In Module 2, students were expected to draw on their prior and present experience of volunteering work in partnership with local organisations within the university and volunteers in the sharing of knowledge and experiences. They also sought guidance from these organisations to develop the social capital necessary for effectively serving the communities. The learning activities included:
15 hours of community service,
12 hours of reflective face-to-face sessions,
2 short reflective papers, and
Self-reflection in blogs and commenting on peers’ blog posts.
Data collection tools Data mining
These undergraduate and postgraduate students drawn from diverse faculties at the university were expected by their educators to post messages to the GC-LSJ Programme Facebook group forum (public wall) using their desktop computers or mobile phones. Since the university prohibited students’ access to social media from library work stations and computer labs, many students opted to access their Facebook accounts from their mobile phones (that is Facebook mobile).
Since the current study focused on social media networks ability to mediate community engagement discourses between students and educators, the researcher was authorised by the GC-LSJ team to download all Facebook group forum postings for in-depth analysis. After downloading these artefacts, he printed them to understand the interactants’ cogitative processes on community engagement.
Presentation of data Descriptive statistics
At the end of the GC-LSJ programme that lasted two semesters, student postings /discussions were mined, printed and counted to determine their frequencies (See Table 1). About 200 students enrolled for the GC-LSJ programme and of this number only 41 students participated on the programme’s Facebook page, representing a participation rate of 20.5%.
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Table 1: Frequencies of the themes discussed on Facebook mobile forum
Theme Number of
postings
Percentage International politics news (e.g.,
popular uprisings)
10 9.52%
Human rights violations 6 5.71%
Global interventions 3 2.85%
Collective civic action 17 16.19%
Social justice and equity 9 5.57%
Climatic change debates 13 12.38%
Enhancing critical social awareness 11 10.47%
Personal branding 2 1.90%
Natural disasters 3 2.85%
General announcements 31 29.5%
Total 105 100%
Using thematic analysis, the Facebook mobile forum was closely searched to understand the main themes that educators, students and peers discussed. As shown in the Table 1, 10 themes were discussed. Although not every one of these themes incited some debate, some themes (like popular uprisings and human rights violations were more perceptively emotional than others). Given that the focus of this investigation is exploring the mediating role of Facebook mobile in academic engagement, the focus was less about unravelling the occurrences of each theme in Table 1 and more about how different forms of engagement played out in the Facebook mobile forums.
Qualitative analysis using CoPE and community engagement concepts
After counting the occurrences of each theme on the Facebook mobile forum, these themes were put in conversation with Wenger’s (1998) Community of Practice (CoP) and community engagement concepts to make sense of how social media networks mediated community engagement discourses. The community engagement categories were adapted from the Staffordshire County Council (see Table 2 Below).
Table 2: Community Engagement Framework Community of Practice Concepts Type of Engagement Description Example
Domain Information Keep people
informed about what is going on
According to a new report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent – 18 per cent – than transport. It is also a major source of land and water degradation. How does meat contribute to greenhouse gases???.
(Student posting).
On the climate change article; as people rightly point out weather & environmental fluctuations
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Practice Consultation Seeking people’s opinions about a document, idea or policy
Thomas Sankara - The Upright Man Part 1 www.youtube.com Synopsis: Thomas Sankara rose to power in a popularly supported coup in 1983 and renamed his country to Burkina Faso, "Land of Upright Men" and launched the ...A different kind of African leader?? (Peer posting)
Definitely a different kind of African leader. Not a puppet of Europe like some leaders we see today. Although his ideologies were not perfect, we do need someone with the courage that Thomas Sankara had. Thanks for the link (Peer’s response) Involvement Seeking views,
ideas or
opinions and using them to inform or make decisions
Meat Free Monday: don't forget to play your important role in fighting global warming. be a vegetarian for only 24hours and make a positive change (Student posting).
By giving up meat for one day each week you can save money, reduce your environmental impact and live a healthier life.
I think meat-like vegetarian products are a grey area, I'm sure many additives go into them as well (Student response) Community Acting together Local people and public organisations working together to carry out work or run parts of a service
If you agree that South Africa's current response to climate change is ineffective and leaves much to be desired and that we need a stronger and more effective South African response to climate change, sign the petition at: Cleaner Climate Campaign - The Petition Site www.thepetitionsite.com (Student posting) Supporting independent community initiatives Helping the local community to do what they want
Dennis Hong: Making a car for blind drivers | Video on TED.com TED Talks Using robotics, laser rangefinders, GPS and smart feedback tools, Dennis Hong is building a car for drivers who are blind. It's not a "self-driving" car, he's careful to note, but a car in which a non-sighted driver can determine speed, proximity and route -- and drive independently (Student).
