Informal Online Research Articles

Sharing Experiences and Seeking Informal Justice Online: A Grounded Theory Analysis of Zoombombing Victimization on Reddit

ABSTRACT During the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoombombing emerged as a new form of online disruption/harassment characterized by unintended and unsolicited virtual visits by both strangers and known individuals via Zoom. The current study utilizes a grounded theory-based qualitative analysis of over 1,000 posts on Reddit to explore discussions around Zoombombing victimization incidents. This paper reveals how Zoombombing victimization subreddits function as communities for sharing victimization stories, user perceptions, and support while further developing a space that promotes informal justice online. The implications include an enhanced understanding of how Zoombombing occurs and the role of online forums and cyberpolicing tools in preventing and discussing victimization.

Understanding Chinese teachers' informal online learning continuance in a mobile learning community: an intrinsic-extrinsic motivation perspective.

While extensive studies on informal online learning have been well documented to afford teachers' collaborative learning and knowledge sharing, little is still known about their motivational factors regarding the continuance intention of informal online learning. To this end, an extended expectation confirmation model (ECM) was proposed including intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The proposed research model and several hypotheses were empirically evaluated using questionnaire surveys with the valid data collected from 231 Chinese in-service teachers in the shared mobile learning community. The results consolidate the appropriateness of the extended ECM to explain teachers' informal online learning continuance. Specifically, satisfaction is the major determinant of continuance intention, followed by perceived usefulness and intrinsic motivation. In addition, extrinsic motivation positively predicts perceived usefulness and confirmation. The results of this study provide some theoretical and practical implications into in-service teachers' continuance intention of informal online learning.

Online media experiences of caregiving fathers: A study of leave‐taking fathers in South Korea

AbstractObjectiveThis work aims to document the different ways in which leave‐taking fathers in South Korea engage with online media to address some of their challenges as male primary caregivers.BackgroundAlthough involved and caring fathers are becoming more common, childcare responsibilities still remain gendered. To equalize the gendered division of childcare, there is a need to gain a better understanding of the cultural barriers that fathers face in caring for their children and the ways that fathers could be supported, including through informal online communities.MethodsThis article qualitatively analyzes semistructured interviews with fathers in Korea as well as posts from blogs by parents of young children about their experiences of taking parental leave and being a primary caregiver for their children.ResultsCaregiving fathers experience similar exclusion and isolation in offline and online spheres from both communities dominated by mothers and those dominated by men who do not identify as caregivers. However, by engaging in online media communities for caregiving fathers, they learn to be better caregivers, connect with other fathers, and influence other parents through their online activities. Although such online activities allow fathers to address their various struggles as male caregivers, some fathers voiced reservations and critiques of online communities.ConclusionIn general, most fathers reported positive experiences from online activities that allowed them to address their experiences of exclusion as male caregivers, but there remains room for greater inclusion and accessibility for fathers.ImplicationsThere is a need for online communities to become more diverse, better promoted, more inclusive, and more easily accessible for fathers.

Lurkers versus posters: Perceptions of learning in informal social media‐based communities

AbstractThe growth of social media has given rise to many informal online communities. In these communities, people communicate, make connections, exchange information and transfer knowledge without time or location restrictions. The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate both lurkers' and posters' perceptions of learning in Reddit‐based education‐related communities. A mixed‐method approach was used to obtain an overall understanding of how members perceived learning and the differences between posters and lurkers. Eighty‐two participants (43 posters and 39 lurkers) were recruited from education‐related subreddits and nine of them (5 posters and 4 lurkers) were interviewed. The results showed that there was no significant difference in the perceptions of learning between posters and lurkers. Both lurkers and posters believed that they have learned in these communities, and both defined learning in these communities as changing behaviours or thinking or applying what they have learned to real‐life situations. Although both lurkers and posters reported having learned in the communities, qualitative analysis of the interview data indicated that posters demonstrated higher learning levels than lurkers. The findings of this study offer implications for further research into how members perceive learning in informal social media‐based communities. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Although informal social media‐based communities are not designed for learning, given the large user base and wide accessibility, these communities do provide social spaces for users and promote informal online learning. Research regarding perceptions of learning has thus far been mostly focused on formal learning settings and less on informal online environments. It is difficult to investigate how members, especially lurkers who rarely post, perceive learning in informal online environments. What this paper adds Both lurkers and posters report that they learn in education‐related subreddits, and there is no significant difference between how lurkers and posters perceive learning based on the quantitative data. Both lurkers and posters believe that if they change their behaviours or thoughts, or apply the information they receive in real life, then they have learned. Both lurkers and posters tend to pay more attention to the information itself than to who the information came from. Posters communicate more with other members of the communities and tend to apply, analyse and evaluate information from the community to a greater degree than lurkers. Implications for practice and policy It may be unrealistic for educators and community managers to encourage every member of the community to be an active poster, but encouraging members to share and interact can increase the likelihood that they will more carefully apply and analyse what they have learned. Instruction from the community managers or moderators could be necessary to provide guidance for members to offer contexts or backgrounds before making a post. This effort does not require members to write down their real names or provide their personal information in the posts but may ask them to provide some background information. The background information is also important to community members in deciding whether to adopt the opinions based on the context information or determine how to adjust and apply the content to their own teaching scenarios. Community managers or moderators may need to provide guidance to members so that members can provide appropriate contexts or background information before making a post. Other community members can use the information to decide whether to adopt the opinions or to determine how to adjust and apply the content.

