JOHANNA ANNALA PhD, is senior lecturer at School of Education, University of Tampere. Research interests include personal development planning, curriculum studies and guidance in higher education.MARITA MÄKINEN PhD, is research director at School of Education, University of Tampere. Research interests include literacy education, special education, curriculum studies, and higher education.PÄIVI SVÄRD MA, is researcher at School of Education, University of Tampere. Interests include online pedagogy and social media in education.KIRSI SILIUS M.Ed, is researcher at Tampere University of Technology. She is carrying out her doctoral thesis in hypermedia. The topic is modelling pedagogically personalized and adaptive hypermedia content production and web services. THUMAS MIILUMÄKI is researcher in at ABSTRACTThis paper illustrates how university students describe the benefits and challenges of online community environment (OCE) in promoting engagement in university studies. The sociocultural framework allows gaining understanding of the engagement in learning processes as well as the collaborative dimensions of OCE in developing higher education in the 21th century. The study was conducted by using the method of empathy-based stories. The data were collected from two student groups representing samples of presumed forerunners of online and offline environments. The results revealed the importance of multidimensionality of engagement, with interaction among and between students and staff. OCE was seen beneficial in strengthening the sense of belonging to the university, in networking and in enhancing active citizenship. The students saw the academic and social world overlapping. OCE was not seen as an alternative but supplementary to offline community, being beneficial for learning and extracurricular activities. The results represent four overlapping spheres that reflect the potentials of OCE in enhancing engagement in studies: supportive reciprocity, collegial contribution, growth of expertise and shared direction. In order to enhance engagement in university studies via OCE, the results suggest that the focus should be on the sociocultural practices and pedagogical processes.

No abstract

Abstract-Social media services have recently become well known especially among young people [1]. In social networking sites a user can participate intensively in activities in the service. To support collaborative study at Tampere University of Technology (TUT) and also to provide social networking tools for students especially at the beginning their studies, the development TUT's own social network site was begun in spring 2008. To make the system popular among students, developers and researchers at the Department of Mathematics and Hypermedia Laboratory at TUT designed interventions for fall 2009 when the semester began and new students started their studies. The earlier research [2] revealed numerous motivating aspects that should be somehow included in a study oriented social networking site. This paper will describe the research results of interventions to motivate students to use a social networking site in the context of studies. The results will show that such an environment with social aspects connected to studying and study life on various levels is a means of enhancing studies and basically a necessary tool, especially for students in the early phase of their studies in a new university. The motivation should be further encouraged by the system itself when it relies on students' own voluntary activity. Moreover, the intensive actions of developers, researchers and administrators can be used as tools in directing network activity development.

No abstract

Solutions of social media enhanced learning are widely studied in Hypermedia Laboratory at Tampere University of Technology (TUT). In recent years Web 2.0 based social media services (e.g., Facebook®, LinkedIn®, Last.fm®, etc.) have become popular, especially among young people. Based on this phenomenon TUT Hypermedia researchers have developed a social networking site for TUT freshmen aiming to provide convenient tools for interaction and study support. The first idea was to offer a free-of-charge social web site in the context of learning Basic Engineering Mathematics at TUT. This was thought to be an efficient tool to get new students studies off to a good start as mathematics courses play a significant role. However, the prediction failed, which caused us to study students’ motivations for social network site usage in the study context. This paper describes research conducted in 2009. Moreover, a description of subsequent measures accomplished (e.g., web site development and social network analysis) at TUT is included.