Using Steemit to Promote Online Responses from a Community Based Learning Program

By Phil Hulbig PhD candidate

Abstract

This pilot study looked at the impact Steemit had on motivating students to extend their involvement in a community based learning program (CBLP) to include written responses. The study used the Whole Dojo technique, which teaches concepts of metacognition through subjects of popular interest. The research question of this study was would the introduction of Steemit into the CBLP inspire greater self-directed learning and self-regulation? Or stated more broadly Would the potential to earn cryptocurrency promote a written online response to a CBLP? This was measured by the extent individuals were willing to go beyond the usual requirements of the CBLP and write an online reflection on their experience. This study found that test subjects enjoyed the CBLP experience, and found it intellectually silent on several dimensions. However, neither the enjoyment of the event, nor the introduction of Steemit, was enough to inspire the participants to volunteer to write a reflection. The conclusion of this study is that individuals can be attracted to CBLP events, like the Whole Dojo, but their participation will be limited to that event. It was found that the students’ own negative self-perceptions were the largest factor preventing their expanded participation. Students were not motivated to write a response or post on Steemit, despite the potential of earning cryptocurrency. Future avenues of research will include more targeted samples of individuals controlled for online posting experience, familiarity with crypto currency, and economic background. It may also be important to examine situational factors such as levels of emotional and structural support with response generation.

Rationale

The Steemit platform may be important for motivating and sustaining CBLPs in the future. Offering cryptocurrency incentives for participation could promote increased motivation, self-regulated and self-directed learning of CBLP members. It also holds the hope that CBLPs could potentially be self-sustain within communities, without the need of the broader need of governmental or institutional support. This holds the hope that transformative metacognitive education could reach communities that have been historically neglected or difficult to reach with this information. Steemit’s convergence of an online networking platform for posting intellectual activities and an economic platform that generates income through a block chain may be able to inspire and support learning communities in new and exciting ways.

Self-regulated and self-directed learning are popular concepts in education research. Self-regulated learning theory grew out of work done by Albert Bandura (1997) in social cognitive theory and work by John Flavel (1979) on metacognitive regulation. Metacognitive regulation is related to the learner’s ability to control his or her cognitive activities (Coutinho & Neuman, 2008). Metacognitive self-regulation involves strategies of planning, monitoring, and evaluating one's own learning (Schraw & Moshman, 1995). The concept of self-directed learning was initially developed through the study of adult learners by Knowles (1980) and Tough (1979) and is defined as a student's ability to plan out their own learning with the help of a community. These communities often consist of family, neighbors and colleagues. Researchers (Marriam, Caffarella & Baumgartner, 2007) have been looking to uncover the conditions that lead learners towards greater self- control over their learning and achievement. Some researchers (Schrader-Naef, 2000; Williams, 2001) have highlighted the necessity that such studies include learners of all ages, grade levels and backgrounds.

One of the central skills of both self-directed and self -regulated learning is metacognition. Metacognition is the ability to learn about, and understand, one's own learning (Flavel. 1979). Metacognition has been shown be tremendously beneficial to students with learning disabilities (Wong,1986; Dumont, Istance & Benavides, 2010), brain or neurological injury (Bethune & Doidge, 1998; Doidge, 2015) and underprivileged or oppressed backgrounds (Freire, 2000; Sharrone, 1987).

It has been found that the development of metacognition can lead to transformational learning (Kegan, 2000). Transformational learning is learning that promotes fundamental, and sometimes dramatic, changes in the learners’ view of themselves and the world they are a part of (Kegan, 2000). The idea of using learning and metacognitive insight to transform the lives and thinking of marginalized and oppressed peoples was developed by Pablo Freire (2000), who worked with various groups of poor and disenfranchised in Latin America. Hammond and Collins (1991) believe the “ultimate goal is empowering learners to use their learning to improve the conditions under which they and those around them live and work”(p.14).

One of the chief impediments to bringing transformative learning experiences to marginalized communities in the United States has been the lack of resources in the communities that would most benefit (Hammond, 2010; Ravitch, 2010). The ubiquitous access to information provided by internet technology over the past decades was hoped to provide more equal opportunity of access to information than ever before. Certain online learning programs like Khan Academy and Harvard/MIT’s Edx have opened up subject-oriented learning, ranging in level from primary to post-secondary, to anyone with a connection to the Internet. However, online learning platforms suffer from a general inability to meaningfully engage or motivate learners. (Bomia et al., 1997; Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006)

Even with access to technologies, like Khan Academy, many learners lack the metacognitive skills to direct and regulate their learning to achieve success in online courses. (Sarma, 2015) Metacognition is a necessary skill for successful online learning (Artino, 2008; Pachnowski & Jurczyk, 2000). This is because most learners do not think strategically about their own thinking or regulate their learning behavior well (Garrison,1997). It has been found that motivation and responsibility are reciprocally related (Garrison,1997). Thus, while the Internet has done well bringing information to a wider and wider audience, these learners often require support developing the metacognitive learning skills needed to achieve a level of success.

