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Rambe, P. (2012). Constructive disruptions for effective collaborative learning: Navigating the affordances of social media for meaningful engagement. Electronic Journal of E-Learning, 10(1), 132-146. The essentialist view that new technological innovations (especially Social Media) disrupt higher education delivery ride on educators' risk averse attitudes toward full-scale adoption of unproven technologies. However, this unsubstantiated logic forecloses possibilities for embracing the constructive dimensions of disruptions, and grasping the tremendous academic potential of emerging technologies. Community of inquiry and virtual ethnography adopted as theoretical and methodological lenses for exploring the productive pedagogical impacts of appropriating Social Media in an Information Systems course at a South African University. Lecturer-student and peer-based postings on Facebook examined to understand the influence of Facebook adoption on student meaningful learning and pedagogical delivery. The findings suggest that Facebook constituted a collective "Third space" for student enactment of counter scripts, augmented traditional academic networking, fostered "safe" havens for student democratic expression, and afforded learning communities for student co-construction of knowledge. Shortfalls identified include challenges of developing quality academic discussions and fostering student engagement at epistemological and conceptual levels to ensure deep learning. The study recommends a multi-pronged strategy that foregrounds contingent relaxation of academic authority, on-task student behavior, strategic alignment of powerful collaborative technologies with pedagogical designs, and learning needs and styles of students.

Raiker, A. (2009). Transformational Learning and e-portfolios: A Pedagogy for Improving Student Experience and Achievement. International Journal Of Learning, 16(8), 313-323. Abstract Article Review:  Transformative learning occurs when an individual's understanding opens up a new vista of interconnected learning. As an individual develops, s/he is increasingly able to solve abstract problems logically and to think critically of the self and others in moral, social, emotive and judgmental terms. The individual assimilates and accommodates the reformed knowledge gained into new structures of thought, affecting esteem and efficacy. The transformation achieved results in autonomy, a necessary attribute in the current climate of world-wide change. Of course, the reformed knowledge might result in negative outcomes with the individual's sense of self being lowered with resulting dependency. A way of ensuring positive outcomes is through the structured and supported use of e-portfolios in personalized and reflective mode. This approach reflects current policies in England calling for the development of e-assessment and the embedding of personal learning and thinking skills into school, further and higher education curricula. However, the success of these initiatives determined by what happens at the point of pedagogical interaction. This paper takes as its starting point the UK's Joint Information Systems Committee's declaration that in using e-portfolios the pedagogy not the resource comes first