PhD candidate: Yinjuan Shao

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Mobile Group Blogging in Learning A Case Study
of Culture Transition
PhD candidate Yinjuan Shao Supervisors Boriana
Koleva Charles Crook
Tom Rodden Damian Schofield (1st year)
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Research background

• Technology development
• -Digital technology
• -The generation of digital native
• Learning can occur anytime anywhere
• Mobile computing
• Social software
• Learn from social life

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Research background

• Technoratis investigation reveal that more and
  more people started using blog in everyday life
  for different purposes such as for fun, for work,
  for study or just as diary of their experiences
  (Sifry 2006) .
• Mobile group blogging involves a group of people
  gathering, contributing, discussing and sharing
  information on an online blog, with the mobile
  devices to capture and deliver instant
  information from their own contexts.

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Target group

• The largest group of overseas students in the UK
  is Chinese (BBC 2004)
• An investigation by the China Study Abroad (CSA
  2004) indicated that as well as language capacity
  (76.7) and professional knowledge (74.1), which
  are at the top of their intentions, local culture
  (52.6)and networking skills (36.4) are also
  regarded as key challenges.

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Research questions

• Will the mobile group blog suitable, acceptable
  for people to use in cultural transition and
  learning?
• How could learners feel that they are part of the
  group or community in the mobile group blog?
• What benefits could the mobile group blog offer
  in reality to people for their experiencing
  culture transition?
• If contributions in the mobile group blog are
  regarded as learning resource, could it be
  reusable?
• What could be improved?

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Related theory

• Constructivism (Bruner Piaget )
• Social constructivism (Vygotsky)
• Situated learning (Lave and Wenger)
• Two focus in the research
• Learning community
• Learning context

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Research Approaches

• Observation
• Field study
• Interviews
• Action research
• Focus group

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Overview of four studies

• First two studies investigated the demands and
  needs of a mobile group blog application in
  culture transition.
• The third study investigated real and practical
  mobile group blogging activities with a group of
  twelve newly arrived Chinese overseas students in
  Nottingham.
• The fourth study was conducted in China, for
  evaluating the mobile group blog in study 3.

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Needs assessment by a group blog (study 1)

• The first study was conducted with a group of
  newly arrived Chinese students in 2006, doing
  group blogging, talking about anything in their
  everyday life.
• Observation on their personal blogs on MSN space
  and QQ space, which helped to distinguish the
  different utilities of the personal blog and the
  group blog. Conversations were made before the
  study to get the peoples background.
• Follow-up interviews and focus group were
  conducted after they finished their three weeks
  group blogging

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Findings from study 1

• 120 logins by bloggers were found, 77 blog
  entries were posted onto the group blog in forms
  of texts and images and 72 comments were given
  while total number of blog hits was 254.
• These overseas students had great enthusiasm to
  share information with people locally or
  globally. A group blog is a platform for records
  keeping, information sharing from physical world
  to the virtual world through the Internet. Their
  attitudes towards Mobile group blog were
  positive.

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Summarized category proportion
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Needs of mobile blogging

• Capture a sudden occurrence
• Enthusiasm of sharing experience immediately
• Supplement of recording tools (such as not
  carrying digital cameras all the time)
• Know the reactions and replies on the go and
  remotely
• In my opinion, mobile phones with cameras/video
  cameras are very good at capturing the unexpected
  moments (Tao, Master student ,University of
  Nottingham)
• Provided good technology, my good friends and
  parents could travel with me through the
  Internet. That would be amazing if they sit in
  front of computer and I wear mobile cameras to
  catch happenings in my real life here.
  (Yuzhuo, Master student ,University of
  Nottingham)

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Comparative audio diary (study2)

• Another group of Chinese students who came from
  Ningbo campus to Nottingham, staying for a short
  period for Summer Institute.
• In about one month, they continued telling
  stories about their experiences by recording
  their own talks with MP3 recorders.
• I tried to explore what people mainly concerned
  about and their experiences of using a portable
  digital tool for recording diaries.

