Interrelation between Trust and Sharing Attitudes in Distributed PLE: Sonia C. Sousa, Vladimir Tomberg, David R. Lamas, Mart Laanpere (presenting) Centre for Educational Technology :: htk.tlu.ee Tallinn University, Estonia The Case Study of LePress P http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lepress ICWL 2011, Hong Kong
Transcript
1. Interrelation between Trust and Sharing Attitudes in
Distributed PLE: Sonia C. Sousa, Vladimir Tomberg, David R. Lamas,
Mart Laanpere (presenting) Centre for Educational Technology ::
htk.tlu.ee Tallinn University, EstoniaICWL 2011, Hong Kong
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lepress-20/
2. Background Cultural switch in experiencing the Internet:
from closed to open environments, from protecting to sharing
Trends: LMS use decreases, PLE use increases Pedagogical arguments:
social negotiation of meaning, collaborative knowledge building,
connectivist learning Trust could play an important role in
hindering or supporting the adoption of new technology The
affordances of next-gen learning tools can be designed so that they
address also the trust-related factors
3. Research problem Aim: to identify interrelation between
general trust level and attitudes towards sharing within open,
blog-based learning environments Research questions: 1.What are the
students attitudes and expectations towards (a) sharing learning
resources via the public Web, (b) sharing the assignment
submissions and teachers feedback with fellow students; and (c)
participating in the negotiation of shared meaning? 2.How is the
generic trust level of LePress users related with their attitudes
towards affordances they expect from an online learning
environment?
4. Trust: the hidden factor Social media, blogs and the culture
of sharing and remixing Trust can affect individuals predisposition
to interact, by shaping their willingness to rely on others, or by
influencing their ability to believe that others actions will
eventually lead to expected results Trust can influence individuals
beliefs, attitudes and behaviors towards learning and sharing
process using blogs Developers of blog-based learning environments
should take into account the potential impact of trust-related
factors to the attitudes and expectations of users
5. LePress: a Wordpress-based PLE LePress: an open-source
plug-in for WordPress, made in Tallinn University, Estonia LePress
is providing Course Coordination Space (S. Wilson), reduces the
teachers overhead work Provides built-in workflows for course
enrollment and learning (assignments, feedback, assessment),
Non-intrusive implementation, using native features of Wordpress:
categories, trackback, sidebar widget Everything is public
(assignments, submissions, feedback), except the grades for
assignments
6. Empirical study Online survey in English, Estonian, Russian
(with LimeSurvey) The questionnaire contained 18 questions in four
parts: demographic and background information questions attitudes
towards sharing the level of trust in the context of generic online
activities expected affordances in online learning environments 32
respondents (age range 18..52, 13 F/ 16 M, 11 RUS/18 EST) from two
different higher education institutions: Mainor College (IT BA) and
Tallinn University (MEd informatics)
7. Results Ranking online activities regarding personal
usefulness: majority (65%) valued e-mail communication, content
sharing was in the bottom Respondents usually share their personal
information, comments and status only with the people they trust
Decision upon letting a new person to enter the ring of trust is
made on the basis of trust delegation (37%), similar interests and
preferences (34%) and perceived honesty (34%)
8. Results Respondents are more likely to be engaged in give
and take actions with persons who: Are willing to share their
information and content (85%) Seem to be honest (48%) Seem to feel
sympathy towards the respondent (41%) Respondents do not mind
sharing their learning process and products via blog-based PLE
(45%), majority (39%) agrees that blogs make learning process
transparent and shareable; 31% prefer to have their learning
resources on public Web Majority prefers the affordances of a
blog-based PLE (commenting, tagging, feeds, openness) to that of a
traditional LMS, but expect higher level of control over their PLE
(to specify sharing settings)
9. Discussion Conflicting preferences: on one hand, openness of
PLE and sharing with everyone would help to evaluate the
trustworthyness, but at the same time, a person would need to
evaluate the relation with others before she shares smth Evaluation
of relationship: visualisation, avoiding
oversimplification/stereotyping There is a need to support ad-hoc
groups within official study groups, with varying level of openness
(public, only for authenticated users, only for coursemates, only
for sub-group members, only for friends)
10. Conclusion The study explored interrelation between generic
trust level and attitudes towards sharing and affordances of PLE
Majority of students prefer public sharing of learning resources
Students with higher level of trust are more willing to share and
also more open towards keeping their learning paths public PLE
should provide tools to evaluate/rank the quality of relationship
and to set the level of sharing on the group level The next steps:
creating ad-hoc groups within a LePress course, allowing a student
to set the different access level to different groups
11. Acknowledgments Participation in ICWL conference was
supported by DoRa programme of Archimedes Foundation and European
Social Fund