For many students, particularly poor and minority students, there are strong social factors at work that actually repress metacognitive self-reflection in their community (Freire, 2000; Rothstein, 2004). These social forces often enforce a cognitive rigidity that promotes feelings of fear, incompetence and hopelessness (Rothstein, 2004). In turn community members come to develop closed mindsets (Dweck, 2013) where they believe that learning is based on unchangeable inborn characteristics, rather than skills you can develop and improve. So while there is some evidence that students are becoming more self-directed as a result of simple exposure to the internet (Kerka, 1999), social and cultural pressures seem to be locking most poor and minority communities into cycles of poverty (Ravitch, 2010; Rothstein, 2014).

One solution could be the creation of small, informal CBLP that develop the metacognitive knowledge and regulatory skills of its community members. CBLPs are akin to the historical tradition of communities of practice (Stamps, 1997), with the exception that they are specifically focused on the development of an individual's understanding of learning itself. CBLPs could promote the success of members by promoting knowledge of the learning process and encouraging a process-oriented approach toward learning. CBLP could make use of the interpersonal connections already present within the community to support the metacognitive and self-directed learning behavior of members. Research (Fink & Hummel, 2015; Hunter & Austin, 2015; Jessup-Anger, 2015) has tended to focus on institutional professional and collegiate learning communities there is considerably less research on more informally-based learning communities that may support neighborhoods or specific groups of learners outside of academic settings.

The Whole Dojo technique developed as an outgrowth of experiments utilizing the Wholistic Problem Solving (Hulbig, 2011) metacognitive teaching intervention. This intervention frames learning the learning experience in terms of nine constituent cognitive skills. It then reviews the investigation of subject matter with specific and direct focus on utilizing these constituent cognitive skills developing both a student’s understanding and competence with these skills. The student then becomes aware of both the subject matter and the specific cognitive skills that were utilized in the investigation of the subject matter producing a metacognitive learning of the subject. The Whole Dojo attempts to inspire the development of metacognitive thinking skills by creating learning opportunities centered on high interest subject matter such as television, music and sports. Involvement is often bolstered using online resources like Youtube or Netflix.

There are often great pressures on an individual's time and attention. Unless the subject matter is perceived as interesting or relevant to their lives it is hard for individuals to find the time to participate in or develop such communities (Marriam, Caffarella & Baumgartner, 2007). Financial pressures also exist, which have historically prevented such small scale learning communities to persist over time (Rothstein, 2014). Without access to a funding source, many communities are reliant on support from outside the community, such as governmental or institutional sources. For this reason, an online platform like Steemit could become a useful way to promote and sustain small groups of learners, and, possibly, pull together long term sustainable learning communities that become self-funding over time.

According to the Steemit white paper (Larimer, at al., 2016) Steemit is an online, blockchain-based social networking site that allows members to post ideas/content and receive monetary reward for the value of their input. A blockchain is a communal ledger that is able to store, secure and verify online transaction (Loonstra, Brink, Vries & Zuidam, 2014). The site leverages the appreciation of an online virtual currency called Steem Power to create an online marketplace of ideas. This market place of ideas is funded by another virtual currency called Steem Dollars. Steem Dollars are, in turn, paid out to participants whose content is deemed worthy of value by the community. The value of posts are determined by the number of up votes a post garners and the number of responses.

A CBLP could utilize the Steemit platform to motivate self-directed learning behavior by offering a cryptocurrency incentive for participation. The degree to which a small community of learners could generate revenue this way is an open question at this time. Because the Steemit program itself is new, and still in beta (experimental phases) itself, many questions need to be answered to determine if such a platform would be a viable support to small communities of learners offline. However, such a platform holds the potential of bringing transformative metacognitive education to historically neglected communities through a convergence of an online networking platform for posting intellectual activities and an economic platform that generates income.

Method

August 24, 2016, at 7:00 pm, a Whole Dojo on the Netflix series Stranger Things was held. The format was an open discussion around the series. The discussion was framed with the expressed purpose of teaching the underlying processes used by the brain when approaching a problem or idea.

Eight students volunteered to be part of the Whole Dojo discussion. They chose to be part of the event either because of the subject matter or because of their earlier participation in a Whole Dojo that they enjoyed. Of the eight only four chose to be part of this experiment. Some of the members of the discussion were also disqualified from participation in the study because they were under the age of 18.

