Abstract
ABSTRACTLearning on and through social media is becoming a cornerstone of lifelong learning, creating places not only for accessing information, but also for finding other self-motivated learners. Such is the case for Reddit, the online news sharing site that is also a forum for asking and answering questions. We studied learning practices found in ‘Ask’ subreddits AskScience, Ask_Politics, AskAcademia, and AskHistorians to develop a coding schema for informal learning. This paper describes the process of evaluating and defining a workable coding schema, one that started with attention to learning processes associated with discourse, exploratory talk, and conversational dialogue, and ended with including norms and practices on Reddit and the support of communities of inquiry. Our ‘learning in the wild’ coding schema contributes a content analysis schema for learning through social media, and an understanding of how knowledge, ideas, and resources are shared in open, online learning forums.
Highlights
The Internet provides a wealth of ways to learn, from crowdsourced resources of online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia, how to videos on YouTube, online news, e-books, and open access journals to interactive learning opportunities, such as open courses and online interest groups
We describe the application of content analysis to online social learning practices and the resultant coding schema
To illustrate how the coding schema identified learning processes in Reddit, we present the final count results for the 2016 data where two or more coders agreed on the same code, and discuss what these tell us about learning processes in Reddit
Summary
The Internet provides a wealth of ways to learn, from crowdsourced resources of online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia, how to videos on YouTube, online news, e-books, and open access journals to interactive learning opportunities, such as open courses and online interest groups. This is learning where there is no instructor, syllabus, or mandate to cover essential texts; no one earns a university degree or a workplace promotion from this kind of teaching or learning (at least not directly) They are sites where questions are asked, where crowds of participants comment, correct, and argue about answers, and where those who answer make the effort to present information in informed, accessible ways, often with citations to further resources. This informal learning takes place outside traditional educational environments, based on crowdsourced interest in just-in-time answering of posted questions. It is informal and non-formal learning taking place outside classroom settings, with what is asked about, answered, and learned at the discretion of those who ask and answer
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