Digitalization is an ongoing process in our society and David Withe discuss usage of digital and social media from a generation perspective as well as from a Visitors and Residents perspective. In my case, I belong to the Visitors side, which means that I’m not use social media and don’t’ want to leave digital traces on the web. However, these two different perspectives are from my perspective not static, rather context dependent. I develop my knowledge on a daily basis in this area (digital tools and platforms, social media, etc.), but the problem is the fast advancement in several areas.
As a part of the Open Network Learning course I’m forced to blog. Is it dangerous to blog, NO. For me two important aspects for not using social media are privacy and data usage. Whom will earn money from my writing (data) and how will my text be used now and in the future. These two arguments are typical for a Visitor and this Youtube clip highlight the negative effect of social media that I agree with.
Are social media and digital tools important to master or be aware of? As I started this post, digitalization is an ongoing process and in order to be a part of the society everybody need to understand and adapt to the trends in this area. For example, when the pandemic started early 2020 this had consequences for everybody and in my case for the education. I was new at the university, responsible for designing a new course, no academic/teaching experience, and I had to convert the course to online. The ironic thing was that the course that I developed covered Industry 4.0, digital transformation, and digital technologies. The main problem was that I didn’t know what type of digital tools that could be used for online education. My toolbox with digital tools was almost empty when I started the course and I had to identify and try new (for me) digital tools during lectures.
In order to learn and find out more about digital tools for online education I applied for the Open Network Learning (ONL) course. The ONL is an online course divided in three levels, 1) ONL community (all participants), 2) Group level, and 3) Individual level. My group (Level 2) is a perfect composition of individuals supporting knowledge development through knowledge integration. One of my research areas is knowledge development or organizational learning during high uncertainty. My model for knowledge development (Capturing, Joint learning, Absorb learning) seems to be valid in this context as well. For the reader interested in this model can read this journal paper:
AHLSKOG, M., BRUCH, J. & JACKSON, M. 2017. Knowledge integration in manufacturing technology development. Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, 28, 1035-1054.
The start of the ONL course have been super confusing. Why? Important information is spread all over the webpage. Often questions or meeting invitations are addressed in posts at some digital whiteboard. To stay updated you need to read every post. This becomes very time consuming and in today’s digital society other problems are information overflow and communication channels. The number of information channels have increased the last years which implies that everybody need to filter all information more rapidly since our available time is limited.
Stay tuned!
/Alwood
Online education 
4 replies on “Experience from online education, social media and knowledge development”
Hi,
You start off by describing yourself as really a visitor and you don’t want to leave any trace. You describe the use of “big data” and becoming a part of the “data”, the product that someone profits from. But aren’t we leaving traces anyway? When Googling? When using your phone? And now you are blogging very openly… You also say that this is context dependent. This makes me curious: How?
Then you also lift that everyone must understand the area and trends. How do we do that if we don’t engage?
It is so interesting to see your reflections to your own practice but also to your research!
In the end you refer to the information overflow and how to filter information these days. This is SO true, and this makes me wonder how this affects our students? The learning? Our adaptation as a teacher?
-Thanks!
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Hi,
You start off by describing yourself as really a visitor and you don’t want to leave any trace. You describe the use of “big data” and becoming a part of the “data”, the product that someone profits from. But aren’t we leaving traces anyway? When Googling? When using your phone? And now you are blogging very openly… You also say that this is context dependent. This makes me curious: How?
Then you also lift that everyone must understand the area and trends. How do we do that if we don’t engage?
It is so interesting to see your reflections to your own practice but also to your research!
In the end you refer to the information overflow and how to filter information these days. This is SO true, and this makes me wonder how this affects our students? The learning? Our adaptation as a teacher?
-Thanks!
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Hi,
You address many questions and I will develop my thoughts a little bit about some. You are right that we leave digital traces when using google or a mobile phone. I believe that everyone has noticed the ads that pops up at google and they are based on what you recently searched for.
With social media you will voluntary leave even more personal information. Quite recently we have had some scandals like Facebook selling out user’s personal information. For the Residents this might not be a problem, I don’t know. For me at the Visitors side, this is one of the main reasons for not using social media. I care about my privacy and I don’t want anyone to profit on my personal information.
The purpose with social media like Facebook or Twitter etc. can be good. I see the point with networking, stay in contact and sharing information. These sources are not my first choice when it comes to find information. Depending on what type information that I would like to find I use more trustworthy sources. I use Instagram mainly for sharing photos from holidays and travels in a closed community.
I try to understand how social media can be used in education like my blog. This blog is for me an experiment and I still don’t know the purpose of it. I try to adapt to the resident side and learn the benefits of using social media. Digitalization is here to stay, but I don’t want to live my life in digital world like many persons do. I spend my time on things that I find more important.
/Alwood
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