hierarchy. Social Capital is used by those that have it to reinforce their position.

Coleman suggests that SC is a by product of people acting from their own self interests (rational / game theory). Interesting point here about side effects and the way that social capital is raised – as in Web 2.0 applications

Getting to Putnam soon.

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Social Capital in the Web 2.0 world

Currently working on a literature review of Social Capital – obviously a massive area, so will attempt to narrow it down to recent applications in the specific area of learning and web 2.0. Hopefully the volume of literature will not be too overpowering.

Gale helpfully suggested starting with this:
A Bayesian Belief Network Computational Model of Social Capital in Virtual Communities

Bit irritating to discover that a lot of what I was thinking about covering is knocking about already, although the reference list (and the fact that it was published mid 2007) helps.