Revolution Doesn\'t Happen When Society

¶ … Revolution doesn't happen when society adopts new technologies-it happens when society adopts new behavior." (Shirky, 2008, p. 160) Currently, many schools are moving rapidly toward technology as a way to deliver content, especially in online courses. Students who are dispersed across the world can participate in any preferred program at any university through online learning that provide a rich interaction and learning experience. Social networks, free open source software for creating communities of people with common interests, are considered one of the important new technologies in this era. They help users to have better interaction and more effective communication (Concas, Lisci, Pinna, Porruvecchio, & Uras, 2008).

Many early online education courses were self-training tutorials with no human interaction; no relationship to the material was required. Thanks to a pedagogical shift, contemporary online learning strives for learning to take place beyond the dyadic method of lecture, remember and repeat. Online programs have encompassed various technologies to enhance interactions and to maintain communication between students and instructors and among students.

For instance, streaming video and audio can help learners understand complex concepts and procedures that are difficult to explain with text and graphics (Klass, 2003). Video can help improve and augment the learning process of students as they see the concept in action, helping them to visualize how something works (Michelich, 2002). In addition, media can evoke emotional reactions that increase student motivation (Joint Information Systems Committee).

Unfortunately, despite its benefits for enhancing online learning, streaming media has technical limitations that limit its appeal (Hartsell, & Yuen, 2006). According to these authors, the streaming media server must have enough capacity and bandwidth to support the number of simultaneous video streams by multiple users. Of more concern, are end-user and Internet constraints beyond the control of the online project. Inadequate bandwidth to retrieve streamed files can be a major limitation, challenging even cable/DSL connections (Reed, 2003). Internet congestion can cause can impact streaming. Further, competing technologies for streaming is another obstacle. Different vendors use their own technologies for streaming. Thus, if a user does not have the right player, the user cannot play the media file.

Due to current-day constraints of streaming media, its use in online instruction will be limited. Instead, this project will rely on social networks to create an optimal learning environment. "The goal of community design is to bring out the community's own internal direction, character, and energy." (Wenger, et al., 2002, p. 51) Social networks in online classroom settings facilitate communication between instructors and students and among students. Learning-environments can be interactive, collaborative, and engaging for online students. Also, social networks encourage each student to add value to the community through vivid participation

According to Kerka (1996), perfectly designed online courses support interaction and collaboration. Online courses offer the opportunity for equal participation to everyone; thus, students can spontaneously communicate their ideas at any time. The existence of distance education depends on the creation of learning communities (Palloff & Pratt, 1999). New technologies enhance interaction and collaboration through different synchronous, asynchronous and social networking learning tools. The versatility of social networking with learning tools seeks motivation and cultivation to meet the needs of learners in online courses.

There is a strong demand for creating communities among students who are enrolled in online classes to provide flexible learning opportunities without compromising the instruction's quality and to increase the level of satisfaction with online learning. Using social networks as a way of communication will reduce the transactional distance that Moore defines as psychological and communications spaces between learners and instructors (Moore, 1993).