Caroline Haythornthwaite

Caroline Haythornthwaite
University of British Columbia | UBC · iSchool

About

129
Publications
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11,031
Citations

Publications

Publications (129)
Article
Full-text available
The Internet provides many opportunities for learning from static resources to conversational spaces for questions, answers, commentary and exploration of topics of interest to participants, whether organized as Q&A sites such as Reddit, hashtag communities on Twitter, or knowledge-sharing sites such as Stack Overflow. Yet, there is limited researc...
Preprint
Learning on and through social media is becoming a cornerstone of lifelong learning, creating places not only for accessing information, but also for finding other self-motivated learners. Such is the case for Reddit, the online news sharing site that is also a forum for asking and answering questions. We studied learning practices found in ‘Ask’ s...
Preprint
Learning on and through social media is becoming a cornerstone of lifelong learning, creating places not only for accessing information, but also for finding other self-motivated learners. Such is the case for Reddit, the online news sharing site that is also a forum for asking and answering questions. We studied learning practices found in ‘Ask’ s...
Preprint
This research was motivated by an interest in understanding how social media are applied in teaching in higher education. Data were collected using an online questionnaire, completed by 333 instructors in higher education, that asked about general social media use and specific use in teaching. Education and learning theories suggest three potential...
Preprint
This research was motivated by an interest in understanding how social media are applied in teaching in higher education. Data were collected using an online questionnaire, completed by 333 instructors in higher education, that asked about general social media use and specific use in teaching. Education and learning theories suggest three potential...
Article
Full-text available
As social media become a staple for knowledge discovery and sharing, questions arise about how self-organizing communities manage learning outside the domain of organized, authority-led institutions. Yet examination of such communities is challenged by the quantity of posts and variety of media now used for learning. This paper addresses the challe...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose – Many of today’s information and technology systems and environments facilitate inquiry, learning, consciousness-raising and knowledge-building. Such platforms include e-learning systems which have learning, education and/or training as explicit goals or objectives. They also include search engines, social media platforms, video-sharing pl...
Article
Learning on and through social media is becoming a cornerstone of lifelong learning, creating places not only for accessing information, but also for finding other self-motivated learners. Such is the case for Reddit, the online news sharing site that is also a forum for asking and answering questions. We studied learning practices found in ‘Ask’ s...
Article
Full-text available
The theoretical lenses, empirical measures and analytical tools associated with social network analysis comprise a wealth of knowledge that can be used to analyse networked learning. This has popularized the use of the social network analysis approach to understand and visualize structures and dynamics in online learning networks, particularly wher...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The theoretical lenses, empirical measures and analytical tools associated with social network analysis comprise a wealth of knowledge that can be used to analyse networked learning. This has popularized the use of the social network analysis approach to understand and visualize structures and dynamics in online learning networks, particularly wher...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper introduces a 'learning in the wild' coding schema, an approach developed to support learning analytics researchers interested in understanding the different types of discourse, exploratory talk, and conversational dialogue happening on social media. The research examines how learner-participants ('Redditors') are leveraging subreddit com...
Article
Full-text available
In just a short period of time, social media have altered many aspects of our daily lives, from how we form and maintain social relationships to how we discover, access and share information online. Now social media are also affecting how we teach and learn. In this paper, we discuss methods that can help researchers and educators evaluate and unde...
Article
This research was motivated by an interest in understanding how social media are applied in teaching in higher education. Data were collected using an online questionnaire, completed by 333 instructors in higher education, that asked about general social media use and specific use in teaching. Education and learning theories suggest three potential...
Article
The poster focuses on an ongoing, 5-year SSHRC-funded research initiative to understand the affordances and potential roles of social media in teaching and learning. It highlights some preliminary results of the 1st year of this initiative, focusing on a survey to investigate different approaches to social media integration for teaching across Cana...
Conference Paper
In this paper, we examine how multiple social media platforms are being used for formal and informal learning by examining data from two connectivist MOOCs (or cMOOCs). Our overarching goal is to develop and evaluate methods for learning analytics to detect and study collaborative learning processes. For this paper, we focus on how to link multiple...
