Cultivating professional communities of teachers and practitioners through Social Networking Sites

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Cultivating professional communities of teachers and practitioners through

Social Networking SitesMaria Ranieri*,

Stefania Manca**, Antonio Fini**University of Florence , Florence

** Institute of Educational Technology - CNR, GenoaItaly

BackgroundThe overall background of this study is provided by the SoMobNet Framework:

• informal mediated context of learning• changing practices developed by practitioners in the field of education through SNS• where mobile learning meets SNS

Research questionsThe research is part of a larger study aiming at exploring the professional uses of Social Networking Sites to cultivate communities of teachers and practitioners. In particular, it intends to investigate the following general issues:

• What are the mechanisms characterizing people participation in SN professional groups? [Stellar Issue: Connecting]• What is the interplay between real and virtual experiences in these groups, and the impact of social mobile practices ? [Stellar Issue: Contextualization]• How people’s profiles are evaluated to be admitted into the groups? How credibility is established? [Stellar Issue: Orchestration]

Research designStudy 1 : Exploratory study based on quantitative and

qualitative data• Participants: 10 managers of SN professional

groups (5 F & 5 M)Study 2 : A wider survey based on quantitative data and

semi-structured interviews• Participants: more than 500 members of SN

professional groups

In this presentation the focus is on Study 1

MethodThe online survey was based on a three-part questionnaire:

• 2 closed-ended sections:participants’ socio-demographic data (age, gender, jobs, etc.)characteristics of SN groups, such as: 1) purposes; 2) members’ profiles; 3) participation; 4) measures to manage the conflict, etc.

• 1 open-ended sectionparticipants’ motivations and behaviours related to group management

• TimeSeptember-October 2011

FindingsSN manager profile: quantitative data

• Average age: more than 40 years• Educational background: 7/10 have a university degree• Job: 5 teachers, 3 freelancers, other• ICTs use: 9/10 have used PC and the Internet since more than 10 years• SN sites: 10/10 have a Facebook profile and 6/10 since more than 3 years. They use also other social media tools and social networks , as shown in Figure 1.

Fig. 1 – Social media uses

• Frequence of use of SNS: 8/10 access SNS many times during the day• Mobile access: 6/10 access SNS through their mobile phone (there is a correlation with the age)• Groups: almost all founded more than one group•History: 6/10 had founded virtual communities before SNS

FindingsSN groups profile: quantitative data

• group foundation: 2007 (1), 2008 (2), 2009 (4), 2010 (2) e 2011 (1) • groups members: 5/10 have more than 1000 members, 2/10 have between 500 and 1000 members, only 2 groups have less than 300 members• members profile: mainly teachers, but also experts, professionals and “curious” members

Fig. 2 – Number of SN groups’ members Fig. 3 – SN groups’ members profile

Fig. 4 – SN groups’ aims and purposes

• Membership mechanisms: - 6/10 completely free- 3/10 invitation or cooptation- 1/10 filtered by the founder

• Invitation criteria: the main criteria is the sharing of interests• Rules: almost all groups don’t have any explicit rules • Removal of people or contents: this is not a common practice, but it happens in case of spamming, advertising or opportunistic behaviours

Fig. 5 – Participation levels

FindingsSN groups and manager profiles: qualitative data

• Reasons for founding the groups : - “it’s the future of free and active citizenship”; “they increase sharing and participation”; “to provide professional support…”; “to share comments on a specific topic”; “personal curiosity”

• Reasons for using SNS:“visibility”; “speedness”; “networking with a high number of people”; “to share my interests with others”; “they provide more opportunities for sharing ”; “uniqueness” (anobii); “they have specific functionalities”

• Management: All groups are mainly managed by the founder with some exeptions. In these cases, the founder is helped by colleagues in promoting discussions and checking posts/comments.

• Actions done to cultivate the group’s life:“posting news”; “posting links”; “commenting news”; “posting comments”; “sharing links”; “sharing resources”; “checking contents”; “answering questions”; “moderating conflicts”; “promoting pertinent initiatives”; “favouring discussion”

• Negative events: most of the SN groups’ managers declared that there were no negative events with some exceptions… such as people leaving the group because of flaming or removing advertisement

• Positive events:“sharing emotions”; “impact on real initiatives at local level”; “generating new projects”; “widening participation”; “widening sharing”; “creation of a network of blogs”; “storing of posts” (memory of the groups)

We celebrated some significant moments for the group or for singleparticipants: subscriber #1000, a dyslexic child passing to next class, a colleague's project winning a contest. We shared also the frustration for losing a job, the sadness of newly retired, and lots of laughter in telling jokes and gags.

Sharing emotions…

• I like…: the easy way of expressing “approval” (I like); the possibility to write individual messages; alert messages; sharing

• I dislike:the SNS’ “short memory”: the low visibility of posts on the long run; the lack of internal search engines

Discussion and conclusions• Connecting: to be connected for sharing comments, link, resources and information is the most appreciated affordance of SNSs.• Contextualizing: interactions are immersed in contexts with intense interplay between real and virtual presence. From online networks to new projects, local initiatives and new connections.• Orchestrating: credibility seems to be linked only to professional credits, while excluding personal knowledge, but… there should be some intermediate levels of mediation…

Future developmentsElements that deserve further investigation and that will be the object of the 2nd study:

• Practices of mobile social networking: Which affordances and constraints? Issues of geolocalization and privacy, «real-time» participation, etc.• The tacit mechanisms of participation: What kind of implicit rules? Spontaneous or «directed» self-management groups?• The need of a social memory: How to cultivate and storage it? • Types and mechanisms of personal credibility: Who credits whom? Which tools?

Thanks!

Maria Ranieri*, Stefania Manca**, Antonio Fini*

*University of Florence , Florence** Institute of Educational Technology, Genoa