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Informal learning on YouTube:

exploring digital literacy in
independent online learning
a
Elaine Tan
a
Learning Technologies Team, Durham University, Durham DH1
3UP , UK
Published online: 22 Apr 2013.

To cite this article: Elaine Tan (2013) Informal learning on YouTube: exploring digital
literacy in independent online learning, Learning, Media and Technology, 38:4, 463-477, DOI:
10.1080/17439884.2013.783594

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 Learning, Media and Technology, 2013
Vol. 38, No. 4, 463– 477, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2013.783594

Informal learning on YouTube: exploring digital literacy in

independent online learning
Elaine Tan∗

Learning Technologies Team, Durham University, Durham DH1 3UP, UK

(Received 1 February 2012; accepted 5 March 2013)

The focus of this paper is a project conducted in 2011, exploring the use of
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YouTube in the classroom. The project conducted a number of focus groups

for which highlighted a number of issues surrounding independent informal
learning environments. The questions posed by this research are concerned
with what constitutes learning in these spaces; how valid this is perceived to
be by the students and how they engage with materials in this space. A ques-
tion also posed was how cognisant the students are of their learning in these
spaces and how they perceive the efficacy of the materials to support and
enhance their learning. The research uncovered how the students interacted
with each other in these informal spaces and the role that YouTube video
content plays in community formation and supporting informal peer learn-
ing. The nature of informal learning spaces being that their focus being not
solely of education, but also of entertainment leads to a variation in quality,
reliability and suitability of content. The research also explored the stu-
dents’ digital literacy, uncovering the strategies used to first navigate in
these spaces and then critically engage, analyse and assess materials that
they may find.
Keywords: informal online learning; social networking; open education;
social media; digital literacy

The internet has long been known to support the learning of students outside of
the classroom contributing to structured conversations in teacher-led and con-
trolled activities such as those established within the virtual learning environ-
ment (VLE). However in addition to this, the internet also has facilitated and
enabled self-directed, independent and informal learning outside of the confines
of the online classroom. It is the latter that is the focus of this paper based upon a
project conducted in 2011, initially exploring the use of YouTube in the class-
room (Pearce and Tan 2013).
The questions posed by this research are concerned with what constitutes
learning in these spaces, how valid this is perceived to be by the students
(in this study aged between 18 and early 40s) and how they engage with
materials in these informal spaces, both individually and collectively as students
∗
Email: elaine.tan@durham.ac.uk
# 2013 Taylor & Francis
 464 E. Tan

interact with each other in these spaces. The research also explores the role that
this open content plays in online social spaces, the methods by which students
exchange and transfer this material, and ultimately how the materials from
YouTube are integrated into other informal spaces such as Facebook. The
research examines the role and impact that these processes have in and upon
community formation and informal peer learning.
This paper also questions how cognisant the students are of their learning in
these spaces; outside of the classroom environment and self-directed. To what
extent do students recognise these interactions as valid and legitimate, or simply
spurious activity? The research draws comparisons between facilitated use of
informal environments and the teacher-directed space of the VLE (Land and
Bayne 2005).
A final facet of inquiry addresses the criticism that the focus of these infor-
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mal learning spaces focus is not solely education but also entertainment. If it can
be argued that in order for students to use these spaces to exchange, source and
learn from accurate material, they must first be able to critically engage, analyse
and assess materials that they may find (Lotherington and Jenson 2011). The
duality of purpose of informal and social learning sites complicates this
issue. Critical analysis and evaluation of materials are activities often associated
with digital literacy, more commonly employed in academic contexts and nor-
mally given little status in entertainment or socialising spaces as accuracy is not
normally given such a high priority.
This research sought to uncover some of the existing strategies employed by
the tertiary-level students on a foundation programme when navigating these
informal spaces. It sought to investigate how they sourced, searched and
selected material in these environments that they then repurposed for education
purposes; examining how they evaluated the results and finally integrated these
activities into the rest of their learning experience.