Article
Inclusion of open resources that employ a peer-generated approach is changing who learns what, from whom, and via what means. With these changes, there is a shift in responsibilities from the course designer to motivated and self-directed learner-participants. While much research on e-learning has addressed challenges of creating and sustaining par...
Conference Paper
In this poster, we present work on exploring use of multiple social media platforms for learning in two connectivist MOOCs (or cMOOCs) to develop and evaluate methods for learning analytics to detect and study collaborative learning processes.
Conference Paper
In just a short period of time, social media have altered many aspects of our daily lives, from how we form and maintain social relationships to how we discover, access and share information online. Now social media are also beginning to affect how we teach and learn in this increasingly interconnected and information-rich world. The panelists will...
Article
Social media is a powerful, rapid, and popular way of communication amongst people around the world. How can health professionals and patients use this strategy to achieve optimal disease management and prevention and attainment of wellness? An interdisciplinary group at University of British Columbia, supported by a grant from UBC Peter Wall Insti...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Rapid changes in the knowledge base of science raise challenges on how to disseminate new knowledge and associated pedagogical practices to pre-college teachers. Accelerating that process by seeding knowledge in a network for dissemination and adoption is one aim of the 'EnLiST' NSF-funded project on entrepreneurial leadership in STEM teaching and...
Article
Full-text available
Social network analysis provides a perspective and method for inquiring into the structures that comprise online groups and communities. Traces from interaction via social media provide the opportunity for understanding how a community is formed and maintained online. The paper aims to demonstrate how social network analysis provides a vocabulary a...
Article
This introduction to the special issue on learning analytics provides an overview of the area, acknowledging the research traditions it emerges from, such as computer-supported collaborative learning, academic analytics, and educational data mining, and the way the field aims to bridge from technological innovation to learning purposes. The introdu...
Article
This article presents an examination of motivational factors relating to contribution to the wiki OpenStreetMap, a site for voluntary geographic information. Based on a wide literature review of motivation, open source, volunteerism, and serious leisure, a questionnaire was created and completed by 444 OpenStreetMap contributors. Results of judgmen...
Article
Full-text available
Questo contributo discute e illustra come la conoscenza delle reti sociali possa essere usata per dare forma alla progettazione sociale e tecnologica dell’apprendimento e dell’insegnamento nell’istruzione universitaria. Il lavoro introduce la prospettiva delle reti sociali e spiega come questa possa essere usata per esplorare l’apprendimento. In pa...
Article
Full-text available
This paper explores the underlying structures that support participation and reputation in online crowd and community-based peer productions. Building on writings on open source, peer production, participatory culture, and social networks, the paper describes crowd and community structures as two ends of a continuum of collective action - from ligh...
Article
This paper presents the background, arguments and examples to support a social informatics of elearning. In more than 25 years of studies of information and communication technology, social informatics draws our attention to how technologies work in practice and in context. Extending the principles of social informatics to elearning requires attent...
Article
Full-text available
Social interactions are essential in understanding the collaborative processes in networked learning environments. Although individuals may learn by retrieving information from online archives, dictionaries and encyclopaedia, it is the interaction with others with similar, perhaps narrowly enjoyed interests that fuels the benefits of networked lear...
Article
Full-text available
To gain greater insight into the operation of online social networks, we applied Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to text-based communication to identify and describe underlying social structures in online communities. This paper presents our approach and preliminary evaluation for content-based, automated discovery of social networks....
Article
Full-text available
This minitrack addresses the leading edge of technology use and system design to analyze, support, and/or create learning and learning environments. Papers that fit this minitrack fall under new and ongoing areas of learning research that may be referred to as learning analytics, networked learning, technology enhanced learning, computer-supported...
Article
Collaborative learning in contemporary online classes thrives on conversation and interaction among individual members of the class. Yet, many of these settings provide little feedback on interaction beyond summary lists of individual contribution. As more communication happens online for both place-based and distributed education, the more need th...
Article
This minitrack has been ongoing under various titles since 2003. Over those years, our emphasis has continued to be on exploring how social media - internet, email, twitter, blogs, social networking, and more - affect the development and support of community-based endeavors. We consider community quite broadly to include work and learning groups, a...