Cooperative affordances: How instant messaging apps afford learning, resistance and solidarity among food delivery workers

This paper aims to understand the practices and meanings associated with the creation and use of private chat groups on instant messaging services such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger and WeChat that are accessible only to platform workers of online food delivery services. We draw on participant observation in five countries (Italy, Spain, Mexico, China, and India), in-depth interviews with 68 food delivery couriers and digital ethnography ( Pink et al., 2015 ) within dozens of online private chat groups of food delivery workers. Our fieldwork shows that private chat groups are extremely relevant in the daily work of delivery workers and are appropriated to restore forms of mutualism not afforded by the food delivery apps. Following Costa (2018) and her concept of affordances- in-practice, we describe how the practice of online private chat groups created by platform workers affords: (1) the emergence of communities of practice; (2) resistance and contempt; (3) mutualism and solidarity. We argue that these workers ‘enact’ the affordances of instant messaging apps, to supplement – from below – the affordances of food delivery apps that were denied or ignored by food delivery companies. We argue that these affordances constitute cooperative affordances. This concept captures the cooperative nature of peer-to-peer communication that occurs within the informal online chat groups created by the workers themselves. Finally, this article contributes to affordance theory by highlighting how affordances are not immanent properties of artifacts, or ‘invariants’, as argued by Gibson (1979) , but can be ‘enacted’ by specific users, like food delivery workers, within specific social and cultural contexts.

Learner Engagement with YouTube Videos in Informal Online Learning: An Investigation of the Effects of Segmenting, Signaling, and Weeding

Millions of educational videos available on YouTube offer unprecedented opportunities for online learning. As it invites open-ended and self-paced exploration of almost any topic, YouTube has emerged as an important platform for informal online learning that occurs outside the formal classroom. A considerable number of studies have been directed toward YouTube educational videos. However, research on learner engagement with YouTube educational videos is limited, despite the central role of engagement in learning and the increasing popularity of YouTube videos in informal online learning. This paper addresses this research gap. We adopt the conceptualization that learner engagement has three dimensions – behavioral, emotional, and cognitive - and investigate how the features of segmenting, signaling, and weeding (SSW), the three multimedia learning principles, in YouTube educational video presentations collectively affect learner engagement in informal online learning. Our analysis shows that different SSW features have various associations with the three dimensions of learner engagement. These findings substantiate the empirical knowledge of learner engagement with YouTube educational videos. Our study corroborates extant video engagement research and extends its relevance to informal learning on social media. It also informs video designers and developers on adding video presentation features to optimize video engagement on social media.

A study of factors influencing user stickiness behavior in online learning communities—Based on the theory of interactive ritual chains

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 in 2019, online learning has become an important way of acquiring knowledge, and informal online learning communities are more flexible in terms of knowledge co-creation and sharing. How to establish and maintain user stickiness in online learning communities is an important issue for the long-term survival and development of communities. Based on the theory of interactive ritual chains, this paper explores the influence of interactive rituals on users' sticky behavior, using short-term user satisfaction as a mediating variable, and uses the findings to build a user-type matrix to further analyze users and build a user relationship maintenance network for different types of users.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTERNET WEB 1.0 TO WEB 3.0 AND ITS EFFECTS ON ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION

