Lurking in the interconnected world: Turning lurking into

learning opportunities

BEYZA YILMAZ İstanbul,2012

http://byilmaz.edublogs.org

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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http://learningbylurking.blogspot.com

You don’t need to take notes. I have

a present for you :)

Definition of Lurking

Reasons

Information Overload /Learning Communities

Strategies for Creating Learning Opportunities

Useful Tools and Applications

Conclusions

OUTLINE

How do you define

lurking?

"...reading discussions on board, newsgroup, chatroom,

file sharing, social networking site, listening to people in

VOIP calls such as Skype or other interactive system, but

rarely or never participating actively.

(Nonnecke & Preece, 2000)

"Lurkers make up over 90% of online groups."

(Ridings, Gefen & Arize, 2006)

Participants' lurking definitions

Where did this topic come from?

Participant 18: I incidentally became a member

4 years ago. I was active during BAW2007

but then for several years Iurked mostly. I

have become a bit more involved this year for

research purposes but I admit that getting

involved in this community ve impacted my

learning and teaching to a great extent that I

always felt like I am learning a great deal

even at the times I lurk. This is the reason

why I chose to stay as a member in this

community.

(Yılmaz, 2012)

Beyza the lurker

Why?

What did I miss?

blog posts

online events

webinars

tweets

email exchanges

chances to interact with my pln

Lurking = Learning ?

Reflection on Your Lurking Experience

1. What makes you feel that you are lurking in an online

community your PLN?

2. Why do you lurk?

3. How do you feel when you lurk?

4. Do you think staying behind is beneficial? If yes, how do

you feel you benefit from lurking? If no, what do you miss

by not participating?

5. What strategies or web 2.0 tools do you use to avoid and

compensate for staying behind in an online community?

LEARNING IN THE NETWORKED

WORLD

Communities of Practice

Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991)

downloaded from http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcleesfo/164496007/lightbox/

Roles and interactions of members of a

community

Wonders of the Internet

for Teacher Development

Teacher Development Communities

PLNs

Webinars

Discussion Lists

Others

Online Teacher Development

Opportunuties

and much more!!!

Reasons for Lurking

being busy

lack of

confidence

lack of interest

having

nothing

interesting to

say

preferred

online

learning

styles

lack of

attention

Is it a bad thing to stay behind?

Participants' Feelings about

Lurking

-

POSITIVE FEELINGS NEGATIVE FEELINGS

self conscious

aware

useful

fine

informative

not feeling connected

Lurkers' Opinions

"I don't really feel I miss what because I

think lurking has its place."

"It can be, can always learn from others."

" I'm a very sociable person and learn

better when I participate actively.

When i don't i feel I learn less and

enjoy less. But over the last few years

I have benefited a lot from lurking,

some kind of 'how-to' tweet, blog,

comment etc. I still read blogs without

commenting on them and I learn a

lot."

"I don't always feel that I am missing

anything by lurking -- especially if I

don't have anything new or valuable

to contribute."

"I think online personality is similar to real-life

personality. I'm a little shier and so only

speak if I really feel what I have to say is

valuable. I feel others speak because they

like the sound of their own voice, which

makes for a cluttered conversation with the

own-voice-lover not fully listening or prepared

to listen."

Strategies to Turn

Lurking Into Learning

Opportunuties

Strategies of the participants

• reading topic lines of messages and saving

the most interesting ones

• going over the information or messages and

having info about them

• making as many questions as they can

• curating

• filtering

• tagging

• using rss feeds

• using social media

Rss Feeds filtering

recordings tagging

What are these strategies related to?

categorizing

filtering

retrieving for further use

interacting

Useful Apps & Tools for Lurkers

TWITTER & FACEBOOK

POWER

Retweet

Photo taken from http://www.webadvantage.net/webadblog/wp-content/content-curation-tools.jpg

RSS FEEDS

Social Bookmarking

Digital Curation

pinterest scoopit

Google Drive

Conclusions

Lurking is not a very bad thing at all and it can

be turned into learning opportunuties by

• interacting with PLN members,

• staying organized for filtering and retrieving

information.

There is no need to be

afraid.

References

Ridings, C.; Gefen, D.; Arinze, B. (2006), "Psychological Barriers: Lurker and

Poster Motivation and Behavior in Online Communities", Communications of

AIS 18 (16).

Nonnecke, B.; Preece, J. (2000), Lurker demographics: Counting the silent,

Proceedings of CHI 2000. The Hague: ACM.

Lave,Jean.; Wenger Etienne (1991), Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral

Participation, Cambridge University Press.

Yılmaz, Beyza N.(2012). Beliefs of members of an online community of practice

on the effecs of membership on teaching and professional development.

MA Thesis at the Department of Foreign Languages Education Institute of

Social Sciences Middle East Technical University, Ankara.

Thank you & happy lurking!:)

Beyza Yılmaz

http://byilmaz.edublogs.org

@beyza