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4)
Presentation and discussion of findings
Connectivist strategies to build on student’s knowledge
To address the question on how educators (Programme Head, course convenor) and students employed mobile social networks (Facebook mobile) to mediate their teaching and learning of community engagement, the study first sought to understand how educators’ pedagogy was framed and informed by mobile social networking. The role of the teacher in a community engagement context is to be an information provider, role model, a facilitator, an assessor, a planner and a resource developer (Harden and Crosby, 2000). In the same vein, students should be active participants in community engagement endeavours, students should be empowered to pose questions or express their own ideas about a subject, be motivated about their learning and be task monitors (The role of student in the classroom, 2009). The educators employed connectivist teaching strategies that drew on existing student mobile social networks to build on student knowledge about community engagement and critical citizenship. For Siemens (2006) connectivism conceives learning (defined as knowledge patterns on which we can act) to reside outside of humans (within an organization or a database) and it foregrounds connecting specialised information sets enabling knowledge seekers to learn more than their current states of the mind. Educator’s connectivist pedagogical strategies therefore, involved:
Provision of relaxed delegated authority to tutors who moderated and engaged with student contributions to the Facebook mobile forums.
They promoted peer-based coaching on Facebook mobile by encouraging students to engage amongst themselves to render a sense of ownership of Facebook forum discussions.
They occasionally contributed invaluable background information and resources that would cognitively scaffold student knowledge about community engagement and critical citizenship concepts. These included videos, pictures and animations on topics like the importance of active citizenship for participative democracy.
Domain: Information sharing
The domain is the research area around which practitioners and novices converge in the course of working and sharing their knowledge. The problem areas around which students shared their knowledge, information and expertise were community engagement and critical citizenship. From these two knowledge domains emerged the discourses that were tied to the ten themes identified in the quantitative analysis in Table 1. The goal of sharing domain knowledge was mainly to inform peers about concepts or issues (see the next paragraph).
Informing and coaching peers about climatic change and civic engagement
Under the theme climatic change, students engaged in critical dialogue about raising critical consciousness and awareness about global issues like climatic change. While all the ten themes discussed qualify to be considered under sharing of domain knowledge category,
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Proceedings climatic change debates where more dominant and hence deserve more attention. In conjunction with the service learning activities they engaged in under the supervision of voluntary support organisations, students also used the Facebook mobile forum to reflect on climatic change discourses learnt in class.
While these informative postings suggest the sharing of peer-based and lecturer knowledge on the current interventions, they tended to be fragmented and lacked cohesive analysis. Often, these engagements did not foreground particular central issues or invite well- coordinated argumentation and informed peer critique. While the limited critique and substantiation of arguments were often typical of “unsupervised” social networking debates, increased tutor support could have improved the quality of the debates.
Practice: Consultations
In CoP, practices emphasises the personal, often unverbalised body of knowledge that the practitioners and novices want to share and build on. as Amin & Roberts (2008) suggests, [social] practices involve “implicit relations, tacit conventions, subtle cues, untold rules of thumb, recognisable intuitions, embodied understandings and shared world views.” in this study, students used the mobile social networks to share views and perspectives, assigned learning tasks, news of latest events, stories and ways of knowing about their communities and critical citizenship.
Seeking people’s views about governance issues
Educators also employed mobile social networks as spaces for promoting political awareness and conscientisation about international political affairs. Students posted some comments that solicited public opinion (peers, senior students and the general academic community) on particular contentious political issues to influence one another’s psychology. For instance, some innovative students downloaded topical videos on You Tube and streamed them into the Facebook mobile discussion page for public comments and feedback. One of these politically inspired videos included Thomas Sankara’s ascendency to power and his resistance of Western imperialism and domination:
Practice: involvement
The sharing on social practices on Facebook mobile also involved seeking peer views, ideas or opinions and using them to inform or make decisions. Student used their personal opinion and perspectives not only to engage in some personal branding but also to influence public decision making about issues like global warming and climatic change.
Seeking peers’ views and using them in decision making
Student employed Facebook mobile as a political platform to raise their opinions about political issues and to build discursive coalitions on issues of public concern. For example, they shared their views on the clean climate campaigns and encouraged their peers to sign a petition on the matter:
Apart from raising political consciousness through a mobile social network, students also reinforced personal branding on Facebook mobile and canvassed their peers’ buy-in to their individual ideologies. Through moral suasion, they enticed or co-opted their peers to refrain
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Proceedings from meat foods as a way of cutting down on the carbon gas emissions from animal meat. The first posting below is indicative of this:
Community: Acting together
Appreciating the mutual engagement inherent in a community, Wenger, McDermott and Snyder (2002), contend that community creates the social fabric of learning through interactions and relationships based on mutual respect and trust. Through their collective engagements, educators and students expressed their willingness to share ideas, expose each other’s ignorance in certain areas and engage with difficult questions.
People and public organisations working together
Students employed Facebook mobile to share news about newly formed organisations that supported youth empowerment and to share their political convictions. They also enticed their communities to join these organisations or group formations and to share their own views in these organisations.
