IRIE : International Review of Information Ethics – Vol. 16 (10/2011)

« Communities of passage » : Online social networks in Distance Learning.

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  Xavier INGHILTERRA :

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« Communities of passage » : socio-numeric networks in distance learning

Not unlike this global village that was drawn in the sixties by the most visionary amongst Canadian theorists¹, now reticular dynamics are a growing part of our everyday life. An unprecedented mobilization of virtual communities² has become well-known through its seminal impact on the Jasmine Revolution³; some dub it “cyber-revolution”⁴. While public opinion was struck by the liveliness of social web, few know however that such a “network” notion goes back to well before Facebook or Twitter ever existed. Participative web won its spurs by sharing Peer-to-Peer files, GPL licences, Open Source softwares, Copyleft, Creatives Commons⁵ and so on, all those being substantial tools of methodological and theoretical development.

As Yochai Benkler said: « Social production is a fact and not a fad⁶ » – production by which he meant Wikipedia or Open Directory Project: their free software keep taking more market share from American lobbies. An old construction pattern regarding information and knowledge meets an end, after being in use for 150 years; now it’s time for social cooperation, as socio-constructivist rules add to its team spirit. A new pattern follows theories like that of “Crowd wisdom”⁷. Network devices upset what people are used to on an individual, cultural and politic level, by entrusting every eager user with the main role, one in which he becomes emancipated.

Internet democratization gave birth to a logorrheic public user, organizing his own topics on forums, bursting into inconvenient speeches, broadcasting his own personal life somewhat ostensibly. Far from what the internet “pioneers”⁸ used to prophesize, virtual communities are especially born around common topics able to reunite people: it’s the “community fiction” paradox. Internet didn’t abolish social and cultural boundaries (Cardon, 2010)⁹. In virtual life as in real life, social relations are built over the same principles: an exchange takes place around shared interests or common goals. To create a distance learning community, it means a group of persons must meet on a regular basis in a virtual space with this goal: the exploration of a common theme.

It is also what was observed when a participative study took place in a group of DEES and BACHELOR Marketing & Communication¹⁰ students. They only had distance interaction¹¹, but did set in place a social network in order to share their every day formation, which was usually three years long. During the first weeks at school¹², students often feel the “instinctive” need to create a “community of passage”¹³, specifically in order to add it to their existing networks, but with specific use modes in that case. A dichotomous logic must exist inside this studying population, and show itself in the use it makes of social networks. We thought it judicious to put this observation to the test of a theory: the “Strength of weak ties”¹⁴. It defines strong ties as the bonds we make by regularly meeting someone; on the other hand, weak ties are the ones linking casual relations, even brief ones.

Strong ties are friends or relations who seek permanent contact; socio-technical devices of all sorts are used to achieve this goal: video, VoIP, chat… But all mean you are connected by ATAWAD¹⁵; this Digital native population feels an urge to be connected, to always have somebody “online”, somebody listening, somebody to confide their feelings to whenever they need, and whatever the moment. The penetration rate of Smartphone in France¹⁶ exemplifies how much generation Y has become enthralled by this object. Beyond utilitarian use, young people play through mobile phones with new ways of having fun, of enjoying privacy, of interacting, of identifying to the available memberships. (Vacaflor, 2011) The evolution of such practices was analysed with the utmost interest by industrials involved in mobile terminals, because smart phones and graphic tablets are precisely a prized tool of pervasive communication with one’s chosen community.¹⁷

Whereas “weak ties” are a space in which learning people usually share news about what they learn in class, what didactic resources they discover, or simply discuss ways to learn in relation with the topic of the formation. But more collaborative works are initiated occasionally, as collective revising groups take place via IRC-type synchronisation tools¹⁸, or via media coverage on Facebook or such, while sharing social bookmarking applications¹⁹ (Nelson, 2009).

According to Dillenbourg, Poirier & Carles (2003)  »a community of passage is a group of persons coming together in order to acquire a knowledge. » In the present case, our community of learning individuals finds there intellectual, moral and interpretative support, and the hope to meet the institution’s expectations. The students teach each other how to become efficient students : collaborations means higher scores in the end, but also better understanding of the community rules inside its participative frame. Charlier & Peraya (2003) consider it’s action learning: often the goal include transdisciplinary projects with problem solving and strong focusing on collaboration/cooperation between students. Online collaboration is a way to develop critical analysis and an ability to solve pedagogic difficulties (Karsenti, Fortin & Larose, 2002). These are students who, by themselves, “learn how to learn”.

Another distinctive sign of our “communities of passage” is they are time-limited. Collective experiences and fruitful achievements mean our students usually part after a successful formation. Later, other contexts may get them to join new learning communities in order to acquire new knowledge. When you look at them through the prism of constructivism in a socio-cultural approach, “weak ties” become real social interactions, the product of a formative context, and play an essential role in the learning process. A search team at the University of Minnesota²⁰, working on educational technologies, showed those ties could be powerful educative tools. American College students, ranging from 16 to 18-years old, have been watched and interrogated over six months about how they relate to the internet. Almost all of them declared using Internet. More than 80% said they had a connection at home, and 25% had a profile on social networks such as MySpace, Facebook or other forums. The results of this study prove that a population can acquire new technological skills, show creativity and open their minds to different opinions thanks to this activity.

