Wow! It's been a busy time for the Social Networking team, with the first phase of data gathering and analysis now complete. Tjhien, Anne-Sophie and I began by researching undergraduates, looking at the role that other people around them can play in their learning, and in particular identifying the points at which they feel other people could potentially help them, but for some reason currently are unable to. After a diary study and interviews with 8 students carefully chosen to reflect the spread of people at the University, we feel we have a much deeper understanding of their needs. There have of course been some surprises, and so points at which this research appears to be conflicting with previous research projects carried out here in CARET. In particular, we're feeling intrigued by students' use of Facebook: a previous project had concluded that self-representation and self-fashioning played a huge role of students' Facebook use, whereas this current research suggests that Facebook is seen by our students largely as an events management and communication system.
Meanwhile, we seem to have used up almost every post-it note in the office during the analysis phase - with the expert help of consultancy Flow Interactive, we seem to have developed a very post-it note intensive process!
Over the next couple of months, we'll be moving into phases II and III of our research , working with post-grads and senior academics. Once again, we'll be looking at the role that the people around them play in their learning, and the role that they feel they can and should play in helping others learn.
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