Case Study 1
For this case study, I examined MySpace, Facebook and YouTube. I chose these for different reasons, but for the same concept. All of them I use related to school, but in various ways. MySpace, I was familiar with because last year during my clinical group, I had several students who talked about “MySpacing” each other. Most of them were already members of the group. So I told them I would like to be privy to their discussions, since it seemed most of what they were “MySpacing” about was questions regarding clinical. I became a member. I used this form of communication to dole out Kudos to those who performed exceptionally well and to keep them posted on upcoming events. I did have a few people I found that I knew in MySpace, but overall, it seemed to be something that required too much time for me to keep up with and too labor intensive to build a page. Maybe it is just my age, but it seemed too busy for me.

MySpace has a logo, “A place to meet friends” and I suppose it is. The community is set up for communicating with others and letting them know your personal preferences. It appears to be more of a social site. There does not appear to be any educational learning accomplished in this site. There is an array of options for decorating the individual site and some seem content to decorate their hearts out. There are also games that can be played online. One of the more common ones I found was a game called Mafia. It would appear that they play against other MySpace members, but I am not sure of the object of the game.

When one signs up on MySpace, they are immediately befriended by Tom. According to his bio, Tom is 33 years old and lives in Santa Monica, California. He is the President of MySpace. One has the option of deleting Tom from their friends list, but always know that Tom is there to answer any questions that arise, which is a nice thing to know.

Communicating on MySpace is not difficult. One picks a person they would like to send a message to, types in the message, and sends it to the other person’s page. Not very difficult. When signing up on MySpace, one has the option of setting their profile to private. This is to protect privacy and an attempt to prevent predators from obtaining information. Most MySpacers profiles are set to private. When perusing through different profiles, I saw some young girls who did not have their profile set to private and anyone could look at their information, pictures and comments. This concerned me, especially since some of their pictures showed other people, some who were babies, and could give information on where a person lived.

I began a Facebook page for one of the requirements of this class. I had heard positive and negative comments about Facebook, but since my experience with MySpace, figured it was the same and had no interest in developing a page. I must now admit that Facebook has opened a new world for me. I have come into contact with a person that I have not seen or heard from in 22 years. I have been able to chat with friends from all over the United States. Since we have lived on both coasts and in the middle of the country, our friends are spread out and this is a great way to connect with them and see how they are doing. It appears to me that Facebook is easier than MySpace to navigate in and do not feel the need to decorate a page. Facebook has a side bar that lists friends of your friends that you may know and that has helped me find people. I did notice last time I was on MySpace, that they have the same option. I had not noticed that before. The Facebook community seems to be geared more towards a more mature community than MySpace does. There is an area where one can link with groups with similar interest. In that grouping, I have found nursing groups, nurse educator groups and groups for those who favor certain television shows, such as LOST. Included, also, are groups from schools across the United States where one can reconnect and post memories of classmates.

The other site I visited was YouTube. I have had videos from YouTube sent to me prior via email and had also used YouTube in the classroom. YouTube is a site where one can make a video and post it to the web. Others are able to view videos at no cost to them. Videos are available to view from funny dog stunts to guitar players to educational training. There are also movie trailers and clips from television shows. To post a video, one must be a member of the YouTube community. Being a member is also a requirement to post a comment regarding a video in this site. One can also send a posted video to Facebook, MySpace or Digg through this page. Videos are also available to be sent via email to anyone. I have used some of these videos to reinforce learning in the classroom. One such video I used was scenes from the television show Scrubs. I was teaching first year nursing students on bowel elimination. There is a clip from Scrubs entitled, “Everything comes down to poo”. In this clip, for every reason a person comes into the emergency department, they are required to give a stool specimen. I used this clip to illustrate the importance of bowel function and elimination. A fellow instructor has also used the clip of the Brady Bunch theme song to serve as a visual reminder of what a blended family is and used the movie trailer to Dances with Wolves to visualize assimilation.

There is truly something for everyone on YouTube. Although one may think it is a site for jokes and humor, it also contains information that is useful and instructive. They have a help page that will attempt to answer any questions one may have concerning technical or non-technical items. This site continues to grow because there is a market for people who want their “fifteen minutes of fame.” As society continues to develop, there is becoming more and more ways to video through the use of cameras and phones and people are anxious to share their moments with the rest of the world.

All three of these communities I visited could be used for pleasure or work. While they are the latest, current trend, in a few years society will have become bored with them and will move to a different type of community. What will that be? Who knows, but of this one thing we can be sure of: it will be a newer, better form of communication and those who are not current with the technology will surely be left behind.

For the second part of this case study, I viewed the websites www.merlot.org and http://wisconline.org. Since I teach at the college level, I thought those would be more geared towards my specialty. On MERLOT, I found many activities for various fields of education. In this site, there are examples and ideas of different learning activities. There is also a link where one can visit with another colleague in the same field. In the virtual speakers bureau, one can watch experts speaking on various topics. Although I have not spent much time in this area yet, there is an area where an instructor can construct assignments for students. I have joined this website as a member so that I may return to it for ideas, suggestions, and interaction with peers.

Visiting wisconline I found a community that was a little different. I just examined through this site and did not join, nor participate in any activities. It did not seem to have the organization that was found with MERLOT. It showcased more game activities for students to do. It did not seem to have the organizational structure that MERLOT did, and that is not necessarily a negative. I will spend more time browsing through the site in hopes of obtaining ideas for use with small group activities. This site is geared more towards the student than the instructor. It, also, will be a useful resource in the future.

Based on the readings in Riel and Polin, both of these sites were task-based learning communities. They require that the members collaborate for a specific task which is assisting the educator. The main goal is using the expertise of others to support the others in the community. When all members contribute their know-how to the community, the learning occurs. As new members become aware of the site, they are able to glean from the knowledge of others and also have the opportunity to input their wisdom into the community. When the user has gained all that the site has available for them, they can amble away and are not required to continue to confer input to the community. The opportunities for both of these sites are endless.

I have previously searched for databases and communities such as these two and not found them. Maybe I was searching for the wrong sites or using the wrong search terms. My only suggestion for improvement would be to have them more accessible to searchers. There are many ideas and input that I found would have been useful in my past semester teaching. I wish I would have known about them then.

What I really enjoyed about these sites was the ability to view into another instructor’s toolbox and see some of the learning activities that they had found useful. Through the sharing of ideas and support the members of these communities allow a time for each other to reflect, share and learn from others in the same field. Through the continual posting of new members, the community is able to grow and prosper.

As a new instructor, I look to those who have years of experience teaching to learn what teaching tools work best. These sites will be of utmost importance to me in the coming months and years. Knowing that while I am in my master’s program my time is limited, I can look to other members of these communities for guidance and direction. Hopefully, at one time or another in my career, I will be able to give back to the communities that helped me when I first started teaching.


Riel, M. & Polin, L. (2004). Designing for virtual communities in the service of learning. In S.A. Barab, R. Kling, & J.H. Gray (eds.)