“Not every member must contribute, but all must believe they are free to contribute when ready and that what they contribute will be appropriately valued” (Jenkins et al. 2006).
According to the paper Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, the authors define participatory culture as “a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices”. Participants are immersed by their own choosing, allowing them to freely engage in any way they see fit, contributing their individual talents and working towards a common goal (whatever that may be). Within these realms, one can try out new things within any concern of failure. They learn from others, build upon existing mediums, and produce their own content for others to use and/or critique. There are no grades, no real judgements, no standard by which they are measured—they can participate on their own terms. Its no wonder why learners are engaged; their learning is driven by internal forces as opposed to external.
Using Scratch as an example, students are willing to engage in this form of media because they create the rules. They can choose to focus on the social community engagement or on the project creation itself. As I played around with Scratch, I found it a little frustrating at times because some aspects didn’t work like I would’ve thought (I skipped the tutorial!) during the creation of a simple little animation. Interesting thing is even when I hit roadblocks, I kept working at it because I defiantly wanted to figure out the program. As patterns began to emerge, I thought about how much patience is actually involved. Kids who engage with this type of learning are likely to fair better as they develop essential skills for the future. The takeaway for me is that participatory culture is beneficial as long as there is some type of primer on the skills and logic needed to navigate such a program. Because I grew up with technology and have pretty solid tech skills, I was able to figure it out—in contrast, older generations, who may not be as familiar with coding logic, would likely have had far worse frustrations and ultimately given up.
The most greatest strengths of participatory culture center on the skills one cultivates throughout the process. Through play and experimentation, the user learners to problem-solve, pushing the bounds of their expertise; and because they essentially generated the problem to be solved, they are even more invested in the overall process. The learner is more likely to want to figure out a solution—thus be willing to research and try out new things, approach the situation from another angle, and confer with peers for advice. Learner’s gain social skills through networking, become resourceful, learn how to troubleshoot, and critically analyze problems to find solutions. The benefit here is that these are the same skills that are required to be a fully capable, participatory adult in today’s society.
I can see many applications of participatory culture making its way into my approach to training. In fact, I used social media to teach my new hires about researching their clients, understanding the company brand, etc. in order to create context for how everything worked together. Taking it further, and with the concept of ‘learning by doing’ as the basis, I could see creating simulations using sample case studies to present a team-based project to a group of new hires. It would be especially interesting if it were a problem that already had a solution—such as one that current employees had already worked through. Similar to a test, it would allow trainees to put their skills to the test and get valuable feedback before even finishing training.
References:
Jenkins, Henry; Clinton, Katie; Purushotma, Ravi; Robison, Alice; Weigel, Margaret. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Building the Field of Digital Media and Learning. pg. 3–11.The MacArthur Foundation.
Video: Scratch feauring MIT Profesor and Scratch co-developer, Mitch Resnick.
Scratch. https://scratch.mit.edu/
Image credits:
https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2018/10/GettyImages-769721159-1024×683.jpg
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