The World Wide Web has quickly become one of the primary resource of information that comes to mind for many people in many fields. The development of the internet, which has more and more application, is grouped as Web1.0, Web2.0 and Web 3.0. Today, the web, which started with Web 1.0, has become a virtual world where people can actively participate. With this development of technology and its effect on every aspect of our lives, educational practices have also begun to change. Especially with the pandemic, the tools of Web 2.0, online learning opportunities, internet resources and communication platforms have been better understood and started to be used more actively in education. Architectural education, like many other fields, has been affected by the spread of the internet and its being a source of information. In the light of these data, the study focuses on the reflections of the learning opportunities and resources that have developed with the internet on today's university students. For this purpose, formal and informal online internet-based learning environments examined in this study. In order to collect data in the research, an online internet survey prepared and applied to a group of architecture and interior design students within the limitation of Eskişehir Technical University. Questions were asked about expanding resources, tools, deficiencies in education and what their dream education is like. In the study, the evolution of the internet, the changing needs of architectural education, the offers and demands of teachers and students in different generations, students and the evolution of the internet were investigated by considering generational differences. As a result of the study in which 47 students participated, the current state of architectural education was determined from the eyes of the students in the light of the answers given.

Training and Self-Learning: How to Improve Farmers’ Willingness to Adopt Farmland Conservation Technology? Evidence from Jiangsu Province of China

The quality of cultivated land is an important basis for guaranteeing grain yield, and improving the quality of cultivated land is an important initiative of the Chinese government to implement its food security strategy. This paper explores the effects of formal technical training and informal online self-directed learning on farmers’ willingness to adopt cultivated land conservation technology using farmer-level survey data. The results show that farmers’ participation in technical training effectively increased their willingness to adopt straw return technologies, but participation in online self-directed learning did not affect farmers’ willingness to adopt, while farmers who participated in both technical training and online self-directed learning had stronger willingness to adopt. These results show that internet-based self-directed learning is a useful supplement to the formal training system. Further analysis revealed that participation in technical training increased farmers’ awareness of the usefulness of the straw-return technology, which in turn increased their willingness to adopt the conservation technology of cropland. This paper clarifies the impact and mechanisms of the two main existing technology learning modes on farmers’ adoption of new technologies in rural China and provides a reference for the promotion of agricultural technology diffusion and the improvement of the quality of cultivated land in China.

Student Engagement in an Online Engineering Afterschool Program During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic forced much of schooling online and limited students’ access to informal learning opportunities such as afterschool programs. The purpose of this study was to investigate how fourth- and fifth-grade students engaged in an online engineering program and what factors influenced their engagement. We drew on a four-dimensional model of student engagement to describe how students engaged in the afterschool engineering program and to identify the factors that enhanced or inhibited engagement. Using a case study design, we drew on interviews with six program mentors and ten students and observation data from weekly Zoom sessions throughout the 2020–2021 school year. We found examples of all four dimensions of engagement, but also of disengagement. The program influenced student engagement in multiple ways, including through the program mentors’ social, pedagogical, and managerial roles, students’ interest in and enjoyment of engineering, the drawbacks and benefits of the online learning environment and Zoom’s affordances, and the nature of the program’s activities. We connect these factors to the different dimensions of engagement. We conclude with a discussion of how our findings add to research on engineering education in informal online settings and offer implications for practitioners.

Building coalitions on Facebook: ‘social media unionism’ among Danish bike couriers

AbstractPlatform work represents an important challenge for the ‘Danish model’ of unionisation. Using interviews and ethnographic data, this article analyses the strategies of the Danish grassroots union movement the Wolt Workers' Group, representing principally migrant couriers using the food‐delivery platform Wolt. This study is an attempt to map an emergent form of flexible labour organisation based on horizontal, informal online networks while supported in different ways by established unions. We term this strategy of balanced autonomy and support ‘social media unionism'. Wolt couriers' attempts at grassroots organisation via social media is an important and understudied issue, especially their complex relationship to union actors. The ‘social media unionism' explored in this article allows for the formation and maintenance of nimble grassroots mobilisation among workers that are otherwise hard for unions to reach, such as migrants platform workers. We argue that this strategy holds both great possibilities and challenges for the labour movement.

Need satisfaction and collective efficacy in undergraduate blog-driven classes: A structural equation modelling approach

This paper investigates how psychological needs spurring self-determined motivation relate to collective efficacy for flourishing in online learning communities. Self-determination theory posits individuals experience intrinsic motivation to flourish at educational tasks because of targeted satisfaction of the three psychological needs: autonomy, relatedness, and competence. However, studies conducted to investigate collective, technology-assisted learning processes suggest competence and relatedness may play a pivotal role in online community engagement and knowledge-sharing. Moreover, informal gaming experiences may mirror the collaborative skills needed in online educational/professional communities. These insights suggest confidence in one’s abilities to contribute to a community, the perception of a strong, supportive social culture in the online classroom, and informal online experiences may lead to self-determined motivation enabling agents in distributed, technology-assisted classrooms to collectively flourish. Little work has been done to examine effects of need satisfaction on collective efficacy in using online technologies. To fill this research gap, we used structural equation modelling to investigate perceptions of 636 undergraduate students enrolled in classes within an education department at a midwestern university employing weekly asynchronous blogging. Our results suggest students’ experience with multiplayer gaming, and need satisfaction towards competence and relatedness correlate with higher collective efficacy in technology-assisted classrooms employing discussion forums. Implications for practice or policy: For instructors, student usership and design can spur motivation in online classrooms. For researchers, understanding student perceptions of collaboration using technology can help understand how to design better technology-assisted classrooms. The design of collaborative online educational communities should focus on creating positive social cultures and fostering competence for students.