Attributes of informal online learning: YouTube as an informal learning

environment
Boekaerts and Minnaert (1999) compiled a number of attributes of informal
learning, a number of which seem to be applicable in the online informal learn-
ing explored in this paper. Some of these attributes included ‘. . . Open-ended,
non-threatening, enjoyable and explorative’ (536). By the nature of the
YouTube environment, the learning and interaction with this material is based
upon a discovery of new materials and self-directed exploration and appears
to be described by these attributes. As stated previously, the purpose of this
informal learning environment is both educational and enjoyable, with the
role of teacher removed from this situation, and the ‘learning decisions’
(Downes 2010) being handed to the student. In Boekaerts and Minnaert’s
(1999) exploration of self-regulation in informal learning environments, they
state that what sets informal settings apart from those of a formal nature is
 Learning, Media and Technology 465

the ‘perception of choice’ (542). With the YouTube environment formed on the
basis of user content-driven and given the wealth of material available, it can be
assumed that this must be navigated by choice. This seems to fit well within the
attributes as an informal learning environment.

Student learning networks

Turning our attention to some of the attributes outlined by Boekaerts and
Minnart, who explore the social nature of these informal learning environments,
the question of what defines a learning network needs to be addressed. In this
paper, we not only explore the use of YouTube as a learner-directed and self-
regulating environment, but also its interplay with other social networking
sites, where interaction and engagement is key to activity. Whilst YouTube
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can be described as a social networking site in itself (Lange 2008), having

many of the features of user interaction, such as commenting, profiles and a
friending facility, the uptake by students (in this context in the majority in
their early 20s), has been largely as consumer, simply watching the videos
posted rather than contributing as a registered account holder (Chau 2010).
Therefore, what is meant by social setting, in this paper, is an exploration of
how content taken from one platform is integrated into a secondary platform.
In this research context this secondary platform is Facebook, which has a
much higher uptake on a contributory level than YouTube. Empirically, there
are many more interactions where the role of user can be considered that of
an author. The issues investigated here is how the YouTube content is integrated
into student Facebook activity and the subsequent interactions that surround
this integration, exploring how it becomes ‘embedded in a social context’
(Boekaerts and Minnaert 1999, 536).
There has been much research conducted into how students are using social
networking sites, specifically Facebook, to communicate and interact with each
other, both in their initial integration into the university community and formation
of social bonds with other students (Madge et al. 2009; Selwyn 2009; Gray,
Annabell, and Kennedy 2010; Goodwin, Kennedy, and Vetere, 2010; Kabilan,
Ahmad, and Abidin 2010). Most of these studies conclude that the primary use
of Facebook is to sustain and develop social bonds rather than for any formal aca-
demic purpose. However, these same studies allude to the fact the platform is used
by students as a mechanism for informally organising academic-related activities
or in Charlton, Devlin, and Drummond’s (2009) case playing a central role in
facilitating group work. As such, the platform can be viewed as Madge et al.
(2009) state, to ‘became more than just a social network for some students and
started to become an informal educational network as well’ (148).
The development of social networking sites as an informal learning environ-
ment has been explored by Downes (2010), who describes the ad hoc nature of
these networks and how they reflect the informal learning environments,
lacking a ‘definite grouping of people, only a clustering of people with more
 466 E. Tan

or less similar interests’ (29). The interaction between users in these sites when
supporting and developing informal learning environments, as with any Web
2.0 environment (O’Reilly 2005) is focussed on user interaction and user-gen-
erated content. Downes (2010) notes how this exchange of content is integral to
the formation of learning networks stating that ‘often the creation of links is
associated with the creation of content’. The importance of this exchange of
information and learning support that ‘participants bring . . . to the learning situ-
ation’ (Boekaerts and Minnaert 1999, 537) is also noted by Richards and
Tangney (2008), who state that this ‘highlights reciprocity of information and
support as well as knowledge sharing and creations, features of any well-
defined learning community’ (94).
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Digital literacy
Digital literacy or as it is termed by some, digital literacies have received a great
deal of attention in the recent years with much wrangling over definitions and
the extent of this term. This term is generally applied to student interaction with
textual content online, examining the sources with which they use to support
their learning. However, there is an argument for a wider reaching investigation
and definition of digital literacy to extend to multimodal outlook, including
social media which (Carrington, 2005) terms as the ‘new textual landscape’
(no page) is voiced by many. For as Lotherington and Jenson (2011) state
‘These texts (e.g. . . . movies . . . podcasts . . . and online social networking)
encode knowledge very differently, and both what is produced and how one
knows and comes to know are different from these processes’ (230).
In Lea and Jones’ article, it is clear that students are integrating other forms of
media into their studies, and the use of online social media and user-generated
content is common within student independent practice. Asselin et al. (2011)
make a case for the expansion of the term digital literacy and explore how new
forms of literacy are emerging, citing Dobson and Willinksy (2009), who make
the link to YouTube explicit stating that it ‘Constitutes a fairly substantial answer
to how digital literacy differs from and extends the work of print literacy’ (302).
Previous research has shown a strong link between the assessment of student
work and their selection and judgment of materials. In the same article, Lea and
Jones continue in their exploration of the digital literacies of students stating that:

