Just how do you measure if informal learning happens?

Twitter Friends network map

Twitter Friends network map

One of the things that has made me think about my course project is how to measure what I’m trying to look at: informal learning in social networking services.

One thing I’m very clear on is how much I learn from the brilliant people in my Twitter network. So how can I try to assess and measure what is going on around me?

The basic methodology for my research is to do a case study of a number of users by carrying out a content analysis over a period of time and then map these to the user intention categories outlined in Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities:

I’ve sub divided these categries to try to assess what they are about.

Great, so that gives me content analysis of what is happening with this group of users, but doesn’t offer any idea of whether there is an opportunity for learning to take place.

My tutor Terry King switched me on to George Siemens and his work on Connectivism (and through him I got into the work of all the fab people who were talking about edupunk a while ago), so the idea from my end is to try to map the tweets on to the connectivist model.

This should give me some interesting data to have a look at.

One brilliant thing I have found, and will be testing in a pilot of the coding sheet and service, is using Googledocs forms to create a coding sheet. The thing I love about it is all the responses are poured into a spreadsheet as soon as the reply happens. And given this can be downloaded as an excel file means it is a pretty powerful tool to use.

I’ll blog about the results of that when I’ve finished it.

Then I think a spot of surveying to get some idea of what other people think, and whether my perceptions about Twitter as a great place for informal learning are being shared by others.

And I’m starting to wonder about the number of people who could use respond to a googledocs survey – could be an interesting way forward.

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March 7, 2009 | Filed Under Msc08, elearning 

Comments

  • I'll certainly be interested in your findings, Glyn.
    I read somewhere during the last couple of weeks (can't quite remember where - it was something I skimmed) that tweets can be divided into just two types - the "daily chatter" - and then those tweets that are more indepth - essentially a short comment & link - inviting exploration. I can't quite remember what they'd seen people who just send URLs - with no reason for exploration.
    I'll also be interested to hear about your students' use of Twitter - I've just given a guest lecture to our first year students & mentioned Twitter (alongside other tools they might want to think about using when having to do group work). I got them for the tutorials (which were run by the regular tutors/lecturer) to use postits to record what tools ("Web2.0" & "traditional") - they use - initially organising them based on general usage & then based on usage while studying. I also got them to indicate which ones (the students were in pairs, to encourage discussion, but reduce arguing!) they saw as "collaborative" (in the way they actually use them, rather than they way they're "meant" to be used).
    I've now got a mound of posters in my office covered with postits.

    From initial skimming, Twitter barely registers (Facebook dominates). How much of that is students in general, and how much the particular group we have (year 1, mostly male, mostly under 20 - on Computing, Computer Science, Business Info Tech, Business Info Systems, Computing & Society & a few Geographers doing Geographical Info Sys) it's hard to tell.
  • Facebook is everywhere. When I asked at the start of the year, six from 87 were blogging and only one had heard of social bookmarking. Now they've had experience of all of them, even if they have decided not to use them. There's a hard core of adopters - haven't done a check but seems to be equally split between males and females,and all of these are postgrad.
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