Chapter
This chapter discusses and illustrates how knowledge of social networks can be used to inform social and technical design for learning and teaching in higher education. The chapter introduces the social network perspective and how this can be used to explore learning. It shows how a relational approach can be used to explore the basis of learning t...
Article
Full-text available
New practices associated with the Internet are profoundly affecting many aspects of daily life and learning. The flood of information online, and the increased use of mobile and internet-based platforms, affect from whom, where and what we learn, how we constitute and engage with learning communities, and how we trust online information and relatio...
Conference Paper
Who we learn from, where and when is dramatically affected by the reach of the Internet. From learning for formal education to learning for pleasure, we look to the web early and often for our data and knowledge needs, but also for places and spaces where we can collaborate, contribute to, and create learning and knowledge communities. Based on the...
Conference Paper
This poster presents our study of how social networks support learning and knowledge exchange among participants of a professional development program for science teachers. Social networks data and qualitative interviews were used to assess participants' current learning networks as well as their perceptions, practices, and experiences with their c...
Book
In E-learning Theory and Practice the authors set out different perspectives on e-learning. The book deals with the social implications of e-learning, its transformative effects, and the social and technical interplay that supports and directs e-learning. The authors present new perspectives on the subject by: Exploring the way teaching and learnin...
Chapter
Full-text available
Online communities are creating a growing legacy of texts in online bulletin board postings, chat, blogs, etc. These texts record conversation, knowledge exchange, and variation in focus as groups grow, mature, and decline; they represent a rich history of group interaction and an opportunity to explore the purpose and development of online communi...
Article
Full-text available
The empirical studies, theoretical perspectives and analytical tools associated with social network analysis (SNA) comprise a wealth of knowledge that can be drawn on for interpreting, analyzing and designing networked learning. In its essentials of understanding the network connections between people, or other network nodes, SNA seems a natural ad...
Article
Learning, in its many forms, from the classroom to independent study, is being transformed by new practices emerging around Internet use. Conversation, participation and community have become watchwords for the processes of learning promised by the Internet and accomplished via technologies such as bulletin boards, wikis, blogs, social software and...
Article
Two significant trends in Internet-based production are affecting attitudes and practices in publishing and peer review, and driving change – or at least disruption – in scholarly communication practices. These are collaborative peer production, and the free/libre movement. These trends are driving changes in online participation, the dissemination...
Article
4 Abstract do artigo original. A autora e os tradutores são gratos a Pierre Ohayon (UFRJ) e Gilda Olinto (IBICT) pela versão do resumo Duas formas de organização para a colaboração dominam o debate sobre a livre participação e produção na internet: um modelo de agru- pamento, baseado na microparticipação de muitos indivíduos não-relacionados, e um...
Article
Technologies for communication and for information production, storage, and retrieval have created radical changes in how we work, who we work with, when, and from where. Education and learning are no less affected. Advances in technology have created new platforms for delivery, dialog, and community for both formal and informal learning and educat...
Article
While much has been written about virtual knowledge communities, particularly in how to create and sustain long-term, strong-tie relationships, the connection has not been made to newer forms of online organizing such as crowdsourcing. This paper addresses the way knowledge collectives are organized online, considering the organizational and motiva...
Conference Paper
Two collaborative forms of organizing dominate discussion of open participation and production on the Internet: a crowdsourcing model based on microparticipation from many, unconnected individuals, and a virtual community model, based on strong connections among a committed set of connected members. This paper argues that dimensions such as task in...
Article
Many I-schools now offer online courses. What are the experiences we have teaching online as compared with on-campus, and what can we learn from each other? This roundtable will let participants discuss how our experiences with different software platforms, our use of asynchronous and synchronous communication, and of different communication modali...
Article
Collaboration entails working together toward a common goal, but what is the common goal we want students to work toward in classes? What kinds of interactions and outcomes do we value as collaboration, and how do we facilitate them? This paper addresses these questions, beginning with an examination of research on groups, community, and shared cog...
Article
Full-text available
The four papers in this symposium address the transformative effects of new media on learning as they provide the underpinnng for a move to ubiquitous learning. The authors pay particular attention to what new technologies afford for learning, and how their widespread dissemination and use affects media literacy and relationships in who learns what...