Participants described how they were guided primarily by what they thought their
tutor would be looking for in their assignment and also by their own concerns
about reliability, validity and authority. Although the data raises questions
about the provenance of students’ interpretation and authority in web-based con-
texts, what is significant is their belief that particular sites are reliable in terms of
institutional requirements for assessment. (Lea and Jones 2011, 387)

The findings indicate how most participants took the guidance given by their tutor
as the starting point for their studies, following links on reading lists, lecture notes
 Learning, Media and Technology 467

and PowerPoint presentations, and supplementing these with searchers using

their own chosen application usually Google Wikipedia. (Lea and Jones 2011,
387)

Institutional role in developing digital literacies

The contrasting nature between institutional culture and the easy access and
communication provided by Web 2.0 sites has been commented upon by
many, such as Hemmi, Bayne, and Land (2009), who state that ‘The volatile
modes of online interaction enabled by the new social media perhaps sit uncom-
fortably within existing higher education practice’ (29). The current practice of
most institutions tends to favour print-based traditional media, and in not
unknown education contexts to ‘[restrict] pupils’ use of ‘recreational’ media-
based environments in favour of ‘educational’ print-based ones’ (Goodfellow
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2011, 136).
Lea and Jones (2011), however, point out that [students are] using a range of
technologies and applications integrating these into their own personal practices
and that there are ‘instances where the personal practices of participants do not
always align comfortably with institutionally mandated practices’ (382). Given
the prevalence of such practices and the dissonance with institutional practices,
to what extent should the institution support learners in developing these skills,
and to what extent should students be responsible for this independently? Good-
fellow (2011) notes that ‘. . . institutional strategic approaches very rarely
address students themselves as responsible actors in the development of these
competences’ (134). So, therefore, we ask the question, to what extent do
these digital literacies exist in the informal non-institutional context and how
can these in turn inform institutional practice?

Research context
The research was undertaken within an Anthropology Foundation programme,
aimed at introducing Anthropology to a diverse student population with little or
no experience or knowledge of the subject. The course was primarily delivered
in face-to-face lectures with supplementary material placed on the VLE in the
form of notes, handouts and slides from the workshop as well as a selection of
highlighted YouTube video clips chosen by the lecturer and placed online in the
form of a collated playlist. The students of this course also took a range of other
subjects, Anthropology forming only part of their social science foundation
year programme. The course was divided across two sites of the university
with two separate cohorts, sharing a VLE space. The students involved in
this research came from a range of backgrounds, mostly non-traditional (that
being over 18 and late returners to education) or international students. The
research was initially conducted to evaluate the efficacy of a playlist created
by the lecturer in YouTube that was made available to the students as a way
of offering suggestions of clips they may find useful to their learning. The
 468 E. Tan

results of this research can be read elsewhere (Pearce and Tan 2013). The issues
discussed in this paper are the aspects of using YouTube to support their own
independent learning and informal interactions that fell outside the scope of
the initial investigation.

Research method
Three separate focus groups were conducted with the students using an inde-
pendent research associate not involved with the course (n ¼ 24), lasting
approximately and hour and a half in length each. During the focus groups, a
number of issues were explored and questions posed to students in a semi-struc-
tured format. Participants were encouraged to explore ideas surrounding the
questions and ensured that all contributions would be anonymous. The ques-
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tions of relevance to this paper that were posed, were: (i) How they used
YouTube independently – search strategies, (ii) How they evaluated the
materials they found in this informal learning environment and (iii) If they inte-
grated these materials into other social media platforms that they were using,
how did they do this and their reasons for this. The focus groups adopted a
semi-structured approach addressing posing questions of: (i) Uptake and
finding of material, (ii) Evaluation of material and (iii) Sharing of material, in
turn, but allowing the participants to return to previous questions as desired.
The focus groups were recorded with the permission of the participants and
transcribed. These transcripts were then analysed thematically using a grounded
theory approach, letting the themes emerge from the data. These common
themes and activities are drawn out and exposed in the results section of this
paper.

