Studies have shown that social networks are critical in everyone’s information world, especially for people who are in a transitional period of their lives when large amounts of information are needed to smooth over unforeseeable difficulties (2007). Doctoral students are in such a period of transition and have shown to desire group support systems (Hadjioannou, Shelton, & Fu, March 2007). ReinventingLife.org (RL) is organization run in Kinsale, Co Cork Ireland by Dr. E. Alana James (2008). Employed by a number of for profit universities on a contract basis in mostly virtual teaching environments, Dr. James expanded the mission of RL to centre on relationship-oriented teaching practices for education and management. Drawing on the work of Siemens (2005) and the educational pedagogical systems evolving from connectivism, she developed an internationally based online social network and forum for communication with doctoral candidates. This work is in line with what Prahalad and Krishnan (2008) who believe that the key to creating value and the future growth of every business depends on accessing a global network of resources to co-create unique experiences with customers, one at a time. The purpose of this new study, proposed here for inclusion in ECER 2009, is to test: 1. Whether and to what extent is it interesting and useful to doctoral candidates in education and management from different universities to participate together in an online social network? 2. What are the difficulties of moderating a doctoral level social network and forum platform? Its scope is the study of one online social network in the first six months of its development. As education evolves away from brick and mortar institutions to include, and in some areas to be based on, virtual realities, it is vital that each new tool be studied against foundational education pedagogy to test its effectiveness. Connectivism encourages the use of electronic means of connection to enlarge each learners personal learning environment (Siemens, 2005, 2006). This study contributes to education research by investigating social networks as a viable tool in the new education landscape.

This study uses grounded theoretical practice, open and selectively coding data from seven months of email and forum conversations with and increasingly international cadre of doctoral candidates. Research employs Atlas/ti software for the development and confirmation of families of ideas and concept interrelationships. Quantitative data derived from website logs, correlated to dates and times of emails triangulate with personal explanations gathered from weblogs, e-interviews, and polls to confirm findings and conclusions.

Findings are expected to emerge that demonstrate: 1) online participation is limited by the relative newness of understanding of online social networks, 2) there is substantial interest from doctoral candidates, more so in management than in education, and 3) once clear types categories of benefits emerged participation grew exponentially. Discussed will be the specific numbers of students, the ways and means of broadcasting activity and results and difficulties in moderating the discussion. It is unclear whether and to what extent this study will conclude that the relative amount of work in moderating networks and forums balance its usefulness in this initial experiment, but it is likely that use and development of online social networks will become a significant means of communication in the future.