{"id":2652,"date":"2015-07-07T10:00:57","date_gmt":"2015-07-07T09:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/tel\/?p=2652"},"modified":"2016-06-10T16:54:01","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T15:54:01","slug":"the-value-of-lurking-for-learning-in-he","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/tel\/2015\/07\/07\/the-value-of-lurking-for-learning-in-he\/","title":{"rendered":"The benefits of lurking in higher education"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Student<\/a>

flickr photo by CollegeDegrees360 <\/a>shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license<\/p><\/div>\n

Inspired by the journal article Online Discussion Forums in Higher Education: Is ‘Lurking’ Working<\/a>?, International Journal for Cross-Disciplinary Subjects in Education Mazuro and Rao (2011)<\/i>, we take a look at the benefits of lurking in online learning spaces in HE.<\/p>\n

Lurking to some may have negative overtones, but why is this? A lurker is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary<\/a> simply as \u2018someone who reads the messages in a chat room without taking part.\u2019<\/p>\n

Whilst this definition indicates a level of passivity in terms of overt engagement, it does not mean that learning cannot, or is not, occurring.<\/p>\n

Elegant lurking<\/h3>\n

Many students benefit from lurking or ‘elegant lurking<\/a>‘, a more positive term to describe the lurking learner coined by David White<\/a>, Head of Technology Enhanced Learning at the University of Arts in London, who believes that, ‘one effective way to learn is to use Social Media un-sociably.’<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to propose the more positive notion of Elegant Lurking. This involves learners following key people in their disciplines (fellow students, \u2018thought leaders\u2019 practitioners, academics etc.) within Social Media to tune into the discourses within the subject. <\/i>David White<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Are you a lurker?<\/h3>\n

A large proportion of users in online communities are lurkers – 90%, according to figures by the Neilson Norman Group.<\/a>\u00a0You could be classed as a lurker too, if you do any of the following:<\/p>\n