SOC10: Ninging It: Social Networking as a Course Management System

Arianne Hartsell-Gundy 
Humanities Librarian, Miami University

Amy Thornley 
Education Librarian, Miami University

Elizabeth Sullivan 
Psychology Librarian, Miami University


The audio for this podcast can be downloaded at


Arianne Hartsell-Gundy: I'm Arianne Hartsell-Gundy, and this is Amy Thornley, and Elizabeth Sullivan. We are all librarians at Miami University of Ohio. So please do not ask me what the weather is like in Florida. I can't tell you; I don't know.

We are going to be presenting about 'Ninging it: Social Networking as a Course Management System'. We work as librarians. We also serve as adjunct faculty in the Department of Interactive Media Studies. So you can kind of tell already that we come from a slightly different perspective than some of the other presenters here.

We are really interested in looking at the classroom environment, and we're also really interested in how the students are using it for a particular kind of class. So we're hoping that this gives you a slightly different viewpoint on things and how we look at it.

All right. So I'm going to begin by talking just a little bit about the context of this particular course to give you an idea of why we decided to adopt the Ning, what some of our reasonings were, and to just kind of situate you in what's going on with our talk.

 01:08

So, we teach in a program called Interactive Media Studies, and this is an interdisciplinary program. So that means that it really has pieces from all sorts of departments across campus--so Art, Business, Architecture, English, you name it, we have people involved in it.

And it really gives it a different kind of focus. It's really looking at digital media and how it is affecting all aspects of life, all aspects of society. So it's a great kind of program in that regard.

It began in 1996. Where there was one course in 1996, it has grown to 30. We have waiting lists for these classes. Students are excited just really to get into the major, even, so it's become a much bigger program over the years. They're working on a graduate program at this point.

 02:01

And I mentioned that there are faculty from all over the place. And we as librarians are very fortunate to be involved with it as well. We actually have a lot of collaboration. We have resources that we share. We give them some services. They share some of our spaces. And we're very fortunate to actually teach a course.

So the course that we teach is called IMS 201. And I always have to look at the title because it's kind of a mouthful. It's the Information Studies in the Digital Age class. And you can read the description here. This is what the students see.

Basically what this class is is it serves an introduction to the major. It's a survey course. And in this course they really are exploring how does media function in society, how do we consume media, how do we create media, and they're really looking in a lot of these issues.

The other piece of it is that there's a lot of things about information studies, and so that's where we come in as librarians. So just as we're looking at media creation, we're looking at information creation, how do people use information today, how is it changing. So we explore a lot of these issues in this course. It really, it situates them as they move into more technical classes.

 03:12

And assignments will be things along the lines of 'look at newspaper articles that deal with technology and media', they'll keep blogs and respond to things that are going on in the world, they will create websites, they'll create podcasts, videos. That's generally what happens, but each instructor has some freedom to do things a little slightly different. But that's the general idea of what we try to do in this course.

And there's a lot of group work involved, and this is kind of an important part of it. Because of the group work, the later classes really focus on a lot of teamwork. The capstone class requires them to work in a group and they have to complete a project for a real client. So we try to prepare them for that.

So this next slide really shows you the infrastructure, how the class works.

 04:01

This is the classroom that we teach in. It's actually a Mac classroom in the library itself. And you can tell the way it's set up that it's meant to be a very hands-on kind of classroom. Each computer has a dual screen so students can have two things up at once and be working on it. You can tell the configurations, the setup. There's some tables in the back that you can't see.

So it's really meant to allow this collaboration, this group work to happen, as opposed to allow the instructor to interact with the students and the students to interact with their fellow students, and to have a time to experiment and try out new things. So it's not electro-based kind of course, in other words.

But that's not what our management system has been. You might all recognize this. Blackboard. From our perspective, Blackboard. We're going to be nice about it, right? We see it as being a really... It's a way for faculty to push information to students, but not the other way around.

 05:04

There's really not a lot of give-and-take. We're really interested in creating a collaborative atmosphere, having the students be able to play, and we found that Blackboard just doesn't really allow that. So we've resorted to look for alternatives for this particular course.

Side note: we are moving to Sakai. It's still in beta and we don't really know a whole lot about how that's going to work yet. And when we were doing this particular class and working on this project, Sakai wasn't an option. But it will be in the future, and we're going to explore that later as well.

So what I want to mention just briefly are some of the reasons why we decided to go with Ning and some of the things that we were actually looking for, what we needed, what we knew we wanted to accomplish in this course.

