2.1. Educational Theories of Learning
2.1.6. Social Capital and Social Networks Analysis
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as a medium of communication. While it may not be highly interactive in a physical sense, the Web has strong potential for social interactivity. The goal of this type of approach is the achievement of 'virtual communities' of learners on the Internet working in small collaborative groups to achieve a common goal (Dillenbourg and Schneider, 1995). The design and
development of the two microworld games understudy, Zadarh and yKhozi, were informed by the theories of constructivism and social constructivism.
Traditional Internet communication tools such as e-mail, newsgroups, Internet Relay Chat, and Multiple User Domains offer both the rapid synchronous communication of normal speech as well as asynchronous interaction which may help to promote a more reflective metacongitive approach (McMahon, 1997). With the use of Web browser plug-ins and server software such as Ichat, such facilities are now becoming available in a more cohesive form on the Web.
Examples of learning through communication can be seen in commercial environments such as TopClass (WBT Systems, 1997) which have no actual content but provide the functionality required for real-time communication and collaborative learning.
Within the social constructivist paradigm, the determination of levels of interaction between learners is important, particularly where learning is done through VLEs. Therefore, the
subsequent section tries to interrogated the notions of social capital and social networks, and the position of each learner within the IT led learning community. John and MacArthur (2000) argue that high social capital is crucial for creating successful virtual learning environment.
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enhancing social capital which allows people to resolve their collective problems through cooperating with each other. However, Daniel et al. (2003) caution that communities, which display highly cohesive forms of social capital are not necessarily beneficial to a society. They argue that in multicultural societies, where there is a decline in the national political culture, people are closely affiliated to communities but pay close tribal, ethnic, or political allegiances to their own groups rather than national interests. In short, therefore, social capital is a process that highlights the importance of personal networks developed over time with the idea of responding to a variety of society’s problems, including those experienced in education.
Social networks are communities founded on what people do together rather than where they live with others (Wellman and Gulia, 1999). There is a general understanding that these networks are built out of specific societal need. In the formation of these social networks, the cultural background of members is important because it influences networks’ characteristics, contents, and structures (King and Waldegrave, 2003). Daniel et al. (2003) posit that social networks can bridge cultural differences by building a common identity and shared
understanding. According to Amory (2005), recently there has been an upsurge of on-line social networks such as Orkut (www.orkut.com), Friendster (www.friendster.com), Tribe.net and LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com). It is through nurturing and promotion of these social networks that appropriate learning can take place. Through the building of social networks in cyberspace, the notion of social constructivism, in particular, collaborative learning is given prominence with emphasis on active exchange of ideas and promotion of critical thinking (Garrison, 1997).
John and MacArthur (2000) identified two major forms of virtual learning environments, resulting from the social capital, namely virtual learning communities (VLC) and distributed communities of practice (DCP) with the key difference being the nature of membership identity.
The VLC is a group of people who gather in cyberspace with the intention of pursuing learning goals (Daniel et al., 2002), while the DCP refers to a group of geographically distributed individuals who are informally bound together by shared expertise and shared interests or work and collaboration is their most important shared characteristic (John and MacArthur, 2000).
Although, most individuals in VLC often hardly know each other, those in DCP are well known to each other.
There is a need to understand networks and their participants by evaluating their locations in the network (Krebs, 2004). These measures help to determine the importance, or prominence, of a person in the network. Amory (2005) states that the use of Social network Analysis (SNA) methods could provide a mechanism to investigate or describe the social interactions in learning
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environments. Involved in the SNA are the mapping and measuring of these normally invisible relationships between people, groups, organizations, animals, computers or other
information/knowledge processing entities (Krebs, 2004). Bonabeau and Krebs (2002) contend that in analysing the flow of information within any network, SNAs may reveal that people who are supposed to be key to organisations are isolated while anonymous workers hold powerful influence. Krebs (2004) further elucidates that SNA tools such as InFlow, can map and measure teamwork, communication, information flow through the use of the three most popular metrics:
Activity, Betweenness and Closeness. A synthesis of these concepts is given by Krebs as below:
(i) Activity: Social network researchers measure network activity for a node by using the
concept of degrees, that is, the number of direct connections a node has. The most active node in the network has the most direct connections to it. However, high level of activity does not make any node (person) more important than the rest as these might be people from the same network (or business). (ii) Betweenness: This node has a big influence over what flows in the network even with few direct connections. However, the problem is that this node, being in the middle of at least two networks is a single point of failure. Without this node, some people in the network would be cut-off from the information and knowledge. (iii) Closeness: Where two nodes in a network have shortest paths to all others. However, even with fewer connections the pattern of their direct and indirect ties allows them quicker access to others in network.
The concepts of social capital and social networks are all crucial in virtual learning
environments as they allow the formation of learning communities based on mutual goals. With SNAs, the nature of interaction within these communities could be measured to determine whether the relationships are of benefit to all learners.
In the mid-1990, in an endeavour to reconstitute the curriculum which embraced the democratic tenets and norms, the South African government argued that ICT tools could be harnessed to support the introduction of the new curriculum. Margules (1996) says,
“Those educators and developers favouring the constructivist approach have sought to tap the computational power of modern microcomputers and their associated technologies, to create an environment in which learners can experience and develop sophisticated ideas from a variety of domains”.
The two concepts of social capital and social networks could play a major role in the South African academic environment in that learners located in different areas would be able to form their own communities of learners striving for a specific goal through collaboration.
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