From Online Social Presence to Network Social Presence

Open Network Learning Environment (Onle)

Tu, Blocher, and Roberts (2008) proposed four dimensions as constructs to conceptualize social interaction in ONLEs: cognitive, social, networking, and integration. These constructs represent different social interactions in ONLE related to online socio- cultural learning.

The cognitive dimension focuses on the process of the individual thinking about their engagement in and the culture within a meta-cognitive element. Learners think about what, how, and to whom they will contribute their contents through interactions. In ONLE, learners are commonly engaged in creating, editing, reflecting, organizing, remixing, and sharing their own and/or’ content of others (Greenhow et al., 2009). In collaborative wiki instructions, learners are engaged in creating, modifying, organizing, remixing, and sharing the learning process collaboratively with their teammates and other digital citizens as part of open educational resources (OERs). Network learners in ONLE do not consume learning content solely; they create and edit learning content collaboratively with other network learners. Additionally, while creating and editing content collaboratively, network learners “remix” identified network learning content to generate a new set of content with their creative ideas to personalize their learning. Remix is composed of processes that select cultural network artifacts and combine and manipulate them into new kinds of creative blends (Knobel & Lankshear, 2008). The digital remix process makes the learning process more personalized, social, meaningful, and authentic.