Results
The results of this research brought to light a number of interesting practices on
the part of the student. First, the methods they use to discover materials to support
their learning, and the extent of this practice. Second, the way in which these
materials are used in interactions with each other, and the role that they play in
the formation of informal student learning communities. Finally, how the stu-
dents perceive the value of both the video materials themselves and also the inter-
actions around this as a method of supporting their learning.

Student uptake
The students in these focus groups had a positive attitude to the use of videos in
informal learning environments as a method supporting their independent learn-
ing. The extent to which they used this content differed between students inter-
viewed as well as a wider variation in how they used this material to interact
with each other. There was a unanimous uptake of the use of online videos
 Learning, Media and Technology 469

in their own independent studies, but of varying levels (explored later in this
paper), both YouTube hosted content and Google video content as well as a
marginally lower uptake of Facebook amongst the group (the majority of
non-Facebook users forming the mature student representation of the focus
groups).
Some students who used online video were critical of the superficial format
in which they are commonly presented online, with one student stating that:

My problem with videos generally is that they propagate quick instant access and
gratification so you can learn something in two minutes and sometimes in an aca-
demic setting you’ve got to have the mind-set that this is something that is going
to take me a while.
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However, from the overall responses of students interviewed, it can be seen that
the practice of using the online informal environment of YouTube indepen-
dently and the interactions between further platforms are a widespread practice
and worthy of further investigation.
In all the interviews conducted, only one student had posted a video to
YouTube stating that ‘I did upload a video once, a friend and I were trying to
promote e a club night so we put a video onto YouTube for this’, perhaps indi-
cating a strong link between social activities and this platform. None of the
other students had uploaded any content to this platform, one simply stating
‘I take and take. I don’t give’ this would indicate that their role within the
YouTube platform is that of a passive consumer of material.

Student independent exploration

There was a distinct variation in the level of usage, from occasional users who
were reliant on the recommendations of others to others who were more prolific
viewers, but commonly they were used by all students questioned. Of those
who were reliant on others recommendation, one explained that they were
not averse to viewing video content online, but simply that they ‘[wouldn’t]
seek things out’. I will do every now and again when someone’s recommended
something and they say ‘oh you’ve got to see this’. This seemed to be based
upon the lack of confidence in their own ability to find suitable content with
some students stating that they ‘wouldn’t know how’ to do so, preferring to
find this in more traditional text-based media or materials provided by teaching
staff in the more formal learning sessions.
From those interviewed who did source and select their own content, what
became apparent was that they had developed a number of strategies for eval-
uating the content they both selected and viewed. The selection of material was
something that did concern them, indicating a level of digital literacy in which
the institution has had a role in shaping, but one perhaps not yet fully formed, as
illustrated by one student stating ‘I do worry though. We’re told not to go onto
 470 E. Tan

Wikipedia and with YouTube it’s exactly the same, it’s just people uploading
things as well, I mean is everything vetted?’
The predominant strategy that the focus groups uncovered is in line with
the previous suggestions of Lea and Jones (2011), as it seems that the main
criteria they used was their interactions in class-time and the information
given to them by teaching staff and how it integrated with their existing
knowledge. This was made explicit by one student stating that ‘It depends
how it relates to the topic in hand and what the tutor has told you. If what
has said or what he is going to say is portrayed in the video’. The link that
the students identified between the content of the video and assessment was
also articulated by the students stating that ‘If it is roughly what [lecturer’s
name] has said then I’ll think it’s good, because at the end of the day he’s
the guy who’s going to be marking my work’. These statements by the stu-
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dents seem to suggest that they are continuing to use the lecturer’s opinions
to shape their judgement of materials in this environment. However, other
statements made by the students suggest that they employ other methods of
judging content.
Of these strategies, some were vaguely defined by some students that they
were able to ‘just feel’ when a video was of reliable academic content. This
was based upon viewing a large number of videos and using a comparative
method of evaluation a student explaining that ‘if you watch five minutes
you can generally get a feeling if it’s just a joke or whatever’. They also
applied this and examined general features of the materials such as ‘the
language that they use’ as stated by one student who continued ‘If they use aca-
demic language you think that they’re more likely to know what they’re on
about’. Another aspect that one student raised was exploring the perspective
of the resource, holding that representation of ‘a number of different perspec-
tives about the subject’ rendered it more accurate, providing the example that
‘if it’s not propagating one particular gender for instance’.
Others mentioned more tangible but still superficial methods of evaluation
and rating, looking at the community rating of a video resource online, and
using criteria of ‘the comments on it, and how many stars there are on it’.
Another form of superficial evaluation was to evaluate the quality of a learning
resource by comparison to other self-selected material, a method stated by one
student as their ‘only way of rating’ they outlined this process stating that ‘I
usually rate the quality of a video by comparison . . . once you’ve watched 4
or 5 you know that the first one was really good, the second two pale in com-
parison and you may get one more built on the original’.
Finally, the students stated that they were critical of the source of infor-
mation, and attached differing degrees of importance to the material accord-
ingly. This can be seen as a more advanced digital literacy, comparing
multiple sources and seeking to establish the authority of the material. One
student provided an insight into his practice when evaluating a video clip
online:
 Learning, Media and Technology 471