So we wanted something that would allow students to upload their multimedia. So I mentioned that they create videos and everything. And it's pretty sad when you're teaching your class that's all about media and you have your students basically burning their videos onto an old-fashioned CD, so we wanted things that would make that a lot easier process rather than having to do it in this very traditional way and there's a lot of hoops and barriers to go through. So we wanted to have something that would be easier for that.

 06:19

We were looking for something that would easily connect to different Web 2.0 tools. The first time I taught this course, I had to have the students create a Twitter account and a Flickr account and just so many different kinds. And they got really confused and they found that frustrating, so I wanted to be able to integrate it all into one and really show them how things actually work. You often are not going to all these separate sites when you're doing things.

So that was something we were looking for. We were also looking for a two-way communication between students and instructors. So I mentioned all the collaboration--we wanted them to be able to have space to talk. And we were very interested in the group space. We wanted to create that sort of environment.

And this is a multimedia class. The whole idea is to create media, so we wanted them to have a space that they could do this kind of experimentation, and we wanted them to feel like this is something they might be able to take out to the real world. So that was really our goal with all of this.

 07:15

And so we began to adopt this Fall of 2009. Some individual investigation--Eli Sullivan actually was the first to start working with this. Spring 2010, we had a cohort of IMS 201 librarians, and all sections began to use the Ning in one way or another.

We all used it in slightly different ways, so the idea there's a lot of flexibility. So if you didn't have a podcasting assignment but you relied a lot on blogs, you could do a lot more with blogs. So it was really nice in that regard.

There is also a student survey that Amy is going to mention in a little bit. But I'm going to pass things on to Eli, who's going to talk a little bit more about the implemention, how the tools worked.

 08:02

Elizabeth Sullivan: Thank you.

So, this crowd, I obviously don't have to talk about Ning at its basic level. I imagine you're pretty familiar. I know you're very active, you have some active Ning sites, so you're aware of the features. What I do want to focus on are some of the tools and how we utilized them in an effective way in a classroom setting, and how that can be expanded upon in our larger goal here.

One of the first things that students really liked about Ning, like they like about any social network--if you seen the movie "The Social Network"--you know they're excited about creating a space that's their own. "Social Network", of course... Have any of you seen the movie?

There's a moment where Mark Zuckerberg is talking and some guy is asking him like, "Do you know this friend of yours, is she single? Is she seeing anybody?" and he's like, "I don't know. I don't know, you know?" and the guy keeps asking, and he just has this revelation like, "Relationship status! That's the best thing about FaceBook! People want to know who they can hook up with!" So he runs back to his room and he adds 'Relationship Status' to his FaceBook and he thinks, 'Now, FaceBook is final! It's different than MySpace! People can hook up over the internet!'

 09:14

So, Ning is not that kind of social network--at least that's not how we chose to use it--but it did have the option to create a space and to add personality to a space, much like MySpace was kind of the draw.

So students, without prompting, would go create a profile, set their background, add pictures, and add some personality to the space. And I think that they really actually liked that in a way that they can't get from traditional Blackboard space.

Blogs are something we really heavily incorporated into--I think it's heavily used in higher education in general, but we used it in a couple of different ways. So this is Katy, one of our instructors. She used it in a variety of ways.

 10:00

She would touch base with them after class and say, "Oh, I forgot this," or "I wanted to clarify this," or "Let's continue this discussion," and used it in some way as a discussion board and carry on a conversation. So students would get to know each other in the comments as well as have interaction with the instructor outside of the classroom.

Others chose to use the blog as an assignment for students. So students were responsible for writing blog posts, and then other students had to respond to the blog post. So there was kind of a forced interaction, if you will. But, again, it allowed students to get to know each other within the classroom and build a sort of community that was important for this class in this major. So that was our kind of utilization of the blog space.

Because there were so many of us, we used different aspects of Ning in different ways for similar functions. Some actually optioned to use the discussion board as a discussion board like others were using the blog, so posting maybe a link to a reading or a question and having the students comment throughout the comments section.

 11:11

And, again, this is an ongoing conversation. So the instructor is involved, students are involved, and there is a collaborative kind of conversation that is going on outside of the class.

Others chose to use discussion boards as posting maybe important notices, kind of more of a bulletin board, if you will, kind of notices or an assignment dropbox. So it was used depending on the instructor in various ways.

One of the things, as Arianne emphasized, group work is really important in this class. So not only are they working in a collaborative space and sitting together in the classroom, some of that happens outside of class. So to have a space for them to communicate, to organize themselves if they need to meet to work on their video project, they can go for availability within this space.

