Student engagement with digital learning resources and online social networking are strong forces in education today.
Learning is a social network relation: it is a transaction, an exchange between people as one person teaches and another learns; it is a shared experience as colleagues explore a new area together, define terms and create common ground; and it is a common experience as students attend classes and lectures together gaining a similar view of subject areas. A social network approach provides methods and measures to allow examination of what is exchanged, shared,delivered and received among members of a network, and to examine outcomes such asinterpersonal ties, common knowledge, and community. Social network studies provide insight into what kinds of exchanges comprise learning relationships (e.g., learning how to carry out aprocedure, use a new technology, operate within a profession), what balance of learning and production takes place (exposure to new ideas versus completing tasks or assignments), and what balance of people and associations within a network make for a good learning combination .
Social network approaches inform e-learning by demonstrating and legitimizing the creation of network outcomes without face-to-face structures, outcomes that include collaboration, innovation, shared purpose, and above all, learning – by individuals and groups –in learning communities and communities of practice supported through the supposedly leancommunication channels of text-based computer-mediated communication, among participants distributed in time and space.
Caroline Haythornthwaite (2005) Social Network Methods and Measuresfor Examining E-learning, [Online], Available:http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/~haythorn/ (10 Jul, 2009)
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