Judging the quality of something – the first time I looked at it, it backed up some-
thing I already knew so I knew that the guy was right.

So I looked up more about the guy. The website is credible as there are a lot of big
names backing him as an educator. He’s just like an audio text book really.

Unpicking this statement, there are several parts to this process. First, the
student verifies the information with something he knows to be correct.
Second, he researchers the presenter online and finally looks for affiliation
with other trusted parties before deciding that this is a legitimate source.

Student-to-student interaction
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The engagement with videos within social platforms was something most of the
students described when asked about their use of online videos. Activities
described included sharing videos either simply by email or sharing and inter-
acting, in the form of commenting upon these within Facebook to initiate
discussion.
During the course of the focus group, whist student were describing some of
the resources that they had found, an exchange between two participants, indi-
cates a culture of sharing that has been established, passing on what they deem
to be, useful, credible and interesting resources around the community of
students.
There is this thing where you can just download all the slides and notes from
other universities.

Oh really, you’ll have to send me that.

What can be seen from this exchange is that a common practice of discovering
and sharing of resources can be observed in the interactions between students.
The most common practice described by the student was to use this activity
for entertainment purposes, which formed as part of their normal social inter-
actions both with each other and other friends as outlined by one student
stating that ‘I’d be on Facebook, not all the time but I will chat to fiends on
Facebook, on yahoo and on msn messenger. Quite handy when you’re
away from home’. These social interactions, however, could lead onto more
academic uses of the material with friends with similar interests as one
student described:

Yes! All the time, it’s usually something comical rather than an academic piece
but it will be somehow tied in because to me and my friends we’ll all be doing
the same subject next year, so we deliberately try and look for comedic things
to try and get us back into the subject matter and it will start us off, we’ll look
at things quite happily like panda videos, but there will be something there aca-
demic that we can sit down and talk about rather than trying to make ourselves
geeks. [sic]
 472 E. Tan

The use of the YouTube platform to find comedic material was also explored by
other students interviewed with one student venturing one explanation as to
why they felt this supported their learning ‘I think with the YouTube things
they’re actually quite funny. I think that a child learns when they’re doing
something they enjoy doing, so if you’re watching something that’s quite
funny . . . you’ll remember it a bit more’. Others made a more explicit link to
their use of video to support their particular learning style saying that ‘I learn
visually . . . I know it sounds silly but bite sized stupid little cartoons. That
clicks somehow, where text and where someone tells you doesn’t’.
The interactions between students commonly described were commenting
on and posting videos to each other’s Facebook profiles. These interactions
were mostly restricted to personal profiles and did not, in the main, extend to
any privately or university affiliated groups. Therefore, the individuals involved
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in these activities are as Downes (2010) describes ‘a clustering of people with

more or less similar interests’ (29). A separate Facebook account for the depart-
ment where this research was conducted existed, however, with the exception of
one student who stated ‘I put something about anthropology on Facebook on
the university Facebook wall. I posted it so people could access it. I don’t
think it’s had any comments’, this activity was restricted to a personalised
environment.
The sharing of resources with other members on the cohort was in the
majority conducted in private profiles this was the one exception, but demon-
strates how students are selecting, sharing and seeking comments and initiating
interaction around video learning resources. This discussion forms a part of
their independent learning online within this informal environment and
appeared to be something that they both actively engaged in and valued as a
learning activity and resource. One student mentioned how they thought they
could both contribute to the discussion and stimulate debate saying that they
were ‘tempted to leave a comment on something that’s a little bit controversial
to start and argument’.
Not all students interviewed participated in this activity, and were more
restrained in their use of these materials online, either sharing material on Face-
book, as they were that the audience for this extended beyond their cohort one
simply stating that ‘If I sent someone a video on the length of thighbones, my
friends would probably think I’d lost it’. Some also were more reluctant to par-
ticipate in commenting on the material with one student stating that they ‘some-
times read the comments but I’ll never bother writing one’. Again, there seemed
to be a lack of confidence in their own technical ability to share information
with peers with one student stating that ‘I genuinely wouldn’t know how to
send it to someone [referring to sending links on Facebook] I wouldn’t even
know how to do it in an email’. The lack of technical ability to share infor-
mation though did not always prevent individuals from participating in the
capacity of an observer as evidenced by one student stating that ‘I don’t
really use it but I do go on it just to be nosey’.
 Learning, Media and Technology 473