 12:00

And it's private to the certain people within that group, so they didn't have to remember the last name of the person in the class. Because everybody had a picture attached, they could be like, "Oh, that's the girl in my group." "Oh yeah, her name is Stacy. Right. She's in my group. We're going to organize this meeting, this space."

They also used the space as--at least in my field, we use Google Docs as a collaborative writing space where lots of people could add content and they could kind of build their presentation in this space. So Group Pages were really a benefit.

For us, as instructors, one of our favorite things was the folksonomy or the use of tagging that happens. Because we were posting things in a variety of formats, it was kind of a way to collect content. So if I posted something in the discussion board, I could tag it as an 'assignment', or if I posted something in a blog, I could tag that as an 'assignment'. And students just knew that the tag 'assignment' was always a place they could find content no matter where it was posted.

 13:02

So it was a way for us to organize information. But this is also something we emphasize with students. They really struggle with this concept of tagging and folksonomy. They don't always understand to pick out the main ideas and that tags are really about main ideas.

Some instructors chose to use Delicious as a tool within the classroom to emphasize this and kind of get them to practice so that they understand that this is something that's really important in social media, that we're controlling and organizing our content. So with their own blog posts, they often had the option to tag their own content and work on that.

And, of course, one of the major features is the multimedia plug-in and the ease of importing content, not only create content and plug it in but already created content, and to bring that into--oh, just kidding. I'm jumping ahead. I didn't look at my slide. I'll jump back.

Twitter. So, you are all very active and familiar with Twitter, and you understand the power that Twitter holds. Students are not, I don't know if you've heard. I've certainly been to sessions where that's come out, and we know first-hand.

 14:13

They do not use Twitter. They don't understand it. They think it's stupid. So it's really a struggle to get them to understand the power of Twitter. And for a class with this content, that was something we wanted them to at least understand how it's used, especially if they're moving into careers where it can really benefit them to be in touch with what's going on.

So we use it in a variety of ways. Sometimes it was 'Post a news story that you read that relates to what we talked this week'. Some actually really adopted Twitter and took it beyond the assignment base. You can see this top one over here. Someone watched "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" and those ladies cracked that girl up.

So they did understand that there's some forum of communication and that this is a conversation and that it's a way to get to know people in your class beyond just posting content. 

 15:06

As an instructor, we used it in a variety of ways. Sometimes it was a reminder, "Hey, don't forget: there's a test on Thursday," even though we told them in class and posted it in five million places. You can never tell them enough. So it's a nice reminder board.

There is also an option to use it as an attendance. So at the end of class, I might say, "What was the most unclear point in today's class? If you tweet it, then I'll know you were here today." And so it was a form of assessment as well as attendance. So it's used in a variety of ways.

Now, multimedia. This is a huge aspect of our class. We are not only consuming information in a variety of ways, they are also creating information in a variety of ways. So to teach in a classroom like that, we pull in videos, we pull in podcasts, we pull in maybe images. We're using these things as teaching tools. So we're bringing them in, and they are also creating these kinds of content.

 16:06

Prior to our adoption of Ning for this course, instructors were often having students create an iTunes U account for podcast, create a YouTube account so you can post some videos. "Oh, don't forget, you're going to have a Flickr account for your pictures."

So they were going to all these different places and using all these different tools, which is terrific, but no privacy. There was no controlled space with it. And Ning allowed all of that content to live in one place, easy to access, and it created a sense of privacy because our networks were closed. So students knew that they weren't going to get some creeper commenting on some photo they had posted, which had happened in the past.

So, again, you know Ning has potential beyond this. There are more. But these are how we utilized them in a classroom setting and in an effective way that made sense. It wasn't just us saying, "Oh, I want to use Twitter because I like it and I'm going to figure out a way to plug it in," but the way we used it made sense, certainly within the context of our class.

 17:14

So we certainly had likes about it but we certainly had some other dislikes. So Amy is going to talk a little bit about the assessment of Ning as a tool.

Amy Thornley: Hi. So Arianne and Eli have only kind of hinted towards you about what we really loved about this tool. So I'm just going to cover it fairly briefly.

The first thing was the customizability, the flexibility of this. With Blackboard, we were really locked into what it looked like and what we could incorporate. So with Ning, we were all able to customize it very quickly and our students were able to customize their spaces really easy.

And this is something I don't think any of us required them to do, but by the end of Week 2, man, every single one of them had a picture up, a background, and a whole color scheme going. It was something that they really liked.

