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Overcoming the Digital Participation Divide: Using Community Building to Promote Socio-technical Skills

Sun, August 12, 10:30 to 11:30am, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Floor: Level 100, 103B

Abstract

Based on the view that learning is a fundamentally social activity, this article investigates whether the promotion of knowledge through online community-building has the potential to advance individual and collective cognitions with regards to information and communication technology (ICT) use, and the implications such outcomes have in terms of social inequality. For this study, an online learning community was developed as part of two introductory courses and online collaborative tools were integrated into students’ weekly activities; survey data was then collected to test the effects of the community intervention on students’ perceived socio-technical skills. Survey data (N = 373) shows that social networks and support are important factors that are predictive of engagement and self-efficacy in participatory activities online; that students who grew up in rural areas tend to perceive themselves as less skilled in online participatory activities than students from less rural areas; and that participants in the online learning community reported greater improvements in self-efficacy than students who were not. Literature on digital inequality is used to guide our discussion of the social implications of these findings, and both policy and future research suggestions are addressed.

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