About this project

Design thinking and process

Keep being inspired by the concept of learning on social media, I found myself discovering a new way of learning when I was working on the "Learning in the wild" project last semester for Foundation of Learning Science class. While thinking about me aggressively looking for some advice for vaccine since my second dose is coming in a week, I found myself not really interested in reading news articles or science publications, but rather than listening to my friends and their friends' experiences after getting the vaccine. Researching on social media and reading through my friends' post of their experiences also help me to know more what I should expect and get prepared. In this way, I think a Facebook group of sharing experiences and advice to people in need for vaccines and side effects based on people's personal stories can be interesting and worthy learning topic to be implemented on social media in particular.

Design rationales

Social constructivism (Lev Vygotsky)

Learning in a social setting is constructing collective knowing than individual knowledge - this is a shared "knowing" as a human product that is made available for everyone in the group.

• Social interaction as the main medium of knowledge acquisition: Learners learn and share knowledge through rapid social interactions such as replying, asking questions, reacting (with emojis), discussing with each other, etc.

• Shared goal and knowledge building: A collective knowledge about common vaccine side effects and some meditating treatments are being constructed by the group members based on their personal stories

• Joint meaning-making process: There is not a role of “instructor” in the group that is responsible for all the "teaching". Learners learn by discussing actively under one or more posts' threads and sub-threads. It's a process that learners of the community are working on building a shared understanding on vaccine side effects. Moderators and admins of the group can be seen as “More Knowledgeable Others” that facilitate and guide the discussion.

Situated theory (Jean Lave)

Situated learning theory in a Facebook group can be seen Learning through social interaction with a focus on situational cognition, in this case, specifically applicable to learners who have a vaccination in their plan against COVID.

• Community of Practice (CoP): Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor: in this case, understanding the experiences with the vaccine. Users of the group are either interested in getting vaccinated, or already are vaccinated that they can share personal stories.

• Participation metaphor: the participation metaphor relates to learning activities considered in context, rather than learning states. Learning described by this metaphor does not consist of the having of knowledge but of learning through doing activities that are ongoing. Anna Sfard likened participation learning to become a member of a certain community - being an active member of the community is an active way of learning in this group.

Social learning (Albert Bandura)

• The social learning theory of Bandura emphasizes the importance of observing and modeling the behaviors, attitudes, and emotional reactions of others: Individuals are more likely to adopt a modeled behavior if the model is similar to the observer and has admired status and the behavior has functional value. By sharing authentic experiences as the core part of learning content in this group, it's more relatable to individuals than the data from scientific research journals or publications, which can be cold and distant from people.

Limitations and future work

There are already numbers of similar Facebook groups either private or public out there, however, sustainability under post-pandemic will be a problem - how to keep the group running and meaningful to people? It is worth thinking if Facebook groups should be designed just for the pandemic, or it can be staying longer and meaningful for the audience.

The role of administrators and moderators should be carefully thought through as well. From a social constructivist perspective, there is not especially a role of “instructors” but “facilitators”: those people can be “More Knowledgeable Others” that facilitate the social interactions and discussions happening in the community. Do the admins need to evaluate the moderators’ expertise on vaccine or COVID-19 as a factor the social learning process can be better moderated and facilitated with guidance and helps? This is an important factor that has to be considered in order to make the group useful and meaningful to individual members to share and construct knowledge together based on each others’ prior knowledge or personal stories.