Experiences of Middle School Programming in an Online Learning Environment.

This small-scale qualitative study aimed to explore learning programming through online experiences among middle school students in a school for girls in Saudi Arabia. The low uptake of computing by girls has been a persistent problem in schools and beyond. In Saudi Arabia, there are similar issues in encouraging learners and girls in particular to be interested in computer coding. To explore how to engage learners in coding, an informal online course on programming for learners (age 12) was designed using a community-of-inquiry approach and a gamification process enabled through the use of Thunkable™ and TalentLMS™ to engage learners. An inductive qualitative research approach was used to explore influencing factors for engaging learners in programming. The data comprised three individual interviews, one focus group, a teacher's diary, and a content analysis of the activities recorded in the TalentLMS™ system's student progress reports. Findings highlighted the need to consider digital learning agency in the online learning environment and that learning programming online was best facilitated through student collaboration using live tools with teacher support to develop the online community. Further, findings revealed the rationale for the girls enrolling in the online programming course, which included improving their online learning skills, planning future careers, and developing résumés. These findings may contribute to offering some insight into pedagogy that can encourage greater interest in computer programming in schools.

Many Destinations, Many Pathways: A Quantitative Analysis of Legitimate Peripheral Participation in Scratch

Although informal online learning communities have proliferated over the last two decades, a fundamental question remains: What are the users of these communities expected to learn? Guided by the work of Etienne Wenger on communities of practice, we identify three distinct types of learning goals common to online informal learning communities: the development of domain skills, the development of identity as a community member, and the development of community-specific values and practices. Given these goals, what is the best way to support learning? Drawing from previous research in social computing, we ask how different types of legitimate peripheral participation by newcomers-contribution to core tasks, engagement with practice proxies, social bonding, and feedback exchange-may be associated with these three learning goals. Using data from the Scratch online community, we conduct a quantitative analysis to explore these questions. Our study contributes both theoretical insights and empirical evidence on how different types of learning occur in informal online environments.

Are online reviews credible? The effects of online reviews for the adoption of MOOCs for E-learning

ABSTRACT The proliferation of massive open online courses (MOOCs) has sped up the evolution of online education. People now have a habit of checking internet reviews before deciding on and enrolling in an MOOC. However, issues about the veracity of online reviews have grown in significance. The S-O-R framework was used to determine the factors that have an impact on the reliability of reviews of MOOCs. The current study uses dual process theory (DPT) as a theoretical framework for identifying the stimuli. This finding reveals that review consistency and overall rating are more important in influencing the adoption of MOOC than the various informational factors. The findings also highlight that informal online communication (online reviews) is crucial to the adoption of e-learning.

The potential for using video games to teach geoscience: learning about the geology and geomorphology of Hokkaido (Japan) from playing Pokémon Legends: Arceus

Abstract. In recent years, video games, as a geoscience communication tool, have gained momentum. Popular commercial video games see millions of people around the world immersed in wondrous landscapes, many filled with real geological features including volcanoes, mineral deposits, and dinosaurs. Even though these features can be overlooked by many players as simple video game tropes, if utilized in educational environments or scientific outreach events, video games have the potential to encourage and stimulate teaching of geoscientific concepts, both in the classroom or in their own time. Here, we focus on the geo-educational potential of Pokémon Legends: Arceus, the latest game in the popular Pocket-Monster franchise, Pokémon. Pokémon Legends: Arceus is set in a fictional landscape, Hisui, that is directly based on the real-world island of Hokkaido, northern Japan. Both formal (peer-reviewed literature) and informal (online websites) resources are used to explore in-game and real-world geological feature comparisons and assess the game's educational potential. This paper demonstrates that a single commercial video game can be used to explore a variety of geological and geomorphological concepts including volcanology, economic geology, and hazard mitigation, with direct real-world examples to support the geoscientific understanding. Applications for this study could be extremely useful, not only for increasing interest and facilitating the self-learning of geoscience worldwide, but also for teaching in educational environments. From an educational standpoint, Pokémon Legends: Arceus could be used as a powerful tool to help students engage more in their learning by utilizing their natural affinity to the popular game and showcasing the many geological and geomorphological features found across the landscape of Hisui.

