Excellence Gateway
This case study was produced by JISC RSC (Regional Support Centres) Northern on behalf of the Excellence Gateway.
Sector relevance:Adult and community learning
Keywords: Improving teaching and learning, improving responsiveness to learners, social networking, Ning, learner support
‘Jonny's Guitar Classes' is an online social network in Ning for learners of Jonathan McCourt's guitar classes at Gosforth Community Education, which is part of Newcastle City Learning. It contains blogs, discussion forums, video (vodcasts), photos and recordings which support and inform the learners outside their weekly classes. Ning is an online platform for users to create their own social websites and social networks.
Gosforth Community Education College is part of Newcastle City Learning. Newcastle City Learning delivers a wide range of adult education opportunities at a variety of centres across the city and runs hundreds of courses throughout the year. It offers formal qualifications as well as Basic Skills, ESOL (English for Speakers of other Languages) and Family Learning courses.
Guitar tutor Jonathan McCourt wanted the ability to offer structured practice and access to resources for learners outside the scheduled class times. He also wanted to create communication channels between the learners and across the classes that he taught. He felt a website was too much one-way communication and a blog couldn't offer the full range of functions that he was looking for.
Jonathan's student, Paul Miller, who is also an Adult and Community Advisor with JISC RSC Northern, suggested using Ning. The unique feature of Ning is that anyone can create their own customised social network for a particular topic or need. Ning also offers a template which can easily be adapted by non-developers.
It took a short time to create the network and to invite all learners from the classes to join the network. Paul Miller organised a few short workshops to train the tutor and the learners to navigate within the Ning network and show them how to make use of its facilities.
The tutor has used the network to communicate with the group on an individual basis and supports the learners outside the scheduled class. He was able to respond to learners' questions and found Ning useful for making his own created learning resources available to his students, especially the videos (vodcasts). Learners also contributed their own learning content for everyone to share and took part in and initiated discussions on topics to do with learning the guitar.
All these activities created a learning community, which was much more than a weekly scheduled class. It offered opportunities to do projects that were not possible in the normal classroom because of time limits.
‘Jonny's guitar classes' social network was launched in December 2007 and a survey was held in February 2008 to measure the impact on the learners. The survey showed that most of the learners often visited the network. Learners who didn't use the network were either ‘not sure what to do' or ‘uncomfortable with social networking'. The most popular feature on the social network was ‘the receiving and sending of messages' and the online recordings of Jonny's own material. Every student thought using a social network was a good idea.
The survey indicates that it should not be assumed that all learners are comfortable with using social networks or have the necessary IT skills to use them.
It is also advised to be careful when using and recording music online because of music copyright. Jonny only uses his own arrangements and recordings.
When setting up a social network in Ning, or in any other social network, be aware that a social network has limited ways of controlling the content compared to virtual learning environments.
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You can find this page and download any referenced resources from the Excellence Gateway at http://excellence.org.uk/170759.
