Abstract
Today’s learners can easily share their thoughts on their social networks, and this movement, undoubtedly, has been affecting their learning. However, learners in such an ad hoc social network environment need a deliberate design to support their idea sharing and concept exchange. Gaining insights into how to stimulate concept sharing in a social network helps learners learn. To this end, this study examined how to design a cloud-based concept construction platform, and analyzed the users’ interaction behaviours on the platform. A cloud-based platform named CoCoing.info was implemented to achieve the aim. The platform has three major functions: (a) co-construction concept building, (b) social network organization, and (c) concept circulation among social networks. Seven hundred and twenty-six accounts registered on the platform. Users constructed 2,121 concepts using 20,049 nodes, and 1,618 files were established. The access statistics results indicated that the platform was used throughout the day, in which the ratio of in-class to after-class access was 0.59:0.41. Among the interactions, 31.24% belonged to concept construction and 68.76% were user responses. Meanwhile, the key player social networking analysis results indicated that teachers appear to play a crucial role in initiating concept construction and triggering social interaction within the type of concept construction social network.
Highlights
Social networking applications, such as Facebook, Line, Academia.edu, and ResearchGate, have become ubiquitous in everyday life, and their potential functions for learning and open education have begun to be considered (Lampe, Wohn, Vitak, Ellison, & Wash, 2011; Meishar-Tal & Pieterse, 2017)
Most of the social networking applications focus on encouraging users to be constantly aware of what their friends do or care about; rarely do they foster a persistent sense of idea or concept construction (Lewis, Pea, & Rosen, 2010)
As social networking and social media technology approach maturity, they have become applicable to learning activities and online learning thereby facilitating learning interactions among teachers and students (Mnkandla & Minnaar, 2017)
Summary
Social networking applications, such as Facebook, Line, Academia.edu, and ResearchGate, have become ubiquitous in everyday life, and their potential functions for learning and open education have begun to be considered (Lampe, Wohn, Vitak, Ellison, & Wash, 2011; Meishar-Tal & Pieterse, 2017). With the linking capacity and ability to integrate users’ contributions, social networking applications have the potential to be useful in guiding people away from the popular “participation” framing model to a “co-creation” model (Lewis et al, 2010). To this end, this study examines (a) how to support learners in taking the initiative to construct their concepts individually and collaboratively, and (b) how to help learners circulate their concepts in a social networking environment. On the basis of the aforementioned arguments, this study investigated the effects of learners’ co-construction concept and evaluated how learners can interact and learn from social networking platforms seamlessly and effectively
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