Throughout this research participants described their experiences of personal assemblages of resources. These socio-material assemblages (Fenwick and Edwards 2010) were reported as changing – usually increasing – access to support, mentors, and peer learning around social media spaces. These assemblages may be very precarious as they are subject to change, and are particularly open to abuse or distortion by weak ties within and outwith their personal network.
Participants describe learning processes that are often centered around information objects and virtual gifts of information or advice, and they describe discussion and both positive and negative impacts of peer support and intervention. The special nature and affordances of these spaces are best summarised by Dan in this extract from his interview:
“In a university, I have a small number of teachers, chosen for me by somebody else, teaching a curriculum somebody else has shaped. In Social Media, I have an overwhelming amount of human experience and authority at my finger-tips, and can form stupid numbers of relationships with other "teachers", and I can hone what I learn by becoming a "teacher" myself. So, perhaps the amount you learn is limited only by the number other people you can learn from. Interesting that I thought of an organism earlier. We might look at ourselves like nodes in a brain. The more nodes we can connect to, the greater our capacity to learn.”
Throughout their responses participants confirmed that, for them, social media spaces are spaces for informal learning, for continuous professional development and for peer support. Whilst previous research on internet communities has tended to focus on relatively well bounded communities (such as Rheingold’s influential work on The WELL (Rheingold 1993)) social media appear to enable far more ad hoc assemblages that span multiple sites, identities, connections, digital artefacts, and types of interaction. Professionals can employ these elements as required, sometimes as convenient on-demand sources of information, sometimes as spaces for brief but valuable scaffolded moments, and sometimes as part of familiar ongoing discussions and communities.
These spaces afford new possibilities for cross-domain continuing professional development led by the individual’s needs rather than employer priorities. There is a need for greater recognition of CPD activities that take place within these spaces although it is also important to note that learning through social media will not suit all, particularly as disruptive and dysfunctional behaviors are often present.
The research conducted here was small in scale and the recruitment method problematic in terms of applying conclusions to larger groups of social media using professionals. This work does, however, represent in-depth discussions with social media users and indicates several key areas warranting further investigation:
Serendipitous learning and scaffolding moments require further examination.
Social media is a powerful source of information, for maintaining weak, strong or new connections. It is also an infrastructure for using and building upon connections with shared interests. Prompts, steers, corrections and similar opportunities do occur but their origins can be anarchic and, as such, quality may vary. There also appear to be stronger opportunities within social media for individuals’ sense of confidence and identity to be threatened through dysfunctional peer behaviours. Further work that examines the qualities of both productive and dysfunctional exchanges may be beneficial for shaping future social media policy and professional best practice.
A learner-led form of on-demand scaffolding is emerging but it is not clear how reliable or robust this practice is in practice.
In many cases participants reported identifying their own learning needs, identifying themselves as being in a Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky 1978), and looking to the network for support in learning further. This on-demand form of scaffolding is an extension of Vygotsky’s original vision. Here the learner must be sufficiently self-aware and motivated enough to be, on some level, aware that they are in a zone of proximal development, to share their interest, and only then may they receive useful steers, correction, support to learn beyond their current knowledge.
It is less clear how a learner may be scaffolded if they are not aware of their own need for correction or advice; nor how one may interpret the requests that go unanswered. Further analysis, both through ethnographic and more systematic actor-network analysis, is required to better understand these learning processes.
Scaffolding that does occur appears to be associated with complex blurrings of roles and expertise - perhaps definable as the “Wikipedia effect” since knowledge on a small topic can (however briefly) raise the individual to the level of expert. A peer or self-selecting instructor in these spaces need only know enough on the right topics to offer useful scaffolding and support. They do not need a broader body of knowledge as the complex array of strong, weak and potential ties in the network provide many opportunities to receive expertise on a wider number of topics and at a range of levels. The system therefore seems to be one of self-advertising learners benefitting from on-demand scaffolding by their peers, mentors, and notable others in their field. Further understanding of these behaviours, particularly what motivates those who do support peers in these spaces, would be beneficial.
Etiquette around CPD and social media and assessments of trust need to be better understood.
Emerging etiquette in social media spaces, as reported by participants in this research, appears to include an “err in public, be corrected in private” model, which is potentially threatening to productive learning encounters and scaffolding moments. Such semi-public exchanges reflect the weight attributed to reputation in social media spaces. For individuals willing to share corrections - and with an audience sympathetic to dialogue – these exchanges can have positive impacts on an individual’s authority as a source of trustworthy information. For individuals unwilling to be corrected, or share corrections, this has the potential to harm reputation. Further exploration of these emerging practices around public and private correction would be extremely useful for better understanding the current and future potential - and limitations - for learning in social media spaces.
Formal markers of trust or influence, such as social media metrics (e.g. number of followers, Klout[1] score), do not appear to be in use by participants in this research. Assessments of trust are instead made against pragmatic criteria, often related to the quality of information or advice shared, attitude, or other highly personal perceptions of value. Further investigation of the relationship between these human trust markers and automatically assessed trust or influence metrics would provide a valuable insight into methods of assessing new contacts and information in social media.
Social media is perceived by many participants to be permanent, an “on the record” exchange, usually in public.
This makes it a high stakes space, particularly for learning. “Permanence” is both a potential benefit (information may be revisited, definitive positions may be found) and a threat, particularly where potentially controversial opinion in concerned, or where inaccurate, incorrect or out of date information could be seen and associated with the individual and their professional reputation. Analysis of existing research on generational attitudes to technology, social media and the authority of print, which could be developed into a more nuanced understanding of what “permanence” means for learning and observed exchanges in a predominantly text-based environment, would be highly beneficial.
Social Media seem to offer personal recognition for helpfulness and support but comparable professional recognition is lacking.
In addition to followers, likes, etc. there is a thriving but very informal gift economy around information. Personal brand, reputation and standing are all important parts of this gift economy, and there is anecdotal evidence, worthy of further investigation, that personal rewards for peer scaffolding can be significant. The importance of discussions in these spaces, the permanence of contributions and the perception of social media as a high stakes professional environment suggests a need for further engagement by employers and professional bodies to recognise and support such CPD activities.
The identification of so many areas for further work indicates the great challenges and opportunities associated with the use of social media for informal learning, and particularly for professional CPD. At the beginning of this research process I was sure that this topic was rich for exploration and it has proved to be far richer and more complex than anticipated.
There are currently a multitude of research projects investigating social media from all perspectives; the challenge for future research projects is to keep up with this rapidly moving area of technology and social change.
[1] Klout is a tool for assessing individuals’ influence across social media: http://klout.com/
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