A brief explanation of the dojo and Steemit was presented to all study participants. All questions presented by participants regarding the study were answered to the best of the experimenter's ability. At the opening the researcher stated:

After the dojo you will be encouraged to sign on to Steemit and post

a reflection or statement. Steemit is an online platform the gives money

people for both posting there is a good chance you will make some

money for your effort. At the very least you will be given some

cryptocurrency just for signing up with Steemit.

And:

“You will have the ability to earn money for posting about what you learned here at tonight's dojo by posting on Steemit.”

Participants were only given basic information about starting a Steemit account as a way to gauge motivated self-regulated behavior. Participants who independently started an account would be rated with a very high level of motivated self-regulated behavior. Participants who produced no written response, whether online or off, could then be rated with a low level of motivated self-regulated behavior. Behavior could also then be scaled between these extremes to rate the level of motivated self-regulated behavior the program inspired. A follow up survey would then be delivered to garner participants’ impressions on the process.

The researcher continued to use encouraging statements several times at both the beginning and end of the event. This was done to insure that all the participants realized that there was a monetary incentive for posting. It was also made clear that students could enlist support logging on and developing a Steemit account. All subjects signed a release and were informed of their rights before beginning. The event was audio recorded, but a recorder error only preserved the first minutes. The following is taken from notes, observations and reflections of the event.

Before the actual discussion began the season 1 finale of Stranger Things, “Chapter 8: The Upside Down” was played on Netflix. Then the CBLP opened with a statement about the philosophy of metacognitive thinking the importance of developing process oriented thinking skills and how these process oriented skills can be developed to improve understanding of what is true and solve problems that may be unrelated to the night’s subject matter. Then there was a brief review of the 3 phases of problem solving, which are the input, processing and output phases. Then there was a description of how these phases of problem solving related to 9 reasoning skills of the Wholistic Problem Solving system. These levels are sensing, attention, memory, analogy, analysis, metaphor, judgment, creation and sense making.

The CBLP was started with a focus on input level skills. Students discussed their basic sense of the series, presented questions that the series provoked in them, identified things that drew their attention, provoked emotion or triggered memories. One question that came up more than once was the relation of the character 11 to the monster. The well written characters, and the actor’s depiction of them, was identified as another initial draw of attention. Several students admitted to having their attention hooked immediately by the portrayal of the Dungeons and Dragons game at the beginning of the series. The show was able to generate real emotion, and a few students even admitted to crying during the scene where the character Will is ultimately saved from the monster in the upside down realm. The series also triggered many memories about other movies from the 1980’s. TheGoonies, ET, Poltergeist and Alien we mentioned specifically.

There was excitement to get to the processing phase of the discussion. Several students had analogies and theories about the series. The discussion in this phase was very active and took over an hour. Some of the ideas that came out of this discussion where that 11 and the monster boar some kind of connection, and the upside down was a parallel dimension that was inadvertently destroyed by the government trying to weaponize psy abilities. There was a major discussion about there being more than one monster, possibly eleven, one for each person utilized in the experiment. As stated many ideas were developed during this phase, this is only a sampling of the main themes.

The CBLP culminated with a synthesis of the ideas listed above. Predictions about what the next season were made. There was unanimous judgment that the next season would revolve around what the character Will threw up into the sink at the end of the series. There was also a strong desire for a resolution of what happened to the character 11.

This explanation was intended to be descriptive but not detail, more detailed research on the Whole Dojo and Wholistic Problem Solving is in progress. The focus of this investigation was on the impact of Steemit on student motivation and regulation of the academic behavior of writing a response. However, it was felt that some explanation into the basic process of a Whole Dojo based CBLP was warranted.

After the CBLP participants were encouraged to post on Steemit and reminded of the possible monetary award. A post titled Whole Dojo 1: Stranger Things was entered on STEEMIT. Students were encouraged to post on this STEEMIT page. A direct link to the page was sent to the students the night of the dojo and at approximately 5:00pm the following day encouraging students to post.

After 24 hours no students had posted to the page. However, one person who was not part of the CBLP posted. Before sending the second notice and link, the experimenter posted a response under an alias, to encourage posting. However, 48 hour latter there was still no response from any student on STEEM. Follow up surveys of behavior where give 72 hours later. Ultimately, no students posted.

The survey found that all study participants gave the overall CBLP high marks. All participants rated the CBLP experience a 6 or better on a 7 point Likert Scale. Individuals made statements about how much they enjoyed the diversity of perspectives elicited, particularly, from the younger members of the group, and how they would love to participate again. Half of the participants said the CBLP captivated their attention.

