RICERCA ITALIANA     

DIGITAL IDENTITIES AND VIRTUAL, EDUCATIONAL, PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITIES

Università degli Studi di Bari

Abstract

This research project arises from the collaboration of 8 university sites and one research center, located in different parts of the national territory. All the participants have in common a strong scientific interest on technology and social interaction in formal and informal contexts.
Many of the participants to this project have a long lasting tradition of collaboration and reciprocal exchange testified by publications, symposiums within national and international conferences, and various events jointly organized. Furthermore many participated to the start up (in the 2005) and development of a research association called Collaborative Knowledge Building Group (CKBG) (www.ckbg.org) that represents an important place for collaboratively building scientific knowledge at a national level, although the center is also known and appreciated at an international level.
The theoretical background shared by this research group comes from socio-constructivism approaches. In such approach technology is considered as an artifact, an expression of the cultural community within which the artifact appears and at the same time, as able to change and re-shape the cultural and the individuals that produced the artifact. In this project technology will be studied by looking at several aspects of human life: from the contexts analysis to the analysis of individual processes and the relationships individual establish within the groups they belong to.
Therefore, the overall and shared objective of this research group concerns the psycho-social dimensions influenced by technology. In particular it will be analyzed the relationship between artifacts and:
• individual processes connected to identity, gender, metacognition, motivation, values and believes;
• social processes concerning communicational styles, participations styles, sense of belonging to a community, collective identity, and strategies of tutorship;

The specificity of this project is to study the aspects described above in both formal (i.e. university courses) and informal contexts (i.e. teens using blogs). In addition to variables to be confronted among the different contexts analyzed, in each context peculiar variables will be studied such as learning strategies and ways to build and assess virtual communities of learners in university contexts; construction of the self as professional with pre and in-service teachers; representation and narrative strategies of teens.

This research project has also practical aims consisting of: a) personalizing educational models where technology could support sustain the development of social and psychological processes, and b) give guidelines to on-line course designers, developers of on-line communication environments and in general to communicators and educators.
The technology we refer to are those designed to host and reconstruct activity systems culturally meaningful. Mainly we consider web-forums, blogs but also complex platforms where it is possible to engage collaborative writing, to build digital portfolios, to design and realize digital products of various types.
Data will be collected both on-line and off-line and it will consist of:
• video-records;
• notes posted on on-line forums;
• blogs notes;
• products and artifacts built collaboratively;
• answers to questionnaires built in purpose for the research aims.

Such a complex project implies the use of complex methodologies, able to take in account the socio-constructivist approach, to respect the ecology of the specific contexts inquired and the nature of the data collected. The following methodologies will be used:
• quantitative methods: questionnaires, quantitative analysis of social networks (Social Network Analysis - SNA):
• qualitative methods such as discourse analysis, text analysis and content analysis;
• mix and innovative methods such as the application of the SNA to the network of meanings contained into the texts and to the processes of I-positioning

Expected results are twofold:
1. exploitation of the theoretical approach, especially about the social and psychological aspects involved in the usage of technology;
2. practical implications. Guidelines will be defined to realize activities through which educators – but also users of any kind – could use technology in a profitable way under the psychological and social dimensions. <<<

Principal Investigator

Maria Beatrice Ligorio Università degli Studi di BARI

Research Objectives

A first general objective the project aims to achieve concerns the relationship between digital technology and socio-psychological processes involved in its usage. The technologies inquired in this project are those conceptualized as spaces of social interaction, thus able to function as a container for daily activities. We consider mainly web-forums and blogs but also other types of complex platforms provided by tools for collaborative writing, for building cognitive maps, for data sharing and for the construction and management of digital portfolios. When we refer to socio-psychological processes we mean:
• individual psychological processes: among these processes the identity construction process will be studied as a social process, interdependent and distributed among individuals, environments and artifacts. It will be studied as I-positioning are played in virtual spaces where it is possible to give and receive feedbacks of different kind and, therefore, I-positioning will be reciprocally influenced. It will be also inquired the exposition to interactive mediated computer environments on the construction of professional identity, gender-identity and strategies of self-narrative used by teens using blogs. Metacognitive processes will be also studied in order to understand the efficacy of technology in formal learning contexts, especially in terms of competences of self-regulation developed by using technology in a collaborative way. Motivation will be studied connected to school objectives, to online learning and professional status. Motivation will be also used as dimension able to recognize tools effective for learning and to overcome gender differences. Finally it will be also studied how technology may influence value and believes systems.
• Social processes: the social processes analyzed are those aimed at understanding how individuals adopt specific participation strategies and how these strategies become sense of community. Later the sense of community will sustain a collective identity. The concepts of participation, sense of community, collective identity will be studied by extracting practical dimensions and by looking at their reciprocal relationship. It will be also studied how this relationship may influence individual identity and strategies to build new cultural artifacts. Social relationships are the main focus of some of the studies included into this project, such as those concerning communication in informal blogs and style of tutorship in educational web-forum.
• Producing/transforming artifacts: artifacts are part of the human activity system, therefore the process of producing and transforming artifacts should be taken in account as a process implying a coordination between individual processes, social processes and cultural processes. It will be inquired how outcomes of learning activities are produced, by looking at both formal and informal contexts. Moreover, it will be explored inter-connections between uses of such artifacts, individual and social processes needed for their construction and identity, individual motivation and establishment of the sense of community.