The students who did participate in sharing videos via social platforms
seemed to see interactions and the exchange of videos online as a valuable
method of communicating with each other. The students interviewed and
who posted to other’s Facebook walls were quick to point out that they did
this primarily as a social action one stating that ‘I share videos on Facebook,
but not really education videos. They do lead to discussion as people
comment on them but they’re not really related to work’. The exchanges in
the online forum were also seen as valuable ways of building relationships
with other class members, with whom they would not normally socialise as
stated by one participant saying that ‘I got to bounce ideas off someone with
whom I would just not communicate with outside of class time’. This
seemed to form what they considered a valuable part of their communication
systems extending and augmenting the existing channels of communication
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and building a cohesive cohort. One student observing that ‘Before we

wouldn’t have communicated that way, we would have phoned or texted and
now the computer has just changed that’.

Student perceptions of ‘learning’

The students interviewed expressed a desire to share videos with others, both in
their private networks but also interestingly they expressed a desire to share
materials more broadly in the more formal setting of the institutional VLE, as
they were aware that not all class members had access to Facebook. One
student outlined what they would like to see as a facility set up so that these
informal interactions could be followed by the entire class, not just those on
Facebook stating:

I think we should have more like (sic) threads and discussion boards where we
can add something. We haven’t got one, that’s what I wanted to add my original
thing onto [a video she had posted to Facebook]. Say a thread that we’re all part
of, we can add and discuss it and we can do it from home when we’re all online.
I’d like to continue the lecture for the rest of the week and we can learn more, and
if we can add something that is relevant it might benefit us all.

What is interesting about this is that the students seem to attach a large degree of
value to the interactions that are happening in the informal learning environ-
ment outside of the structured VLE. This is worthy of note as it highlights a
number of pertinent issues, first the role of informal online learning and its
potential impact upon and interplay with the more formal classroom environ-
ment and the more formal environment provided by the institutional VLE. (It
should be noted that at the point of investigation, there was no functionality
established for students in the VLE share material. As a result of this investi-
gation, this has now been created.)
The interactions and contributions to the informal learning environment
were also seen as a method of allowing the discussion that occurred during
 474 E. Tan

the lectures to continue online. One student explained their rational for this sug-
gestion as ‘I’d like continue the lecture for the rest of the week and we can learn
more, and if we can add something that is relevant it might benefit us all’.
One result that came to light was that the students echoed Goodfellows
(2011) and Asselin et al.’s (2011) suggestions that the online informal learning
called into question and ‘challenges traditional social and instructional inter-
actions’ (Asselin et al. 2011, 640). This was demonstrated by a student
stating that:

There’s so much stuff online that you could learn anything that you wanted to
learn outside of any academic institution – so it does make you think . . . It
almost seems that if you were disciplined enough you could education yourself
online with what’s available.
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Discussion
The students interviewed in this research project, as has been documented in the
related paper, have traditional opinions and expectations of education (Pearce
and Tan 2013). These expectations extended not only from the context in
which learning was seen to be valid, but also their expectations of teacher and
student interaction, and to what extent they themselves were in control of their
learning decisions, preferring to relinquish this to what one student termed ‘the
guy who is going to assess them’. This can be seen as a direct contradiction of
the seemingly ubiquitous guide on the side to a return to the ‘sage on the
stage’ approach to teaching that has previously been touted as the inevitable
development of digital resources and independent learning. Could it be the
case that as the range and availability of learning materials online progresses,
instead of developing the individual skills necessary to navigate this maze stu-
dents are becoming more reliant on lecturers to identify what is valid and acade-
mically sound to support their learning? Even though students are, for want of a
better term consuming more online content, their skills and self-assurance in inte-
grating these materials to support their own learning, either collectively in an
informal learning environment such as YouTube or individually when exploring
is still someway off this utopian vision of independent learning. Within these
online informal communities outside of classtime and beyond the view of
faculty, a culture of shared literacy seems to be emerging, where validated and
vetted resources are contributed by students for general consumption and discus-
sion by other cohort members. These contributions and recommendations are
seen as valuable by students as a way of navigating and more effectively selecting
content to support learning. It could be proposed that a collective literacy is in
evidence and an effective form of micro-crowd sourcing, specific to cohort,
context and programme.
Although students commented that they were aware that their understanding
is raised by these online resources and interactions, they still exhibited a strong
 Learning, Media and Technology 475

