Designing for Peer Learning and Mentoring in New Media Environments

* Paper: Media Literacy in the Facebook Age. Designing Online and Face to Face Learning Environments. By ANDRÉS MONROY-HERNÁNDEZ, MICHAEL DEZUANNI, & KAI KUIKKANIEMI. Chapgter Five of New Intersections of Internet Research.

= We discuss three different social environments where young people engage in developing new media literacy skills through the lens of four phenomena: peer learning, mentoring, unexpected uses of digital tools, and the development of reputation.

Introduction

"This chapter explores how young people develop media literacies in learning environments that have different levels of formality and informality. Media literacy is an educational approach that aims to enhance young people’s knowledge about media and media production skills to enable them to productively participate in a range of social and cultural contexts. The theorization of media literacy in this chapter moves beyond some established approaches that aim to develop young people’s critical reading skills. Instead, the chapter recognizes that young people are often media content producers and that media literacy is developed socially and culturally in an ongoing fashion. Formal schooling is just one setting in which media literacy can be developed and it should be seen as much more than the attainment of an educational goal or competency. Indeed, young people participate in many communities in which they use and develop media literacies. This chapter discusses three environments that allow young people to produce media using new media technologies, in particular video games and digital animation. In recent years, the benefits of using new media forms for educational purposes have been well established. One environment discussed in this chapter, the Video Games Immersion Unit, was constructed in a school setting and includes a blend of online and faceto- face experiences, while the other two environments, the Scratch online community and the Habbo online world are entirely nonschool online experiences. These examples (which are introduced in more detail in section “The Learning Environment”) are discussed to identify the opportunities they provide for students to develop media literacy skills and knowledge. We have identified four common characteristics that are important for the development of media literacies across the three distinct environments: peer learning (“Peer Learning in the Three Environments” section), mentoring (“Mentoring in the Three Environments” section), using technological tools in unexpected ways (“Unexpected or Novel Uses of the Tools in the Three Environments” section), and establishing reputation (“Establishing Reputation in the Three Environments” section). Each of these is discussed separately and then the connections between them are identified. The media literacy field is undergoing significant changes due to the evolving nature of the relationship between young people and media. In the past, media literacy education focused on providing young people with the skills to decode or analyse media texts (Leavis & Thompson, 1933; Masterman, 1980, 1985; Thompson, 1973). This was based on the assumption that young people required critical analytical skills to meaningfully participate in media cultures and to avoid being unduly influenced or exploited by powerful media. More recent theorizations of media literacy, for example, by Jenkins (2006), Ito (2010), Ito et al. (2008), Livingstone, Van Couvering, and Thumim (2008), and Buckingham and Domaille (2009) emphasize the development of young people’s critically reflective social participation in media cultures and recognize that young people are not deficient in their relationships with media, but are active and proficient participants. This has gained impetus with the availability of new media technologies that allow young people to easily produce their own content and socialize in online spaces.

Jenkins theorises this as “participatory culture”:

- Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement. The new literacies almost all involve social skills developed through collaboration and networking. These skills build on the foundation of traditional literacy, research skills, technical skills, and critical analysis skills taught in the classroom. ( Jenkins, 2006, p. 4)

The social media literacy skills required for productive social and cultural participation in media cultures have been theorised through complementary but different perspectives. For example, Buckingham (2007) argues that young people require a conceptual framework for reflecting on their production and use of media that includes asking questions about the languages used to communicate with media, the representations of people, places, and ideas constructed through media, the audiences for whom media are made, and the institutional contexts within which they are produced. Ito (2010) asks what skills and knowledge are necessary for young people to move from “hanging out” and “messing around” with media (e.g., through participation in social network sites) to “geeking out” with media (being more productive with creative technologies). Jenkins (2006) outlines 11 skills that are required for the development of new literacies for successful participation in media cultures: play, performance, simulation, appropriation, multitasking, distributed cognition, collective intelligence, judgement, transmedia navigation, networking, and negotiation. In this chapter, we take a different approach and identify the design features, or affordances, necessary in environments to provide opportunities for young people to develop media literacies at a range of knowledge and skill levels. We argue that unless these features are present, it is unlikely that young people will develop the skills and knowledge identified by Buckingham, Ito, and Jenkins.

We discuss three different social environments where young people engage in developing new media literacy skills through the lens of four phenomena: peer learning, mentoring, unexpected uses of digital tools, and the development of reputation.

The Video Games Immersion Unit was designed collaboratively by media and technology educators as a specific educational experience in a school environment. The Scratch online community was designed as an educational space in which students can share their creative production work. Habbo was designed as a space for socializing, but has educational implication. Our analysis of these three environments is a grounded approach in which we aim to identify specific examples of students’ use of the environments for creative and social interaction. All three environments involve young people in play and work with video games and digital animation, which are significant media forms in young people’s lives. Each of the spaces has been designed to encourage young people to interact socially and to be creative. In the case of the Video Games Immersion Unit and the Scratch online community, education was the underlying design objective. Habbo Hotel was designed for socialization and entertainment. On a continuum, the Video Games Immersion Unit is the most formal learning environment, while Habbo Hotel was the least formal.

Each of the three environments creates a form of community that enables forms of peer learning. Peer learning includes collaboration, teamwork, and shared problem solving. Mentoring was also evident in each of the environments. When young people mentor one another, they provide each other with alternative ways of solving problems and understanding processes from different perspectives.

Mentoring is therefore a form of peer teaching and is a common feature of distributed networks, where less emphasis is placed on a few individuals holding knowledge and distributing it to many (as is the case in traditional school classrooms).

For example, Ito et al. (2008) identify how children sometimes mentor their parents in new media environments. The establishment of “reputation” is important within all three environments and involves young people developing expertise for which they are recognized. Developing reputation is an aspect of the ongoing development of identities which are crucial to learning in new media environments. For example, Gee (2003) argues that young people learn in video games environments through taking on “projected identities.” Each of the environments also allows for the unexpected use of digital tools. This is a crucial affordance that allows for experimentation, play, and creativity, which are central to the development of media literacy in new media environments. According to Jenkins (2006, p. 4), “the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content” is a key skill for participation in new media cultures. Each of these affordances is discussed in greater detail in the analysis sections that follow."