Uyghur and Tibetan university students’ English language learning in China: a spatial assemblage

ABSTRACT Informed by an increasing amount of research in understanding spatiality in language learning, this ethnographic case study investigates two ethnic minority university students’ English language learning in urban, virtual, and classroom spaces as they relocated to an interior city for higher education in southeastern China. Data consisted of the students’ informal online interactions, drawing journals, photos, and interviews. This study examines the participants’ capacity in appropriating and transforming both human and non-human objects in facilitating their English language learning and the contestations embedded in their meaning-making processes as they assembled their linguistic repertoires and materiality. This study finds that the virtual spaces are more enabling for the Uyghur student’s English language learning than his learning in urban and classroom spaces, whereas the urban space is more empowering for that of the Tibetan student. Instead of the traditional layout of classroom space, the two students became legitimate participants in the urban and virtual spaces where they actively engaged in utilizing resources for English language learning. This study indicates that spatiality needs to be seen as more central in shaping the participants’ English language learning outcomes. Implications for future research and pedagogy are provided.

Humanization of professional training specialist of information, library, and archival affairs under distance learning

The goal of the work. To determine the trends in the functioning of higher education in the field of social communications and the essence of the humanization of professional training of specialists in information, library and archival affairs, under conditions of forced distance learning of students during martial law. The research methodology consists in the application of the scienific methods and systematic method of research. The scientific novelty of the work is to expand the understanding of online learning, strategic approaches that create an inclusive climate of the online course, able to maintain cognitive and affective differences that coexist in training specialists in information, library and archival affairs in higher education. Conclusions. It was found that the system of professional training requires significant optimization, revision of the pedagogical paradigm of effective educational process, increasing attention to the study of the basics of general culture, the formation of economic, legal, political, psychological, pedagogical and informational cultures. Scientifically substantiated need for humanization of professional training of future specialists in information, library and archival affairs, special attention is paid to providing formal and informal online education, awareness of internal needs and at the same time objective need for mobile self-development, ability to adequately and dynamically communicate with others and yourself. It has been established that humanization supplies the strict, practical education strategy for online education, which creates an inclusive online course environment, which is able to support the cognitive and affective differences, that coexisted within the courses of the high education institutions. It is defined that the education humanization actualizes the issue of the improvement of the organizational and management of the future specialist culture on the basis of self-oriented technologies development, ensures self-developing conditions for the student, for his self-realization in professional activity, contributes to the growth of the mental potential, philosophy formation, moral behavior pattern. Keywords: humanization, professional training, online courses, culturally responsible training, specialists in information, library and archival affairs.

Networks of trust: accessing informal work online in Indonesia during COVID-19.

Although studies on digital labour platforms demonstrated how the internet has opened up access to income opportunities in the developing world, an exploration of how informal workers use the internet to access work without an intermediary is missing. Using data from digital ethnography and interviews with workers in Indonesia, this article examines how platform‐based motorcycle taxi drivers and domestic workers accessed work through social media in the time of COVID‐19 when the platforms were not allowed to operate. The evidence suggests that while social media can offer increased opportunities for workers, their success was largely dependent on their social networks and bounded by the algorithms designed by platform owners.

Parents perceptions of online physical activity and leisure with early years children during Covid-19 and beyond

ABSTRACT Prior to Covid-19, businesses offering enrichment activities for pre-school aged children were saturating the early years (0–5 years) market. However, the pandemic caused sudden changes to family routines with regular leisure activities cancelled. Using Lareau’s theory of concerted cultivation as a framework, we explored how physical activity (PA) was managed by parents of pre-school children and how routines changed during the pandemic. A UK national online survey was completed by 925 parents. Sixteen tailored, follow-up semi-structured interviews were undertaken with parents. Due to the nature of the pandemic and the age range of the young children, it was the parents who ultimately made decisions about PA, and it was parents who had to adapt, often to a challenging set of circumstances. Our data suggests many parents sought to utilise informal play and online PA during the lockdown periods with mixed levels of success. For those that attended baby, toddler, and pre-school sport sessions provided by commercial businesses prior to lockdown, the vast majority were eager to resume their in-person classes as opposed to continuing online. Parents perceived a wider range of benefits and cultivation for their child if they attended such classes in person (e.g. expert delivery, socialisation, and routine).