What does it mean to participate online? I asked a few of my teacher friends this who are more of the boomer age category. Many told me they really only felt comfortable with email. Some of them joined Facebook and have added friends. They usually do not comment on status updates from their friends. They send them a personal message.
At first, I thought that feeling comfortable only emailing instead of posting or commenting is only with boomers, but I am finding that people of all ages use different social media and participate in online learning communities for different purposes and in ... more...
I started doing research on adult learners and change in the early 90's for my Masters and am surprised that
we still have the same issues today. Have you ever heard of CBAM
(Concerns-Based Adoption Model)? Whenever there's an innovation of some kind, people
take to it at different levels. This is called Stages of Concern.