Escalation of social groups self-organising learning results in a) learning focused around concepts of interest to groups and b) social influence of individuals on the discourse. The ability to self-assemble and participate in online, informal learning events can be viewed as a basic human right. In a democracy everyone should have the ability /responsibility to set up informal, open learning events to learn and to and facilitate the learning of others. However, little is known about individuals' motivation to partake in these types of informal, open learning events. Moreover, the social aspect of the discourse largely remains a black box, where the results are visible, but the underlying processes and relationships are really known. This research project addresses these issues by investigate how social capital and self-regulated learning theory can contribute to our understanding of underlying (learning) processes and individuals' behaviours during informal learning events. More specifically, we will analyse the Editathon Series on “Women, Science and Scottish History on Wikipedia”. For this purpose, we will apply a multi-method approach, combining a social network analysis (quantitative) with semi-structured interviews (qualitative).

The project will be conducted by the following researchers:

Prof. Allison Littlejohn - She is Director of the Caledonian Academy, a centre for research in Technology Enhanced Professional Learning at Glasgow Caledonian University, and Professor of Learning Technology at the Institute of Educational Technology and Academic Director of Learning and Teaching at the Open University, UK.

Dr Bart Carlo Rienties - He is Reader in Learning Analytics at the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University UK.

Dr. Martin Rehm - He is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Mediadidactics and Knowledge Management (Learning Lab) at the University of Duisburg-Essen.