 18:08

We've hit you over the head with this a couple of times, but it was incredibly course-appropriate for us. We were teaching social media in a social media space. So that was nice.

The interface is really intuitive. A lot of times, whenever we were having them do things in Blackboard, we have might to give them a half-page of instructions for how to get that done. With the Ning, the steps that they needed to take were really similar to what they were already doing in YouTube, what they were already doing anywhere they were posting content. So that was really nice.

And then, the availability for post-grads. Most of our students are in a business field--Strategic Communications and the like--so most of them are probably not going to use Blackboard anymore after they graduate. But they may use Ning. So we're introducing them to something that they might be able to use outside of a university setting, which we really liked.

 19:08

That's were lows. It's not all sunshine and flowers; we did have some lows. As you hopefully are aware, since HighEdWeb is fairly active on the Ning, Ning kind of pulled the rug out from under us midway through the semester and decided that what used to be a free site was no longer going to be free any longer.

You do have the option of getting a Pearson-sponsored Ning, which means that they'll sort of fork over the money for you and you can still use it. But we are fairly limited in what we can do on a Pearson-sponsored Ning.

So this all gets to the heart of putting your content in a third-party system, putting your content in the cloud. We don't own that content. We don't really have any control over what would happen if instead of Ning going to a pay service, if it had gone under, would I even have access to that content anymore?

 20:06

And these were things that we were all kind of worried about as we were jumping into using the Ning, and it really became very apparent in the middle. So great teachable moment for our students, that's for sure.

And this gets to the lack of control, the lack of IT support on campus, which for you, all that might be a plus. But it's certainly come up a few times. We were kind of going out on our own on this. And then, of course, the scariest scenarios of cloud failure.

So that was kind of our assessment of Ning. We did have a survey for our students. This was outside of the typical course evaluation, and it was in extra, where we kind of pleaded with them. "Please, fill out our survey." And we got some good feedback. Not all positive. I would say about 75% of the students really liked Ning, but... It was, "I liked Ning, but..."

 21:01

And probably the most valid gripe that we heard and completely realistic was we were asking them to go to another website. As much as we pulled all these other things into this website, it was still not Blackboard. It was an extra. Another site they had to go to. And they didn't like that. And that's, again, completely valid. And then, of course, "It sucked." Got to love it.

And we then asked them, "OK, how does it compare to Blackboard?" Ninety percent of our students said that Ning was easier to use than Blackboard, which I think is very telling and very interesting. And then, of course, "It sucked." That was the same kid and he said "It sucked" to every qualitative question we had on the survey. So there's always one, right?

So what are our takeaways from this experiment? Going into this, and even standing here now, we were never trying to say that Ning was going to be our be-all, end-all and the answer to all of the problems that anyone would ever have with course management systems.

 22:08

We really went into it thinking, 'What does the next generation course management system need to look like? What can we go to from here?' And the thing that we really pulled out of it, well, Number 1, it needs a gradebook.

I don't know about your students; ours are highly focused on incentives. Extra credit is better than candy. And if they couldn't see their grades, they didn't care how cool it was. They needed to see their grades. So that's Number 1. Whatever the new course management system looks like, it has to have a gradebook.

But the other thing that really came out is... You know, all of these things like YouTube and blogs, they are able to comment and interact so easily with the world around them. And that needs to come into the classroom. And it's things that we were experimenting with--'How can we make this a two-way communication?'--and the fact that they can do it for free on another system but they can't do it on our multi-million-dollar university-supported course management system, that's a major disconnect for them.

 23:05

And it's really something that we should be thinking about and addressing and making very easy for them to do within the classroom. And that speaks to the changing classroom model. The fact that I heard someone say yesterday, "The question isn't something about 'Should there be lecture halls in universities, not should'"--I guess I forget how that's going.

Anyway. It's not that I should be simply talking to them. We need to have a social interaction. And stepping that further, the course management system needs to support that interaction between me and my students and between the students with each other.

So the main thing that we are taking away from this is we need to investigate the alternatives. Ning was great while it lasted. At this point, we don't feel it's a feasible solution for us anymore. But what do we need to take away from it? We're looking at things like Edmodo. An initial assessment on my part: I think it's more geared towards the K12 atmosphere, but it does have some interesting factors in it.

 24:06

I've heard a lot of great stuff at this conference--WordPress, BuddyPress, Drupal--all of these different things that are out there that we can look at and see what they do well whenever we are envisioning in our university atmospheres what needs to happen next. There might be something else. Did I mention everything we talked about?

So that's really our takeaway from all of this.