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Evaluating the extent to which sociability and social presence affects learning performance

Authors:

Terence Charlton,

Lindsay Marshall,

Marie DevlinAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin, Volume 40, Issue 3

Page 342

https://doi.org/10.1145/1597849.1384384

Published: 30 June 2008 Publication History

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Abstract

Active Learning in Computing (ALiC) is the first Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) project for Computing Science in England. Funded by HEFCE, the initiative seeks to prepare students for the realities of working in their chosen field by aligning their learning experiences and transferable skill sets with those sought by today's software engineering industry. One way ALiC achieves this is by introducing cross-site, collaborative group-programming tasks into the curriculum. Running over an academic year, this approach encourages active interaction and dialogue between student teams at Newcastle and Durham universities, and develops strong, real-world problem solving skills in participants.

The ALiC project has thus far generated a great deal of positive feedback from undergraduates, and we feel our approach to inter-institutional teamwork offers students a realistic and relevant "real world" experience [2]. However, we are also becoming increasingly aware that time and resource pressures can make it difficult for students to maintain adequate levels of communication for any length of time [4], and once a team disperses it becomes difficult for its members to preserve the channels needed to interact and collaborate effectively.

Consequently, an emerging area of research at Newcastle University concerns how learning can be enhanced through the use of computer-mediated social networking environments - online communities such as Facebook, Friendster and Bebo - through which registered users connect with friends and colleagues to explore similar interests and activities. In a collaborative educational context, these online social networking services offer an attractive means to foster student interaction and community building by providing a means to explore the common ground that exists between participants. [1]

To that end, we intend to embed the communication and "social awareness" affordances - profile creation, synchronous and asynchronous chat, status updates, etc. - of popular social networking sites into our undergraduate, cross-site software engineering projects [3]. Social network analysis will be used to identify, map and analyse the flow of information and resources between distributed team members.

The pedagogic motivation behind this work is to foster greater group-oriented interaction by filling the communication void that often arises between face-to-face meetings [5]. By reducing the geographic and temporal barriers to interaction and community formation (especially where 'peripheral', passive team members are concerned), team members will become increasingly aware of each others' skills, personalities, work rhythms and needs - both online and off - within a pre-existing, persistent, convenient infrastructure.

References

[1]

Acquisti, A. and Gross, R. (2006). Imagined Communities: Awareness, Information Sharing, and Privacy on the Facebook. Privacy Enhancing Technologies: pp. 36--58.

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[2]

Devlin, M., Phillips, C., Marshall, L. 2007a. Making Computing Science Students More Employable with Problem-Based Learning and Cross-Site Teamwork. Technical Report Series, University of Newcastle upon Tyne (Computing Science) 1055.

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[3]

Devlin, M., Marshall, L., Phillips, C. (2007b). Active Learning in Computing: Engaging Learners in a Cross-Site Team Project. Technical Report Series, University of Newcastle upon Tyne (Computing Science) 997.

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[4]

Drummond, S., Devlin, M. (2006). Software Engineering Students' Cross-site Collaboration: An Experience Report. 7th Annual Conference of the Subject Centre for Information and Computer Sciences 2006: pp. 95--100.

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[5]

Wellman, B. and Haase, A.Q. and Witte, J. and Hampton, K. (2001). Does the Internet Increase, Decrease, or Supplement Social Capital? American Behavioral Scientist (45)3: pp. 436.

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Cited By

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Peña-Ayala A(2019)Educational Networking: A Glimpse at Emergent FieldEducational Networking10.1007/978-3-030-29973-6_3(77-129)Online publication date: 9-Nov-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29973-6_3
Agarwal NAhmed F(2017)Developing collective learning extension for rapidly evolving information system coursesEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-015-9394-422:1(7-37)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10639-015-9394-4

Index Terms

Evaluating the extent to which sociability and social presence affects learning performance
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
      2. Model curricula

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

ACM SIGCSE Bulletin Volume 40, Issue 3

ITiCSE '08

September 2008

362 pages

ISSN:0097-8418

DOI:10.1145/1597849

Issue’s Table of Contents

ITiCSE '08: Proceedings of the 13th annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
June 2008
394 pages
ISBN:9781605580784
DOI:10.1145/1384271
Conference Chairs:
June Amillo
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
,
Cary Laxer
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Ernestina Menasalvas
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
,
Alison Young
Unitec, New Zealand

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 30 June 2008

Published in SIGCSE Volume 40, Issue 3

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Cited By

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Peña-Ayala A(2019)Educational Networking: A Glimpse at Emergent FieldEducational Networking10.1007/978-3-030-29973-6_3(77-129)Online publication date: 9-Nov-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29973-6_3
Agarwal NAhmed F(2017)Developing collective learning extension for rapidly evolving information system coursesEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-015-9394-422:1(7-37)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10639-015-9394-4

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Recommendations

Evaluating the extent to which sociability and social presence affects learning performance

Uses and gratifications of social networking sites for bridging and bonding social capital

Designing sociable online learning environments and enhancing social presence: An affordance enrichment approach