preference and place a greater value upon the interactions in the traditional
formal face-to-face classroom. This preference for the formal learning environ-
ment could go some way to explaining the suggestion of formalising the infor-
mal interactions by housing these in the VLE. Another suggestion that could be
posited at this point is with an increasing focus upon assessment as part of their
learning experience (Bloxham and Boyd 2007), students wish to have their
activities monitored in the Panoptican described by Land and Bayne (2005)
as a method of staying on track and potentially seeking the intervention of
staff early and often. Another suggestion that could be proposed at this point
is to counter how Lotherington and Jenson (2011) encoding of knowledge
affects student engagement with this when confronted with assessment. The
assessments that students are subjected to are rarely shaped like the online
learning interactions they may take in their own time with more traditional,
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essay and text-based assessments more likely. In this case, student may attribute
more value to the modality of information most similar to that of the assessment
mechanism.
Where students are seeking their own learning resources to augment these
classroom activities, they are deploying a range of strategies to independently
evaluate the value and accuracy of the resources. Whilst there is a wide variance
in the strategies discussed by the students in this research, there are clear signs
of most students demonstrating an awareness of the need for an element of cri-
ticality and analysis when exploring learning resources independently in infor-
mal online environments, whilst some of these evaluation mechanisms may be
somewhat lacking in rigor, they are fledgling signs of a real evaluative approach
moving ‘from searching to selecting’ (Conole and Dyke 2004, 116).
This awareness of a need for criticality and provision of a benchmark in the
form of a playlist of YouTube videos can be seen as a small success in the insti-
tutional, or in this case, small scale course’s role in developing an awareness of
the competencies and digital literacies within students themselves as outlined
by Goodfellow (2011) at the start of this paper.
Finally, YouTube clips can be seen to play an interesting and important role
in the formation of online communities by the students, extending their inter-
actions with each other in an informal setting outside of the classroom and in
some cases facilitating interactions that would not previously have been under-
taken. Video clips were often shared between students, across multiple plat-
forms and can be seen to provide a kind of ‘social glue’ (Madge et al. 2009,
148) that helps form and build these communities, stimulating comments, dis-
cussion and supporting development of social bonds extending the activities
from the formal classroom setting into the informality of the online social
spaces. At various points, students discussed how they used videos to prompt
interaction between members of their existing cohort and perhaps their
actions can be seen as a form of tokenism in these exchanges and a way of con-
tributing material with the idea of encouraging interaction that could be seen as
a positive and interesting contribution. A contribution that they are aware that
 476 E. Tan

will be visible to the scrutiny of others when placed online. This can be related
to Downes’ observation that ‘structures of the network, along with many of the
resources exchanged in the network are created by the students themselves.
These structures are reflective in the students’ interactions with each other
and with the wider community’ (Downes 2010, 31).

Conclusions
From these results, there are now a few questions that are more starkly high-
lighted to explore in both the formal and the informal learning environments.
To what extent should students’ assumptions and expectations of informal
and formal learning be challenged? How these interactions are shaping and
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impacting upon the formal learning environment and the traditional literacies
currently endorsed by institutions? There is demonstrated in this research a
self-generated method for the evaluation of online open content, but to what
extent is it the responsibility of the academic and wider educational experience
to develop this digital literacy within students? The interactions of informal
online learning can be seen as an enjoyable experience by the students, and
one that they value in supporting their learning, extending their interactions
and social engagements with each other. However, the real question may be
how to support students in this process and provide scaffolding for digital lit-
eracy within informal settings, without the defining features of informal learn-
ing environments, learner autonomy, self-direction, enjoyment, exploration and
independence being compromised.

Notes on contributor
Elaine Tan is a faculty learning technologist at Durham University.

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