Article
Full-text available
Internet-based trends that emphasize contribution, conversation, participation, and community exercise a significant impact on learning. They bring changes in where we find information, who we learn from, how learning progresses, and how we contribute to our learning and the learning of others. This paper addresses two aspects of participatory tran...
Article
Learning entails exchange of information, resources, methods and practices; it entails conversation, and the co-creation of joint practice; it requires getting to know colleagues, their talents and their work practices, and joining a community of scholars, co workers and co-learners. In short, learning is predicated on interaction between individua...
Chapter
The changing presence of the Internet from a medium for elites to one in common use in our everyday lives raises important questions about its impact on access to resources, social interaction, and commitment to local community. This book brings together studies that cover the impact of "the Internet" in everyday life in the United States, Canada,...
Chapter
Debate about the role of the Internet in everyday life has raised questions about whethertime spent online provides benefits to the individuals who are online and the families andfriends around them. While recent surveys provide data on the overall picture of Internetuse, here we look at adult users' views of what is gained and lost with the additi...
Article
Internet-based trends that emphasize contribution, conversation, participation, and community exercise a significant impact on learning. They bring changes in where we find information, who we learn from, how learning progresses, and how we contribute to our learning and the learning of others. While much attention is given to the unlimited possibi...
Article
Full-text available
For many years, discussion of online learning, or e-learning, has been pre-occupied with the practice of teaching online and the debate about whether being online is 'as good as' being offline. The authors contributing to this paper see this past as an incubation period for the emergence of new teaching and learning practices. We see changes in tea...
Article
An ecological and a Web 2.0 perspective of e-learning provides new ways of thinking about how people learn with technology and also how new learning opportunities are offered by new technology. These perspectives highlight the importance of developing connections between a wide variety of learning resources, containing both codified and tacit knowl...
Conference Paper
Studies of Internet use continue to show a gap between those with and without access to the Internet and its resources. However, recent work indicates that this is not a straightforward divide about access; instead there are many variants of access, use, and presence online. This paper examines these variants, bringing together primarily US and Eur...
Chapter
The current rush to put resources online — academic, educational, commercial, recreational, governmental, political, personal — is accepted as providing information and opportunity for learning and self-expression for all. But is this so? Who is online, taking part in this new way of communicating and learning? Who is left out when government infor...
Article
Full-text available
This chapter is the Introduction to the Sage Handbook of E-Learning Research (2007), edited by Richard Andrews and Caroline Haythornthwaite. The introduction, written by the editors, is a substantial work that addresses definitional issues about e-learning research; it begins with an exploration of the “e” and “learning” components in e-learning, a...
Article
Working together has always been a challenge but recent trends in who works with whom, on what, and across what regions, cultures, disciplines and time zones have conspired to increase the complexity of team work, and in particular the complexity of knowledge work and communication across knowledge divides. Drawing from literature and examples of p...
Article
Interdisciplinary collaboration has become of particular interest as science and social science research increasingly crosses traditional boundaries, raising issues about what kinds of information and knowledge exchange occurs, and thus what to support. Research on interdisciplinarity, learning, and knowledge management suggest the benefits of coll...
Article
As private sector and government research increasingly depends on the use of distributed, interdisciplinary and collaborative teams, particularly in scientific endeavors, we are faced also with an increased need to understand how to work in and study such teams. While much attention has been paid to issues of knowledge transfer, the impact of many...
Chapter
As private sector and government research increasingly depends on the use of distributed, interdisciplinary and collaborative teams, particularly in scientific endeavors, we are faced also with an increased need to understand how to work in and study such teams. While much attention has been paid to issues of knowledge transfer, the impact of many...
Article
This special thematic section of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication brings together seven articles that consider what it takes to collaborate around and through information and communication technologies. The authors consider how processes co-evolve between practices and technical systems, how knowledge is shared across organizational,...
Article
In 2001, the UK was hit by Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) precipitating one of the biggest crises ever to affect the UK farming system. The crisis unfolded as a series of information and communication problems, from government to farmers and from farmers to farmers, with consequences for action in a time of crisis, social support, and the maintenance...