Participants were also asked to rate their level of intellectual involvement by applying a value to the demands the program placed on specific cognitive functions. Half of the participants felt an average level of memory demand (4 on the Likert Scale) from the program. The other half gave it a high demand rating (6 and 7 respectively). All participants rated the level analogical thinking demanded by the event as high, with half of the participants giving it the highest rating. Three quarters of the participants rated the depth and thoroughness of the program's analyzation of the subject matter a 7. Three quarters of participants rated the overall impact of the CBLP on their thinking as much higher than average (one individual gave it a 6 and two a 7). The general consensus was that CBLP event had a very positive intellectual impact.

After the CBLP event it was found that none of the study participants used Steemit or wrote a reflection. Half of the participants indicated that they did not have time to post or write a response. Interestingly the other half made negative observations about their own self-regulation. One participants indicated that they were a “lazy butt” and another “a lazy piece of crap”. These responses are interesting as they indicate a split in attributions by participants between neutral environmental conditions in their lives (not having enough time) and negative internal feelings of self-worth. This is similar to findings on mindset by Carol Dweck (2012). One participant that did not post expanded, “I'm not a poster, I don't like to write, quite frankly because I don't feel like I am good at it.”

When asked specifically about Steemit and its potential to motivate responses participant’s answers were very mixed. One respondent felt it was a good idea with the potential to motivate students. One felt that money would not be a good motivator for her because, from her experience, money tended to produce more conflicts and problems than it solved. Another respondent could not make up their mind if it was a good idea or not, indicating that their feelings ranged from it being a good idea to sounding like some kind of a scam. They also indicated later that they felt cryptocurrency was not real money, which made it less desirable. One participant responded that they did not have an opinion.

Analysis

The outcome of this pilot study found that the introduction of Steemit into a CBLP did not lead to an increase in an individual's self-motivated academic participation. Students were not motivated to join an online community or produce written reflections. However, it was also found that Steemit did not deter such a response, as it was not directly identified as a reason for not responding by any of the study participants.

The inability to motivate deeper participation is consistent with other research (Artino, 2008, Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick, 2006) that has found online learning platforms are not intrinsically motivating in themselves. Individuals did freely volunteer their time to be part of this CBLP on a subject of interest, but their participation was limited to the event. It has been found that activities like writing a reflection or posting and sharing ideas online after an event are difficult to inspire.

Some of the potential reason why students did not post or write reflections were a general lack of time, not liking to posting on computer sites, and most commonly, self-identification as being unmotivated. This data suggests that larger issues influenced expanded academic and online participation, which were related to feelings of self-worth and personal competency. It may indicate that for CBLPs of this type to stimulate greater self-directed academic and online involvement increased focus and sensitivity must be paid to the personal psychological feelings of the students involved.

There are a few identifiable weaknesses with this study. The first is its small size and the fact that all participants came from a relatively similar white, suburban, middle class background. It is speculated that the introduction of Steemit, virtual currency, could have made more of an impact with a community with more limited financial means. It could be valuable to run a future investigation in a less affluent community. It is also interesting to speculate on what the effect of a CBLP and Steemit combination would have in a foreign county where standards of living and monetary exchange rates are considerably lower than those in the United States.

Another identified weakness was the general lack of understanding around the Steemit program. One area that was not accounted for in the study where participant’s familiarity with blockchain and networking technologies. It could be that individuals who have more experience with blockchain technologies or posting on social networking sites may be less inhibited to post their reflections on Steemit.

One possible area of future investigation may include having individuals create a Steemit account before leaving the CBLP. Alternatively, doing an expanded introduction of the program by an individual who has experience and a level of understanding of blockchain and cryptocurrency technology may be beneficial. Having an expert demonstrate the posting process, or possibly providing students with a template, may increase the likelihood of student participation.

Another weakness may have been the time frame allotted for participants to post or respond. One of the chief reasons cited for not posting was lack of time. Perhaps 72 hours is not enough time. Possibly given more time would increase the likelihood a reflection would be produced.

It is also important to note that though participants in the CBLP did not post, the initial Whole Dojo posting did generate a response from a member of the Steemit community itself. This may indicate that a CBLP could potentially draw input from the broader Steemit community. This broader involvement by individuals outside the CBLP adds another dimension of potential future investigation.

Conclusion

This pilot study has shown that individuals can be attracted to CBLP events like the Whole Dojo, but their participation will be limited to that event. Students were not motivated to write a response or post on Steemit, despite the potential of earning cryptocurrency. Several dimensions as to why this occurs remain to be investigated. One dimension uncovered in this study was the persistence of a negative self-image of the learner’s own capacities. Students who self-identify as lazy or do not feel competent at a writing task will find it hard to muster the level of metacognitive regulation needed to further direct their behavior toward a written response or reflection after a CBLP. If such a program is to be successful in promoting self-directed learning it must address these underlying feelings and self-conceptions.

This study is presented to the Steemit community for review and consideration. Your ideas, suggestions and support of this work would be greatly appreciated.

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