Sharing is caring? Some thoughts on learning-by-sharing as an approach to online student support

Leadership with education

Hello and welcome to the penultimate (boo!) blog post by Joe Bloggs in which I’ll be presenting the final theme of the blog series before wrapping everything up into a neat little bundle next week. And so what have I chosen for this final blog post theme? Well, for those attentive souls out there, you will remember that last week I identified the topic of learning-by-sharing and raised the question of the validity of this approach and the implications for teachers and students.

So does the sharing of content between students in online environment constitute an effective learning strategy? And how does this affect the teacher-student role? Well, from my own learning background as an undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral student I have to admit that the vast majority of my learning approach was autonomous in nature and I therefore didn’t have many opportunities to share content with other students. Did I miss a trick there? Well to some extent it depends on the context of the subject matter. My undergraduate degree was in Music / Popular Music which necessitated a significant amount of ‘along time’ in order to compose and practise my instrument. For my Master’s Degree in Marketing we had a block structure to our modules which consisted of 8-hour, 3-day intensive lectures for each module, followed by several weeks at home to complete the assignment before moving onto the next module. Even my doctoral degree encountered a proverbial dead end in the content sharing stakes due to the originality and ‘niche’ of my research topic. Would these degree courses have involved more sharing elements if they had been blended or online courses? Quite possibly and I suspect that in the very near future these same courses will involve both more online elements and content sharing facilities.

So what is the big deal with the sharing of content and information as a student? Well, in Ella’s blog post from 13th March (https://meatyloafy.wordpress.com/2016/03/13/social-presence-who-are-you-on-line/) entitled “Social presence – who are you on line?” she suggests that the sharing the content can facilitate a sense of trust and comfort from other students who review your content before contributing themselves. I think that this is a pertinent point as there can be issues of insecurity or caution – especially from new students and especially towards tutors who they may perceive as detached from their needs as a student. However, this discussion revisits a theme I discussed in an earlier post regarding the need for a certain degree of tutor involvement in the content provision in order to maintain quality levels which challenge and drive student excellence (https://jgamblesite.wordpress.com/2016/03/11/too-much-of-a-good-thing-coping-with-information-overload-in-online-learning-environments/). This issue has also been recently raised by Mansour et al. (2013) in their statement about truthfulness validation:

“Validation as an affordance describes possibilities related to verifying the truthiness of both content and content contributors. It is often enacted when people try in various ways to validate whether content shared on a wiki is true and whether content contributors possess the right background and level of expertise to make a contribution” (p. 14).

So, with the quality or indeed truthfulness of shared content potentially representing a matter of contention for online learning, should we, as educators, be recommending it? Well, this still appears to be the case, judging from the veneration of the concept in recent pedagogic journal publications. For instance, Goodyear (2003) argues that group-based educational activities can actually help to share the cognitive load, depending on the optimisation of the skill mix within the group. This topic of synergistic quality enhancement of shared content through ‘strength in numbers’ was explored in another of my previous blog posts (https://jgamblesite.wordpress.com/2016/02/13/strength-in-numbers-the-perils-and-pitfalls-of-online-learning-communities-in-supporting-students/) and demonstrates the interconnectedness of these student support topics. Another advocate of the learning-by-sharing approach is Wang (2007) who describes how the social presence and associated sharing (of both information and resources) leads to the construction of new knowledge in virtual learning environments. The creation of new knowledge from shared knowledge is certainly an innovative approach and I believe that it could be the key to future effective learning strategies when facilitated and supported by tutors in BOE courses.

Like the other blog posts in this series, I have attempted to not only provide a balanced discussion between my own personal reflections and literature reviews, but also in terms of positive and negative aspects of the chosen blog topic. In doing so with this post, I have also highlighted the correlations between this blog theme of learning-by-sharing and the previous topics explored over the past several weeks. This naturally brings us to next week’s final post in which I will reflect on the thematic progression of my blog post series and what I have learned from each topic about supporting the online learner. Stay tuned.

 

References

Goodyear, Peter, (2003) “Chapter 4 : Psychological foundations for networked learning ” from Steeples, C. and Jones, C., Networked Learning: Perspectives and Issues pp.49-75, London: Springer-Verlag

Mansour, O., Askenäs, L., Ghazawneh, A. (2013) Social Media and Organizing: An Empirical Analysis of the Role of Wiki Affordances in Organizing Practices. In: Thirty Fourth International Conference on Information Systems, Milan 2013