Second general objective of the project is to define models to design and to use educational technology where potentialities of such technology are fully exploited. In particular, we aim at having a model able to sustaining the socio-psychological dimensions inquired. In fact, some research units will define a model for designing effective use of educational technologies, sustaining motivation and overcoming gender differences. It will be also defined models of blended learning where the processes of building identity, sense of belonging to a community, and cultural artifacts are efficiently distributed between off- and on-line. Finally, based upon good practices guidelines will be formalized to give directions to educators about how to structure learning activities by blending on-line and off-line. <<<

First Results

This research is aimed at advancing the understanding of psychological and social processes implied into the participation to virtual communities; consequently it will be defined educational models able to take in account the relevance for learning to such processes.

Expected results will go in two directions:
1) theoretical- methodological: it is expected to understand the role played when performing on-line activity by some psychological and social dimensions such as personal and professional identity, motivation, sense of belonging, gender differences, etc.. Moreover, it will be also studied how technology recursively would impact self-perception as teacher, student, and teen as well as the development of self-regulation skills. Finally, it is also expected to clarify the explicative socio-constructivist hypothesis that sees technology and socio-psychological factors as mutually related and distributed in a complex system composed by individual-environment-artifact. Some psychological dimensions, such as the sense of belonging to a community and the strategies of interaction and communication, so far have been studied using the some methods used to study face to face interactions. Therefore specificity of on-line environments has been neglected and could not be used to empower on-line educational environments. A proof of this is that environments such as blogs and web-forums are having an increasing popularity when used for entertainment or informal communication, whereas when introduced in formal and educational contexts they seem not to be effectively used. To correct such tendency it is necessary to undertake research with clear educational and psychological objectives, by selecting and using appropriate methods. Obviously, research having just observational purposes is not adequate. This research aims at finding and using instruments and tools ad hoc for both data collection and data analysis for studying on-line experiences. Our expectations is therefore to build instruments able to help future researchers within the field of socio-psychology more adequate to the specific on-line contexts and to experiences having educational and communicational aims.
2) Practical-applied: under a practical point of view, the research aims to realize educational models, based on e-learning and blended learning, able to sustain psychological and social processes considered relevant for effective learning. It is, therefore, planned to develop set of activities (i.e. role playing, collaborative on-line writing, conceptual maps) and tools (i.e. digital portfolios) useful for offering educational experiences motivating, effective and able to overcome gender differences. Practically this means that at the end of the project we will be able to propose have activities on-line for university students, teachers, and teens. These activities will be already tested under the educational validity and for their capability to sustain personal, relational, and cognitive aspects.
Finally, guidelines for educators will be defined aimed at supporting meaningful activities, to be performed on-line and off-line, adequate for formal and informal contexts.

Both these directions develop toward the design and the implementation of courses and activities always having an educational nature. These activities are targeting users of different kind. For instance, it will be designed, realized and assessed courses for:
- university students that would be able to integrate the meetings in the aula with on-line activities, hosted in a web-site prepared just for them, provided by many functionalities psycho-pedagogical features;
- teachers in service or in training. They will use the on-line environment as support for their training but at the same time as a model of the activities they could offer later in their real professional practice;
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Timescale

24 months

National and international background

This research is part of a wider socio-constructivist framework that supplies an interpretative description of the human activities and psychical life, including an active role of technology (Vygotskji, 1978; Wartofsky, 1979; Engeström, 1987, 2001). Technology is considered as an instrument that, at an individual level, mediates the relationship between psychical processes and environment, and that, at a historical level, is handed down through generations together with the meanings of the activities in which it has been constructed and; finally, at a sociocultural level it modifies the culture in which has been produced (Cole, 2004).
Some digital technologies are useful to receive and to reconstruct culturally meaningful activity systems (Ligorio, 2002; Spadaro, 2007). They are telematic instruments commonly used in order to daily communicate, such as web-forum and blog, but also more complex platforms in which it is possible to initiate collaborative activities finalized to produce new artefacts or to learn. In such technologies, the impact on the cognitive, identity and social systems seems to emerge more strongly than the socio-constructivism had assumed. One of the more important telematic affordances consists in being able to be filled up with contents not coming from just an individual, but from many people interaction. This peculiarity makes internet a powerful social mediator that does not need to wait the times of generational change in order to modify the culture. On this assumption study internet impact on the psycho-social processes when interacting in both formal life contexts, like the formative ones, and informal contexts is a requirement.
The literature that deals with such processes, referring to digital contexts, is quite wide and it is generally about the interaction between identity and social processes inside the specific technological contexts.


