Incorporating Personal Learning Networks into Course Projects

Last semester I introduced a brand new project into my social media class which I've been meaning to report on for a while now. I decided to set 25% of the final grade aside for an assignment the students were allowed to design themselves (the project is described in detail here). The idea was to help students develop independent learning skills by teaching them how to use social media tools to create a personal learning network (PLN) capable of supporting their project goals. Students were able to tailor the assignment to their own learning needs by:

• identifying an area of social media or PR they wanted to learn more about
• outlining a plan of study, and 
• deciding on appropriate learning deliverables to demonstrate their mastery of the material.

The projects the students created ranged from doing PR work for real-world clients to designing their own digital portfolios and social media resumes. The nice thing about this assignment was that as an educator, I got to see and evaluate not only the final product, but also the process the students went through to produce these final products. Below is a Prezi one of my students created to introduce her PLN. I love this Prezi because one look at it told me that this student really 'got' the idea of a PLN -- she really was able to identify experts capable of informing her particular project needs.



To be fair, students' initial reaction to the project may not have been one of absolute enthusiasm... I think the idea of independent learning and PLNs may be so different from the standard academic fare, that it was met with a bit of resistance at first. When I asked my Twitter network to tell me what they got out of their PLN, one of my students responded:

Let's hope that this epiphany hit the student before filling out the end of semester evals :)

So, would I do this project again? You betcha! I'm absolutely convinced that one of the most important skills we can teach our students is to become independent learners. Social media technologies have given us the opportunity to connect to experts all over the world -- all we need to do now is show students how to put these technologies to use in their own learning. It's not just students though that stand to gain from this. PLNs also provide powerful professional development tools for academics. Below is a presentation my colleague and I gave last week to our faculty in order to encourage them to develop their own PLN.

Creating a social learning environment in the college classroom

It's back to school for us next week and to start off the semester, I'll be giving a presentation to our faculty on how to create a social learning environment in the college classroom. Since I can only cover so much in a 20-minute talk, I've decided to focus my presentation on a conceptual discussion of social learning and cover the how-to aspect in a series of tutorials on this blog.

The idea behind creating a social learning environment is to get students to engage the course material critically and to have them keep their eyes open for interesting material to share with their peers. By having to provide their own examples, students learn to reflect upon course concepts and simultaneously learn to evaluate their peers’ contributions. Such environments allow students to contribute course material and share relevant stories, articles, videos, and pictures in near real-time with both their classmates and instructor around the clock. Although this type of sharing of insights isn’t new, we now have technologies allowing us to do so much more efficiently. My presentation will discuss three technologies instructors can use to set up a social learning space for their classes: (a) Delicious Social Bookmarks, (B) Zoho Creator Databases, and (c) Blackboard Scholar. I have created a tutorial on how to set up each and have embedded them below.

The first tutorial covers setting up Delicious and pulling it into Blackboard through a simple Yahoo Pipe. I have students contribute at least one quality resource a week on a topic discussed in class that week. These contributions can take on the form of relevant news stories, articles, videos, podcasts, or slideshows. We occasionally review these bookmarks in class. During those reviews, students are expected to tell their classmates about the resource and why they think it serves as a good illustration of a particular course concept.

View more documents from Corinne Weisgerber.

The second tutorial is based on Mike Wesch's 94 articles activity and explains how to set up Zoho Creator databases and how to connect them to Blackboard.

View more documents from Corinne Weisgerber.

The last tutorial is a brief introduction to Blackboard Scholar, a social bookmarking service offered through Blackboard.

View more documents from Corinne Weisgerber.

Social Bookmarking Assignment

Now that we have discussed what social bookmarks are and how they could be used as a PR tool, it's time to start bookmarking. For next class (09/23), please set up an account in Blackboard Scholar and add a bookmark (related to PR and/or social media) to the Scholar Course Home. See the slideshow below for instructions on how to set up Scholar:

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: scholar socialbookmarking)

Social bookmarks do not only carry important PR applications, but they also constitute a powerful pedagogical tool. For that reason, we will be using them as a way to get everyone to actively contribute course resources and to share them with the class.

Social Bookmarking Assignment:
You will be expected to contribute 10 high quality resources on the topic of social media and PR to Blackboard Scholar by November 18th. These can be links to blog posts, videos, podcasts, slideshows, etc. The important thing is that they provide quality information for your peers as well as others interested in the study of social media and its PR applications. We will occasionally review these bookmarks in class. During those reviews, you will be expected to tell your classmates about the resource and why you decided to include it in our course resources repository.

We will spend some time in class learning how to add resources to Blackboard Scholar. If you are absent that day, or if you need further instruction, you will need to make arrangements with me to learn how to post your content to it. If you encounter technical difficulties adding your resources, you need to let me know before the due date. There will be no extensions given for content added late. Also be sure not to duplicate resources that have already been added by your classmates or me.

For each resource you add to Blackboard Scholar, you need to fill out the following fields:

• Bookmark Name: Give your bookmark a name if it doesn’t already have one
  
• URL: The URL should be added automatically. If it isn’t be sure to add it
  
• Description: Summarize the resource and explain why it is a good source to include
  
• Tags: Include a number of tags that describe the resource you’ve added (the same way you would tag your blog posts)
  
• Discipline Tag(s): Select “Communication studies” as the discipline tag
  
• Course Tag(s): Select the Course Tag for our class 
• Status: Select “public”

Grading criteria:

1. Included 10 resources by the deadline (to make sure you don’t add all 10 at once, you can only add 2 links on any given day)
   
2. Resources contain all necessary fields
   
3. Tags appropriately describe resources
   
4. Summary is comprehensive and clear
   
5. Rationale for inclusion of the resource is sound

Extra-credit opportunity: (this is optional)
Pick any topic you are personally interested in. This can be anything: a hobby, an issue you are researching for a paper, a concept you’d like to explore, etc. Using Scholar or a different social bookmarking service (i.e. del.icio.us, Diigo, etc.), locate someone who shares that interest.

To do that:

1. Bookmark a resource on your topic of interest. Pick a good one here. The more specific the resource, the easier the rest of the assignment will be
   
2. In your list of social bookmarks, look to see who else has bookmarked that resource and what else they tend to tag. Examining their tag cloud will give you a good idea of what their interests are.
   
3. Keep looking until you identify someone who really fits your interests (i.e. who tags resources you would tag). This person should have bookmarked lots of pages on the topic of interest to you, and not just one or two. You may have to repeat steps 1-3 a few times to find that “perfect match” ☺
   
4. Write a one page profile of that person. What are their other tags? What interest categories does the tag cloud reveal? What do these tags suggest that person does for a living? Can you tell what field or profession they might be in?