Learning and Collective Knowledge Construction With Social Media: A Process-Oriented Perspective

Figures & data

TABLE 1 Comparison of Some Characteristics of the Internet Context With the Educational Context in Terms of Social Media Adaptability

Internet Context	Educational Context
Large masses of users are potentially available for participation; given a large group of users, a relatively small portion of active contributors may be sufficient for a community to be able to work well.	Often only a small group of users is available (e.g., a class or course).
	→ Potentially, larger groups of users could be incorporated (such as an entire school or university or several institutions), but this has so far been unusual.
Social media users are largely free in their choice of activities (whether, how, and to what topic they want to contribute); nevertheless, community-specific demands and guidelines exist that cannot be easily modified or ignored by single users.	Often curricula, externally predetermined learning goals, and learning assessments are firmly established.
	→ But many educational interventions seek to make instruction much less top-down; social media processes might be more suitably applicable to those more student-centered inquiry processes.
Users share particular interests or concerns, which may lead to joint activities.	Students in a class are not necessarily interested in the current instructional subject per se.
	→ But in many student-centered approaches teachers concede the choice of (sub)topics or pursuit of individual questions to their students.
High level of self-organization is required, that is, users have to establish their own rules, organize their own structures and collaboration, and regulate their workflow and activities on their own.	For students in a formal educational institution, it is difficult to see any necessity for self-organization since rules and activities are often already largely institutionally specified.
	→ Recently, however, many educators grant their classes more freedom in organizing themselves as communities.
Social media provide the opportunity for relating one's own experiences, and expressing ideas, thoughts, and comments.	When students are strongly geared toward achieving specified learning goals and receiving good grades, their own thoughts may play a minor role compared to rehashing teacher-determined learning material.
	→ But most educators nowadays explicitly invite students to introduce their own concerns, which might be more compatible with the requirements of social media collaboration.

FIGURE 1 The dynamic processes of learning and knowledge construction.