Today, as the TICE make their apparition, it’s more common to talk about “Social Learning” as a way to improve collaborative work, or in other terms exchange between people. Students learn how to communicate, eventually re-phrasing in order to be understood. In collaborative learning, what’s shared becomes an incredible wealth as well as a useful feedback about each one’s own way to learn (Pinte, 2011).

Across the Atlantic, the University of Purdue²¹ is leading the way thanks to HOTSEAT²², a micro-blogging application that allows collaboration with peers during the class, via social platforms. Pertinage (pertinent chat, “bavardage” in French) improves pedagogic dynamic without disturbing the course of the class, which takes place in lecture halls. The applications works using devices students themselves are prone to use, such as Facebook and Twitter: they can comment from their mobile phones, ask questions, create a hierarchy to select the most relevant, vote or answer and in the same time remain synchronous with each other.

In some classes, such a method helps provide valuable opinions, impossible to produce otherwise in a public session. It’s especially difficult when delicate issues are debated. The students’ participation is what gives the class its value, by making a difference, and it can also extend beyond the university. Absenteeism is reduced as the students are more and more interested. As for the instructors, they can improve their teaching skill by getting to know what questions students ask themselves about the subject, and what opinion they have of the way it is taught. Statistic data collected since 2009 prove pedagogical effectiveness gets better following the degree of class participation and collaboration between students. On the same basis, students who participate more are shown to get better grades at exams: the more you give, the more you get (Lamontagne, 2010).

While teachers are increasingly confronted with a flow of students’ practices they have to adapt to, the institution remains reluctant in most of cases. The digital divide stands at the heart of the matter : on one hand, teachers who were born with generation X, and on the other hand, an audience of digital natives, more and more hermetical to academic contents, more and more in need of interactivity. This is a transitional phase, in which an educator must demonstrate creativity in fields he often doesn’t master, and with limited means. Daniel Apollon²³ gives a detailed account about “how heavy the historical authority of institutions can be, how intrusive the general networking of organisms and individuals (Castells, 1998), how abstract still the notion of making knowledge in post-industrial societies – or the notion of cultural/organisational representation of the TIC”.

Of particular concern is our last issue: “the Web”, this “universe separate from the world” dreamt by Internet pioneers, is pure illusion. Virtual life and real life are mingled (Cardon, 2011) as more and more virtual communities end by meeting physically²⁴. Geolocalisation is in turn improved by smartphones boom, and through it, alternative marketing takes place ; it is also know as “advertisement by peer pressure”. Fletcher says “people will do something all the more when a friend recommends them to”. Following Google’s economical model, appear the “sponsored tweets” on micro-blogging network n°1, the launching of Open Graph and of a “Like” button on Facebook, or Foursquare and its badges collect²⁵. There’s no surprise in asserting Facebook and Twitter are the most used devices for generation Y; it seems then legitimate to wonder about the harmful aspects of a Deleuzean “audit society” set in such a paradigm.

Popular collaboration websites such as Facebook and Twitter prove effective as learning devices, as long as a strong pedagogical mediation ensures the activity remains within certain boundaries. Participative observation into a community of learning people sharing a distance formation has effectively shown how “collaborative platforms can become real vectors for the opening to new knowledge” (Pinte, 2011). Socio-numeric networks serve what is called “social-learning”.

However, as soon as those become tools of the computer and communication industry lobbies, there can be a lot of dangerous abuses. Under the pretext of improving social ties, big technological companies shamelessly exploit their subscribers’ traceability, making them go physically to places of reference, where they’re exposed to big advertising signs. The promise of a social bonding is, sadly, motivated by the attractiveness of cold, hard cash. Now we meet a paradox: the global village signals the end of private life, as Deleuze shows through “the passage from a disciplinarian society to a control society”, where everyone keeps an eye on others as well as on oneself. Politic or economic control over traces is more and more established in the practices of the citizens themselves.

Bibliography :

• Darnon, Buchs, & Butera, 2005 ; Muchielli, 1985 ; Raynal & Rieunier, 2007
• Dillenbourg P., Poirier, C. & Carles, L. (2003). Communautés virtuelles d’apprentissage: e-jargon ou nouveau paradigme ? In A. Taurisson et A. Sentini. Pédagogies.Net. Montréal, Presses
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• Dillenbourg, P., Poirier, C. & Carles, L. (2003). Communautés virtuelles d’apprentissage : e-jargon ou nouveau paradigme ? In A. Taurisson et A. Sentini. Pédagogiques.Net. Montréal, Presses.
• Lapointe, J., Nault, G., Legault, F. (2005). Le rôle de l’appartenance sexuelle dans les attitudes et la participation aux communautés d’apprentissages virtuelles lors des stages en enseignement in L’intégration pédagogique des TIC dans le travail enseignant : recherches et pratiques. Ed. Presses de l’Université du Québec. Canada.
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• Les réseaux sociaux : des outils d’apprentissage en devenir? Pinte Jean-Paul Maître de conférences SIC Pinte.jp@gmail.com Université Catholique de Lille, 60, Bd Vauban, 59000 Lille
• L’enseignement supérieur face au numérique en Europe: tradition, innovation et résistance : Apollon D., Paris : France (2005) – http://edutice.archives-ouvertes.fr/edutice-00001476/fr/
• Les enjeux économiques de la géolocalisation pour les réseaux sociaux numériques : Bassoni M., Weygand F. Hermes, 59 (2011) 137-142 – http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00625988/fr/