From George Siemens' eLearning Resources and News (6/8/09)
Investigating the Application of Social Software to Support Networked Learning (.pdf at http://eprints.qut.edu.au/18476/1/c18476.pdf) suggests that "university students need to learn new network and software literacies to become digital citizens". In addition to being literate (and therefore be able to participate in the consequential conversations occurring through, or mediated by, technology), authors state students spend surprisingly limited time in socialization (p. 17).
As background, Vincent Tinto has produced a model that promotes academic and social integration as key requirements to student retention. Students who feel connected to each other an the institution are less likely to drop out. I'm not familiar with studies to date that have looked at social networking services as a resource for reducing attrition...but it's a worthwhile concept to explore... Later in the report, the authors share a view that innovators on many campuses likely hold: "Centralised ICT Services departments have proved a barrier to the exploration of innovative emerging online technologies and services being explored in this project."
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