The researchers analysed these contributions, along with students’ responses to a questionnaire about how they found the module.
They analysed the contribution to find out what users were talking about, and who was talking to whom. They also analysed the results from the questionnaire to find out why users communicated as they did.
They found that there were significant differences between students’ use of social media – and individual participants displayed “Visitor” and “Resident” characteristics.
The Visitors and Residents model for online engagement was put forward by University of Oxford researchers David White and Dr Alison Le Cornu in 2011.
In this model, “Visitors” use the internet in functional terms as a tool, while “Residents” see the Internet as a social space.
The University of Leicester-led study suggests the Visitors and Residents model is valid – and is the first study to suggest this using statistical methods.
Fiona Wright conducted the study as part of her final year project of her Biological Science degree.
She said: “In order to know how to effectively teach using social media one needs to understand the student’s motivation to use it. Such paradigms, if proven correct, help educators to approach this problem, increasing student engagement with tasks.
“Students of today often spend a large amount of their free time
using social media, so if this tool could be used effectively for academic purposes it would be a great resource for teachers in higher education.”
The paper was co-written with Dr Alan Cann, a senior lecturer in the Department of Biology – who leads the IT and Numeracy Skills for Biologists module.
Dr Alan Cann said: “Although social media forms a prominent part of most student’s lives and is increasingly becoming part of academic environments, there has been little work investigating how students use and respond to social networks for formal academic purposes (as opposed to informal use).
“This is some of the first evidence which validates the Visitors and Residents model, and so it gives important insights into students reactions to social tools as part of a working environment.
“Although the Visitor and Resident labels only represent the extremes of a continuum of behaviour, this study has produced statistical evidence that Residents report online tools to be more useful academically than Visitors do.
The full paper can be found at: http://scienceoftheinvisible.
blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/ visitors-and-residents-mapping-
student.html
The paper was also co-written with University of Oxford researcher David White and Tony Hirst, a Lecturer in the Department of Communication and Systems at The Open University
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60