Article
This paper explores the impact of communication media and the Internet on connectivity between people. Results from a series of social network studies of media use are used as background for exploration of these impacts. These studies explored the use of all available media among members of an academic research group and among distance learners. As...
Conference Paper
Abstract Knowledge flow in interdisciplinary teams has become,of particular interest as research and alliances cross traditional disciplinary boundaries, and as computing,is applied in any domain. The problem is how to share and/or pool knowledge,toward a common goal among,people with diverse backgrounds. To understand the needs of such groups, it...
Conference Paper
This paper describes a usage-based pricing scheme for distributing digital content over peer-to-peer networks that rewards peer users who actively participate in the distribution process. We present a dynamic distribution model that is used to compare ...
Article
This paper advocates an approach to the design, use and impact of new learning technologies that incorporates the view from multiple perspectives. This includes considering the questions and goals of students, faculty, administrators and co-workers, as well as social dimensions of learning, professional socialization, family dynamics, career, commu...
Article
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...
Article
This short presentation highlights ethical issues that can result from the collecton and display of social network data. The problems include exposure of individuals from whom data has not been collected and thus who could not give permission for their inclusion or exclusion in the data; revelation and exposure of individuals' positions in the netw...
Article
Full-text available
When computer networks link people as well as machines, they become social networks. Such computer-supported social networks (CSSNs) are becoming important bases of virtual communities, computer-supported cooperative work, and telework. Computer-mediated communication such as electronic mail and computerized conferencing is usually text-based and a...
Article
Full-text available
The goal of the Distributed Knowledge project (DK) is to investigate distributed knowledge processes among multidisciplinary teams and the roles that technology and group context play in these processes. The initial inquiry of the project was focused on the six scientific Applications Technologies teams of the National Computational Science Allianc...
Article
Full-text available
When members of an online, distributed learning community revealed that understanding local patterns of communication purpose and form was key to learning how to operate in this environment, we turned to writers on genre and persistent conversation for help in understanding the basis of this community. We derive from genre literature the idea that...
Conference Paper
This paper describes how a group working around the emotionally-charged topic of cultural and linguistic appropriateness created new knowledge about practice, and in particular practice about keeping a knowledge problem constantly open for inquiry. The group's work focused on the creation of a database of materials to support and educate practition...
Article
This article argues that consideration of the strength of ties between communicators can help reconcile disparate results on the impact of new media on social relations. It is argued from the research literature and studies by the author that where ties are strong, communicators can influence each other to adapt and expand their use of media to sup...
Article
k, community and domesticity have moved from hierarchically arranged, densely knit, bounded groups to social networks. In networked societies: boundaries are more permeable, interactions are with diverse others, linkages switch between multiple networks, and hierarchies are flatter and more recursive. People maneuver through multiple communities, n...
Article
Numerous new undergraduate programs have appeared in the past few years that focus on theories and practices of information science and information technology. As the global reliance on networked, digital information continues to grow, we can expect such programs to be enduring and common features of college and university undergraduate curricula....
Book
The Internet in Everyday Life is the first book to systematically investigate how being online fits into people's everyday lives. Opens up a new line of inquiry into the social effects of the Internet. Focuses on how the Internet fits into everyday lives, rather than considering it as an alternate world. Chapters are contributed by leading research...
Article
Using the Internet means bringing into our offline lives yet another social world, one in which we operate through media, communicating and maintaining ties with people who live at a distance and who we may rarely or never meet. How successfully do we manage integra tion of this new world into our existing world ? Do worlds collide or seamlessly in...
Article
The increasing presence of the Internet in our everyday life raises important questions about what it means for access to resources, social interaction, and commitment to local commu nity. This special issue of the American Behavioral Scientist brings together seven U.S., one U.K., one Canadian, and one North American study that examine the way in...
Article
A computer-mediated group is a complex entity whose members exchange many types of information via multiple means of communication in pursuit of goals specific to their environment. Over time, they coordinate technical features of media with locally enacted use to achieve a viable working arrangement. To explore this complex interaction, a case stu...

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