IDENTITY PROCESSES IN NET
The idea that the ubiquity of internet has allowed a substantial change in the subjectivity construction is already accepted since some time. Individual development is no longer grounded on cultural socialization processes, based on the participation to local and tangible practices, but on acculturation processes based on the self-narration inside of global and digital practices (McKenna, Bargh, 2000; Lorenzetti, Stame, 2004). In the study of the individual factors, therefore, it is needed a specific attention on identity as a critical point through which technologies have a strong impact on the daily life. In the Dialogical Self theory (Hermans, 1996), the identity expression depends on the social and cultural context and on the available instruments of that specific context. In this sense, digital contexts, being multiple, expand the dialogue opportunities, and can be considered as “laboratories to test identities" (Turkle, 1997; Ligorio and Hermans, 2005).
When web forum-like technologies are used to learn, some researches have demonstrated that identity is continuously redefined in the educational interaction (Ligorio and Hermans, 2005; Spadaro and Ligorio, 2005). Virtual learning environments can be therefore an effective formative support for both students and teachers (Admiraal, Lockhorst, Wubbels, Korthagen, Veen, 1998; Russel, Loughran, 2007; Grion, 2007), where it is possible to experience oneself through a Teach About Teaching model (Fichtman, Yendol-Silva, 2003). From the cognitive point of view, to see oneself as an "intentional learner" (Scardamalia, Bereiter, Lamon, 1994) allows the development of an intrinsic motivation for learning and it promotes, therefore, long-lasting knowledge (Blumenfeld, Kempler, Krajcik, 2006; Elliot, McGregor, 2001; Hidi, 1990; Krapp, 2002; Renninger, 1992; Renninger, Ewen, Lasher, 2002). In a meta-cognitive perspective (Zimmermann, 2000; Mazzoni, 2003; Boscolo, 2003; Pellerey, 2003), in fact, self-regulation processes-based learning involves one’s active role in planning, monitoring and estimating the action (Albanian Flour, Fiorilli, Maltempi, 2004). Such processes support and, at the same time, are promoted from, the activity of e-learning (Scardamalia, 2003). Also in informal contexts mediated communication offers more opportunities of identity construction. Particularly, the blog, that seem to be mainly used by adolescent (Sifry, 2006), offer a space in which to explore identity through the diarist narration (Nurmi, 2004) and to reconstruct the own-self through feedback exchange with other persons.


SOCIAL PROCESSES IN NET
The importance of dialogical interaction for the identity construction makes necessary to understand how, in the net, interactions become processes of the community construction. The community is not a natural category but it is a social construct, asserted through the spread of shared meanings (Mantovani, 1995; Wenger, 1998). This means communities function as a mean and at the same time as a journey for both an effective learning and for constructing identity. The study of some students’ communities, in fact, has shown that the identity construction is strongly berthed to the belongings to specific communities (Traetta, Annese, 2007). Other studies confirm the relation between identity, sense of belongings and artefacts construction emphasizing that the individual, supported from the community, contributes to the innovation of the collective culture (Ligorio, Spadaro, 2005). Moreover, the participation to knowledge building community seems to favour a meaningful learning (Berge 1997; 2000; Chan, Burtis, Bereiter, 1997; Scardamalia, Bereiter, 2006) even when learning occurs on-line (Dawson, 2006; Shea, 2006; Rovai, 2002). A further important aspect in favouring successful on line activities is the tutorship style: a constructivist tutor mainly stimulate, comparing to a traditional one, an interaction based on collaboration and on argumentative elaboration of problem-solving (Cacciamani and Mazzoni, 2006; Cesareni, Ligorio, Pontecorvo, 2001; Schellens, Valcke, 2006). Also in informal contexts it is observed that the Net is used by teens not only in order to acquire information, but above all like an occasion to extend their interpersonal communication and social relations. Most of these relations are meant to reinforce the network of friends already consolidated in the daily- life and contexts (Gross, 2004). In this sense, blog technologies can become an instrument for knowledge, change and relation.


TECHNOLOGIES AND PSYCO-SOCIAL PROCESSES
Social dynamics are adequate for analyses focused on affordances (the emerging properties of technological artefacts) and communicative contexts (as expression of social, personal and community dynamics). In learning contexts, for instance, instruments of asynchronous communication are more useful to collaborative knowledge building than synchronous one (Ligorio, et al., 2006; Dewiyanti, et al., 2007). Moreover, instruments as digital portfolios effectively support learning assessment and auto-assessment (Tillema, 2001; Ajello, Belardi, 2007). Technology studies (John, 2006; Faulkner, 2001) also has seed light on the complex social processes through which technology design seems to be corrupted by some gender stereotypes (Drude, 2006; Isbister, Doyle, 2002). On the other side it is well-know how in informal contexts technology has modified the communicative processes (Crystal, 2006). In order to support motivational, cognitive, identity and social technology potentialities it is therefore necessary that their design and their use are always supported by clear scientific indications. <<<