Geolearners: Informal Learning with Mobile and Social Technologies
PhD Thesis by Gill Clough, 2009
For my PhD thesis I used Geocaching as the focus for uncovering and analysing the informal learning opportunities that arise through membership of an online community. I based the analysis on a four-stage communities model, the Reader to Leader framework (Preece and Shneiderman, 2009) to identify the different stages of community membership. I characterised the informal learning opportunitiesusing Jonassen et al. (2003) constructivist framework for identifying meaningful learning with technology, adapting the formal learning rubrics to suit informal learning.
References
Jonassen, D. H., Howland, J. L., Moore, J. L. & Marra, R. M. (2003) Learning to Solve Problems with Technology: A Constructivist Perspective, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, Merrill Prentice Hall.
Preece, J. & Shneiderman, B. (2009) The Reader-to-Learner Framework: Motivating Technology-Mediated Social Participation. AIS Transactions on Human Computer Interaction., 1(1)