Social media for open distance learning and teaching

"Social Media: An Interview" | @downes on past, present and future of Social Media & Learning http://t.co/Ra5nLLDD

Interview in which Stephen Downes describes his current use of social media, and more specifically his 'production process'. Some practical examples for distance teachers can be found here.

Transactional distance and teaching presence in e–learning environments

RT @gconole: this guide to using twitter for academics is v good http://t.co/pvagqVCL #fb

Special Issue - Emergent Learning, Connections, Design for Learning

Poellhuber, B., & Anderson, T. (2011). Distance students' readiness for social media and collaboration. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 12(6). In recent years, there has been a rapid growth in the use of social networking tools (e.g., Facebook) and social media in general, mainly for social purposes (Smith, Salaway & Caruso 2009). Many educators, including ourselves, believe that these tools offer new educational affordances and avenues for students to interact with each other and with their teachers or tutors. Considering the traditional drop-out rate problem documented in distance courses (Rovai, 2003; Woodley, 2004), these tools may be of special interest for distance education institutions as they have potential to assist in the critical "social integration" associated with persistence (Sweet, 1986; Tinto, 1975). However, as distance students are typically older than regular on-campus students, (Bean & Metzner, 1985; Rovai, 2003) little is known about their expertise with social media or their interest in harnessing these tools for informal learning or collaborating with peers. To investigate these issues, an online questionnaire was distributed to students from four large Canadian distance education institutions. A systematic sampling procedure lead to 3462 completed questionnaires. The results show that students have diverse views and experiences, but they also show strong and significant age and gender differences in a variety of measures, as well as an important institution effect for interest in collaboration. Males and younger students score higher on almost all indicators, including cooperative preferences. The limits of the study and future developments and research questions are outlined.

Regularly updated and annotated selection of relevant contributions on scoop.it

Very well made presentation by Steve Wheeler about designing learning in a digital world.

Handbook with some interesting tips and tricks for using social media in training situations.

Mainly focused on 'How-to' instead of 'Why should I?', but still a valuable resource.

Interesting guidelines produced within the SVEA project (http://www.svea-project.eu/) on how to integrate social media in training institutions and practice.

Thanks to everyone who retweeted my #webcomMT content #curation slides! 20,000 views in two days - not bad! http://t.co/xUYP9xq1

A very nice presentation on the benefits of content curation. I see a major role for (higher) education institutions.

Presentation slides by Grainne Conole at the SVEA project's final conference "Next Generation Learning" in Brussels, November 23rd 2011.

Presentation held at the SVEA conference "Next generation learning" in Brussels on November 23rd 2011.