The intention of these student postings was to use Facebook mobile to introduce and socialise their peers into different social formations that would improve their active participation in community engagement processes and their decision making processes about under-served communities.
Supporting independent community initiatives
Students also shared inspiring community initiatives that they expected their peers to rally behind in their community building aspirations.
Although these posts point at students desire to establish learning communities around their shared community of practice, their challenge, however was the lack of in-depth engagement with peer and lecturers’ postings beyond just posting individual messages.
Discussion
Mobile social networks mediated discourses on community engagement and critical citizenship in five main ways which are:
Raising political consciousness about latest global issues,
Generating political opinions and perspectives about political affairs,
Influencing and shaping mobile Facebook users’ psyche and decision making about community engagement issues,
Supporting community development initiatives
With regard to imparting political consciousness, mobile social networks were useful vehicles for communicating political messages among student community engagement who would
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Proceedings otherwise not meet physically to discuss their political views and perspectives because of their engagements in the field (service learning). This finding coheres with literature. Robertson, Vatrapu & Medina (2010) demonstrate how social networking sites like MySpace have been deployed by American presidential candidates for advancing democratic discourse. Their study report on how political candidates have appropriated these sites for collecting funds disseminating messages, creating groups with political affiliations and initiating collective activities.
Student also appropriated Facebook mobile to generate and share their opinions about diverse matters like environmental protection, global warming, climatic change and abuse of human rights. Therefore, mobile social networks were harnessed by educators and students not only as platforms for disseminating critical citizenship and community engagement messages but rather as conduits for individual and collective expression of global issues. This finding contradicts existing literature. For instance, while Mossberger & Wu’s (2012) acknowledge the potential of social networks to foster civic engagement and local e-governance because of the multiple opportunities they create for public dialogue on governance matters, there was no evidence to suggest that American city councils are using these websites to promote public discussions about their work.
Facebook mobile was also employed diplomatically for mobilising peers engagement in public decision making. Students harnessed it to enlist their peers’ support and involvement in the signing of petitions on limited government action on climatic change and to voice their concerns about mob justice. As Boulianne (2009) suggests, the increased information access via Internet sites may reduce knowledge deficiencies that are used to excuse disengagement. More so, new online opportunities for self-expression potentially leverage the identification and organisation of like-minded citizens, and expand their engagement with diverse populations.
Implications for pedagogical change
The educators employed multiple learner-based teaching strategies such as provision of relaxed delegated authority to tutors (who were also postgraduate students) to engage and summarise online discussions, to promote peer-based deliberations without their direct involvement, post visual representations (pictures, videos and animations) and post notifications about critical awareness developments (petitions and campaigns). They also provided background information on complex citizenship and community engagement issues that cognitively scaffolded students.
Collectively, these strategies impacted pedagogy in several ways.
Fostered constructivist teaching methodologies-The provision of background materials (multimedia representations) that fed into Facebook mobile discussions on community engagement potentially enabled the collaborative construction of pedagogical content knowledge. The emergent forms of talk back processes and coupled with the transformed roles of educators (from “sages on the stage” to information brokers, guides on the side and neutral participant observers) also served to present a collaborative, discursive pedagogy that potentially transferred the responsibility for critical dialogue, self-reflection and self-regulation in decision making about knowledge from educators to students.
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The formative conversational exchanges among them potentially enabled educators to make inferences about their processes of meaning making as well as discern the valid judgments that they made about what qualified as objective knowledge in community engagement and citizenship discourses. These informal inferences by educators potentially broadened the educators’ opportunities to reflexively engage with their teaching practices, identify teaching gaps that they needed to fill in through providing more focused seminars including addressing student misconceptions and challenging areas of student learning. This could have triggered a shift from the traditional “blanket approach” towards a pragmatic, strategic approaches that targeted “problem areas” and “soft spots” among students.
The use of social presence rather than direct involvement in Facebook mobile enhanced student acceptance of academic mentors that contributed to the breaking of social distance between them. Social presence and the continual reinforcement of teaching (through provision of background information) potentially contributed to increase on-task behaviour from students, heightened interest in the course, and educator familiarity with the students.
Conclusion
The study explored educators’ use of mobile social networking to teach community engagement and critical citizenship at a South African university. Theory of Community of Practice was employed to demonstrate how students shared domain knowledge and practices on critical citizenship and community engagement. From an educators’ perspective the use of four student centred teaching strategies enhanced their exchange of shared repertoires, domain knowledge and social practices of the discipline. An analytical framework on community engagement was integrated with CoP concepts to provide a unified analytical framework for examining the different forms of student engagement that emerged from their multiple interactions with academics, peers and content. Students deliberated on ten themes that ranged from supranational interventions, political activism issues to national disasters. While different pedagogical interventions were explored that ranged from direct instruction to integrated approaches of teaching, the drawbacks of teaching with mobile social networks included the fragmented nature of discussions, suboptimal quality of the discussions and the incommensurate attention paid to the exploration of certain concepts.
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