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Proportion of category
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Design the mobile group blog system

• The findings of the above two studies guided the
  design and development of the mobile group blog
• User Analysis
• Activity analysis
• Content Analysis
• Mobile group blog as a learning community as well
  as a learning resource

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Framework of mobile group blog
Information Gathering capture and collect
data Information Searching reviews and
reflection
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Mobile group blog solution

• Mobile blog Gateway
• - Post by E-mail
• - Post by SMS/MMS
• - Direct post by Web or custom application
• Web-post applications are suitable for most
  mobile devices with browser
• Install and configure blog service system
  (WordPress) manually, adding mobile features

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Layout of the blog site
http//wwwdev.mrl.nott.ac.uk/yqs/moblog/
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Experimental evaluation (study3)

• Practical deployment of mobile group blog in the
  real world within a group of newly arrived
  students from September 2007 in Nottingham.
• Used qualitative and quantitative approaches,
  data was collected through observations, field
  studies with partly researcher-participation,
  interviews and focus groups.
• Explored the actual acceptances of the mobile
  group blog in these overseas students and the
  strength, weakness of this technology

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Method

• 12 newly arrived Chinese overseas students were
  recruited, 8 females and 4 males, aged from 19 to
  25, who came to do undergraduate or postgraduate
  programs in the university of Nottingham. They
  were asked to tell true stories of their
  experience, thoughts, feelings in everyday life,
  their insights about the local society, their
  exploration of Englishness and the way of life in
  the UK.
• An example of moblogging in Nottingham city
  center.

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Proportion of moblog and traditional blog
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Contributions from participants
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Frequency of moblogging
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Category proportion in this study
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Findings from interviews and focus groups

•  Motivation of mobile blogging
• -Sharing experiences
• -Expecting comments
• -Keeping inspiration and passion
• Time and place of blogging
• All participants claimed they did moblogging
  mostly in their dorm in the evening after
  classes. Although photos could be taken anytime,
  texts required time to type. They said they did
  moblogging on trains and buses, in the park, cafe
  and some public places so on.

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Findings from interviews and focus groups

• Learning in the context
• Sometimes we dont notice something in our
  context but some other people notice them in
  their own contexts. They put them on the group
  blog and we realized the culture difference there
  that we nearly neglected. Then I would make a
  link of their findings and thoughts to those
  happened or happening in my contexts.
  (Xue,Master student)

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Findings from interviews and focus groups

• Shift from texts to images
• complaints about the inconvenient inputs of texts
  through mobile phone keyboards
• the new generation is an image generation
• Audience consideration
• 11 out of 12 participants stated that they
  had slightly different contents in their personal
  blog and this group blog. Considering the online
  identity, most students shared more photos of
  people on their personal blogs than on this
  public group blog.

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Findings from interviews and focus groups

• Potential psychological aids
• Through this group blog, they felt some
  familiar people with similar background and
  similar opinions toward what happened around
  them. That made them feeling not alone. And
  communication through the discussion sometimes
  released their agony, anxiety and confusions.

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Alternative evaluation (study4)

• A group of Chinese students in the South West
  University in China were asked to join the study
  to evaluate the contents on the mobile group site
  contributed by bloggers in study 3.
• They were asked to browse through the blog site
  from computer
• Also, follow-up interviews and focus group were
  also conducted.

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Findings from study4

• In the process of reading through these blogs,
  all participants compared what they saw from the
  blogs and the environment they lived in China
  from time to time.
• Interestingly males and females had slightly
  different appetites on the contents. Males were
  more interested in building, transportation
  while females gave more their attentions to
  food and shopping.

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Findings from study4(contd)

• They emphasised that studying abroad not only for
  the purpose of study, but also to widen their
  vision, get more insights into the local society
  and the local culture.
• They noticed only a few people did the blogging.
  They suggested more people to join this online
  community that may provide more interesting and
  more useful information from more aspects.

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Feedbacks and suggestions

• Due to the low speed of Internet connection in
  their campus, they found it take longer time to
  open the webpage to review than they expected.
• Expert section was needed. A forum-blog
  community in which bloggers have the freedom to
  record their experiences, express their opinions
  and all people including the readers authors can
  really be engaged in the discussion in this
  community.

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Contribution made

• Culture awareness
• -Language challenge
• -Food
• -Psychological stress
• Technology to keep information of the context
• Start the adoption remotely

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Limitations and challenges of this research

• Tiny screen syndrome
• Ownership
• Input dilemma
• Connectivity
• Accessibility
• Cost
• Privacy and security

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Future work

• Audio-ware to mobiles
• Ease of Use
• Awareness of community
• Location awareness
• Bridge the prospective students and current
  students
• Privacy and security

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Thank you !
Yinjuan Shao (Peggy) E-mail yqs_at_cs.nott.ac.uk
or yinjuan_at_gmail.com