Platformised Affinity Spaces: Learning communities on YouTube, Twitch and TikTok

Zowi Vermeire — 2024-11-15

Online, informal learning communities bring youth opportunities for learning that schools cannot offer. Yet, there are concerns about the impact of social media platforms’ control over online learning. We argue for a re-evaluation of what an ‘online informal learning community’ is by looking at such active communities on three platforms: YouTube, Twitch and TikTok. We do this by reconsidering Gee’s ‘affinity spaces’ and by asking: how can we understand online informal learning communities in the current sociotechnical context? We observed and analysed interactions of six learning communities on YouTube, Twitch and TikTok. Our results show that in today’s platformised online context, Gee’s concept of ‘affinity spaces’ should be reconsidered in three ways. First, platforms call for discussion about affinity spaces’ boundaries through the visibility regimes that play a part in access. Second, platforms challenge the affinity spaces’ grammar; to maintain a focus on their interest, platforms need to engage with interests provided by platform cultures. Third, a more fixated hierarchisation, informed by platforms’ focus on creators, impacts affinity spaces’ social structures. We introduce the concept of ‘platformised affinity space’ as a first step to specific dynamics that platforms introduce to online informal learning communities. We conclude that we only understand these communities when acknowledging how these dynamics are appropriated as well as resisted to achieve community goals.

Inclusive Excellence in Practice: Integrating Equitable, Consequential Learning and an Inclusive Climate in Higher Education Classrooms and Institutions

Susannah Davis — 2024-11-19

In education, initiatives aimed at improving diversity, equity, inclusivity, and justice (DEIJ) are often conceptualized and implemented separately from those addressing students’ and faculty’s learning — and the reverse is also true. In this theoretical paper with an empirical illustration, we present a holistic framework based on our experience with a comprehensive change initiative. The I²Framework posits that DEIJ and learning goals need to be addressed simultaneously and at multiple, intersecting organizational levels. Through a systems approach, I² integrates change activity across two dimensions: one representing goals of reform (DEIJ and improved learning) and another representing levels of organizational change (classroom and department/organization). I² integrates the work of creating equitable, consequential learning opportunities in the classroom and the work of creating an inclusive climate at the departmental/organizational level, emphasizing their inherent relatedness. We provide an empirical example based on design-based implementation research and related mixed methods analyses of a multi-year change project in an engineering department at a large, public university in the United States. The example highlights a need to shift the nature of this work, how we do this work, and the environment and culture within which we do this work at both the classroom level and the department level. The example also illustrates ways that elements of the change initiative intersected with existing institutional practices, leading some innovations to succeed and others to be resisted. The I² Framework provides guidance to practitioners, policymakers, and leaders working towards equitable, consequential learning at the classroom level and an inclusive climate at departmental and institutional levels.

Frontline Learning Research

Platformised Affinity Spaces: Learning communities on YouTube, Twitch and TikTok

Inclusive Excellence in Practice: Integrating Equitable, Consequential Learning and an Inclusive Climate in Higher Education Classrooms and Institutions