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Identity in Online Communities: Social Networking Sites and Language Learning Identity in Online Communities: Social Networking Sites and Language Learning

from Diigo https://ift.tt/2uuXPhl
via IFTTT

This is a study of a community made up of foreign language learners which focuses on the creation of new relationships.

Of particular interest is the section on Mediation (pg119) which describes how mediation has no particular rules and regulations but is fluid and ‘arbitrary’ and the concept of ‘impression’. The idea of trying to find someone, one can relate to in an online community can be a very interesting concept to study. Do members of an online community decide to like or reply to another member on the basis of what is being posted or because they somehow feel that they can associate with that persona?

 

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Week 6 – Have MOOCs been created with the idea of online communities or are online communities a phenomenon of MOOCs?

This week’s posts have been somewhat similar in gist and content to week 5’s but possibly taken more from the perspective of the economy of MOOCs. MOOCs are one of those inventions where the whole seems greater than the sum of the individual parts, often making us wonder if they are seen as a product, a service or even both (Sultan, 2014)?

This week I spent some time analyzing discourse in the MOOC I have chosen, mostly what brought the people on the MOOC to take the course. The MOOC I have chosen ‘Launching Innovation in Schools‘ (which I decided to change to earlier on) is mostly populated by professionals in education. Most of those who took the MOOC decided to do so because they felt they could take something out of the course as opposed to simply taking the course for self-satisfaction (which in a way is also taking something from the MOOC). In this way, a MOOC represents a service. It is providing the necessary material for someone to learn. Yet MOOCs are also a form of ‘servitization‘, defined as

“the increased offering of fuller market packages or ‘bundles’ of customer-focused combinations of goods, services, support, self-service and knowledge in order to add value to core product offerings” and claim that manufacturing firms are increasingly moving towards offering services in order to avoid competing on cost alone.

(Vandermerwe and Rada as cited in Sultan, 2014)

Online communities pertaining to MOOCs are therefore a phenomenon that is part of this servitization but without the need for MOOC organisers to invest any capital into it. They do advertise numbers of participants in an effort to attract more people to the course and investment is required in designing the platform to allow for communication but it is like parking a hamburger van outside a football stadium. All you have to do is wait for the people to come by with little effort.

References:

Sultan, N. (2014) Cloud and MOOCs: The Servitization of IT and Education. Available at: https://www.uos.ac.uk/sites/default/files/basic_file/CLOUD-AND-MOOCS.pdf. (Accessed: 20th January 2020).

Image obtained and modified from: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart

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Week 5: The needs of online communities.

The posts over week 5 have hopefully been proof of the different needs associated with online communities in an effort to determine what aspects I should concentrate on in the micro-ethnography.

Mark Wills’ view that online community encourage communities that are essentially neutral in the embodiment of genderless, ageless and classless notions may perhaps be counterargued by the last few posts for this week which show an inherent need for MOOCs to suit the needs of different types of communities. Being neutral and anonymous might have been a common practice in the first online communities but nowadays online participants seem to feel the need to show who they are and where they come from. This has also been evident in a short investigation of my MOOC which has shown that few people use pseudonyms any more.

This week has also been about the economics of MOOCs. In one of the articles, a major MOOC platform representative of Coursera states that:

At Coursera, we don’t really see ourselves as a MOOC provider, we look at ourselves as a three-sided platform that’s connecting learners, educators and employers.

(Kapeesh Saraf, 2019)

MOOCs might perhaps be realising that it is not just a question of posting material online for everyone to consume but it is about the need to bring together all interested parties in a continuous effort to meet the needs of different communities. Couple this with the need (still evident) of having face-to-face contact and it seems that teachers will not be out of a profession any time soon.

 

References:

Johnson, S. (2019). Much Ado About MOOCs: Where Are We in the Evolution of Online Courses? Available at: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-02-26-much-ado-about-moocs-where-are-we-in-the-evolution-of-online-courses. (Accessed: 15th February 2020).

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Liked on YouTube: The Online Community-A New Paradigm: Mark Wills at TEDxSanLuisObispo

The Online Community-A New Paradigm: Mark Wills at TEDxSanLuisObispo
IT professional Mark Wills explores the changes to social norms and mores caused by the rise of online communities, and why it matters to all of us. A site administrator for the online technology help community Experts Exchange (https://ift.tt/fy60lw), Mark helps connect answer seekers with thousands of technology professionals every day to solve problems large and small.

Mark Wills raises the notion that online communities are essentially raceless, genderless, ageless and faceless. The faceless community is the identity in itself and certain social skills associated with face to face communication are lost. The question of trust becomes paramount to people that are part of an online community.

Longevity, shared value, community management, moderation are some of the new roles associated with online communities and make them successful.