LIB 4900 – Social Informatics – Fall 2015

How can developers better enhance the usability of CUNYPortal for students?

Brantley, Steve, Annie Armstrong, and Krystal M. Lewis. “Usability Testing Of A Customizable Library Web Portal.” College & Research Libraries 67.2 (2006): 146-163. Web of Science. Web. 22 Oct. 2015.

Cited 12 times!

Values

Organization

Clarity

Efficiency

Security

Academic integrity

Familiarity
Interactive

Accessibility

Convenience

Norms

Fully functional

Customer support

Will use it

Persistence

Continuous updates

Do homework

Take quizzes

Use study guides

Won’t cheat

Values:

• etiquette
• courtesy
• security
• time
• fairness / plagiarism
• rules
• will to learn
• curiosity
• agreed upon standards

Norms:

• proper communication with professor / faculty / students
• when posting content / comments be detailed enough to get your point across (don’t leave people in the dark)
• be polite when leaving feedback and comments
• no inappropriate content / spam
• keep track of your progress so you don’t miss anything
• explore the options of the system for familiarity
• be aware of copyright material

Values:

• Security
• Privacy
• Accessibility
• Control
• Intuitiveness
• Support
• Transparency

Norms:

• You should not leave yourself logged into the portal on school computers — click log out at the end of a session.
• You ought to read the Chancellor’s Report.
• You ought to stay connected with what’s going on within CUNY in regards to events.
• You should keep track of the operations level stuff within your account — financial aid and the like.
• Don’t share your login.
• Don’t hack or compromise the site.

Title: A Study of the Effectiveness of Blackboard Collaborate for conducting synchronous Courses at Multiple Locations
MLA Citation: Tonsmann, Guillermo. “A Study of the Effectiveness of Blackboard Collaborate for Conducting Synchronous Courses at Multiple Locations.” Insight: A Journal of Scholarly Teaching 9 (2014): 54-63. Web. 21 Oct. 2015.
Research Question: How effective is the videoconferencing software Blackboard Collaborate for carrying out instructions at college level to students attending classes synchronously at multiple locations.
Methodology: The paper reviews and analyzes the author’s experience in teaching the college course “Discrete Mathematics’ using a tool called Blackboard collaborate (a videoconferencing software). This tool allows students to take part in live regular class sessions from different places in the United States. The method entailed the author directing class sessions from his office in Park university Campus in Austin Texas, while the students attended sessions from various locations; Austin, Texas, Minot, North Dakota and Charleston South Carolina. Every participant had full duplex audio and video communications and the course was an 8 week term between October and December, with 2 classes per week. All class sessions were recorded by the Blackboard Collaborate system and all students had access afterwards. There were power point lessons and final exams were held on site. Most importantly, “Students were polled at various stages of the presentation to gauge the level of understanding and engagement with the class”.
Extent of Social Informatics Approach to the Research Study: The author Guillermo had a very scientific/empirical approach to his research question because he followed the general layout and stepped out the process of the experiment, as well as look at the motivation and analyzed the data. In the end he even allowed for student feedback and a page for recommendations to what he found most useful after his experiment style question was answered. He also chose a big subject and narrowed down his results and created a solid question with answer, pertaining to one particular feature of a course management tool (Blackboard).

Dale Spencer

Title

The Student Experience of a Collaborative E-Learning University Module

APA Citation

Biasutti, Michele. (2011). The Student Experience of a Collaborative E-Learning University Module. Computers & Education, 57(3), 1865-1875.

 Research Question

What are student’s perceptions, problems and expectations from e-learning modules in the educational system?

Methodology

An online learning module on music education was presented to 92 students in a university in North Italy. Students were divided into four groups each group was assigned a single tutor. The structure of the module included various activities, such as reading tasks, group discussions, processes of peer feedback and other collaborative group tasks. Participants were asked to read a paper pertaining to music education and discuss it through online forums. Participants were also tasked with the job of designing a learning unit using the virtual environment. After completion of their tasks, students were given an anonymous questionnaire (consisting of both qualitative and quantitative questions) regarding their overall views and their experiences with the online module. The researchers used the results of this questionnaire to draw their conclusions.

Extent to which this article takes a social informatics approach to the research study

Social informatics is the study of information and communication tools in cultural or institutional concepts. This encompasses exactly what my journal article was about. In an effort to test student’s perceptions and experiences with online learning modules, the researchers conducted an experiment that produced firsthand results.

MLA Citation:

Ouyang, John Ronghua, and Nile Stanley. “Theories And Research In Educational Technology And Distance Learning Instruction Through Blackboard.”
Universal Journal Of Educational Research 2.2 (2014): 161-172. ERIC. Web. 15 Oct. 2015.

Research Question:
This presentation is reviewing various
educational technology related theories, exploring and
discussing up-to-date theoretical research and applications.

Methodology used:
A review and discussion of various theories in education. This paper reviews educational technology related theories. Learning theories discussed in the research and later applied to an evaluation of Blackboard’s distance learning environment platform. Theories discussed are: Constructivist theory, a brief description of the multiple intelligence theory, anchored instruction theory, cognitive flexibility theory, theory of diffusion of innovations, distribution cognition theory, dual-coding theory, experiential learning theory, script theory, situated cognition theory, and symbol system theory. At the end of the article Blackboard is discussed in the context of the stated theories.

Extent of social informatics approach to the research study:
According to the Berkshire Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction “Social informatics (SI) is a theoretical and empirical approach to the study of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in society.” The authors Ouyang John Ronghua, and Nile Stanley explore the popular theories of education and then review the Blackboard platform in the context of those theories. This paper definitely applies to social informatics methods of studying ICT systems.

Just a reminder that you have until 6 pm tonight to complete your first blog post for the assignment where you talk about a peer-reviewed journal article. Any late posts will have 1 point taken off for each day they are late.

Here’s the assignment description from the course website:

Find 3 peer-reviewed journal articles that discuss the results of a research study of an ICT that you are studying. Write a separate blog post for each article. Each post should have:

• Proper APA or MLA style citation for the article
• Description of the research question
• Description of the methodology used
• The extent to which this article takes a social informatics approach to the research study

Due:

• First blog post: October 22
• Second blog post: November 5
• Third blog post: November 12

Points: up to 10 points per blog post (30 total)