Using Social Media in Teaching and Research

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USING SOCIAL MEDIA IN TEACHING AND RESEARCH Workshop at Georgia Southern University (Jan 2015)

Dr. Vanessa Dennen Associate Professor Instructional Systems & Learning Technologies Florida State University

My Background

¨  Select accomplishments: ¤ Research on online interactions, knowledge networks,

and community/identity development in social media environments

¤ Designed and taught Social Media for Active Learning MOOC

¤ Teach classes on Web 2.0-based Learning and Performance; Learning & Web Analytics; Open Learning; Mobile Learning

¤ Editor of The Internet and Higher Education

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Agenda

Part 1: Integrating Social Media in a Teaching Context Part 2: Researching Social Media in Education BUT … let’s make this session what YOU want it to be!

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Part I: Integrating SM in a Teaching Context 4

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The Social Media Mindset 5

The Social Media Mindset

¤  Engaging with artifacts ¤  Interacting with other users ¤ Using artifacts and interactions to create new knowledge

Consumer Producer Active Learner

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The Social Media Mindset

¨  Ownership of communication space ¤ Teacher-owned ¤ Student-owned ¤ Distributed within class ¤ Distributed beyond class ¤ External to class (class as lurker/follower)

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Why use social media?

Learning in class Graduating

Participating in a professional community of

practice

What we do in class prepares learners for lifelong and independent learning. Our learners may turn to social media for these needs.

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Is it about the tools? Or the outcomes? 9

Select tools based on objectives

What do you want students to do? ¨  Examine the verb in the learning objective. To

achieve that objective will your students need to: ¤ Communicate with classmates? ¤  Interact with experts? ¤ Find information that will help solve a problem? ¤ Publish their work?

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Types of Networked Knowledge Activities 11

Types of Networked Learning Activities

¨  Collaborative Writing ¨  Collaborative Visualization ¨  Presentation & Sharing ¨  Curation ¨  Network Development Trends

Flipped classrooms Gamification Badges Mashups

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Collaborative Writing Tools

¨  Wikis (e.g., wikispaces) ¤ Support group writing ¤ Support peer editing, with revision history

¨  Blogs (e.g., blogger, wordpress, edublogs) ¤ Group: multiple authors may contribute posts ¤  Individual: one person “owns” and shapes the space;

others may comment ¨  File Exchanges

¤ Shared documents ¨  Shared notepads (e.g., piratepad.net)

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Collaborative Writing Ideas

¨  Peer review and editing ¨  Write a book ¨  Build arguments on a topic ¨  Build a study guide

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Collaborative Visualization Tools

¨  Google Maps Engine (mapsengine.google.com/maps)

¨  Google trends (trends.google.com) ¨  Google public data explorer (www.google.com/

publicdata/directory) ¨  Padlet (padlet.com) shared wall ¨  Bubbl.us (bubbl.us) concept mapping ¨  Dipity (www.dipity.com) timeline

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Collaborative Visualization Ideas

¨  Map it and annotate it ¨  Create and share a timeline (fact or fiction; past,

present, or future) ¨  Concept map class content or ideas

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Presentation and Sharing Tools

¨  Prezi (prezi.com) ¤  Presentations with zooming

animation and collaborative building and sharing

¨  VoiceThread (voicethread.com) ¤  Slide show style presentations

with commentary (text, audio, video) and on-screen annotation

¨  Voki (voki.com) ¤  Talking avatars

¨  Slideshare (slideshare.net) ¤  Sharing presentation and PDF

files ¨  YouTube (youtube.com)

¤  Video Channels with tagging, rating, and commenting

¨  Flickr (flickr.com) ¤  Photo and image sharing with

tagging, rating, commenting, community groups

Sharing Presentations Sharing Artifacts / Collections

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Presentation and Sharing

Example: A Voicethread Presentation

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Presentation and Sharing Ideas

¨  Class presentations doing outside of class time ¨  Formative feedback on class presentations ¨  Weekly summary broadcasts or study guides

(student created) ¨  Presentation of assignment requirements (teacher

led) ¨  Share and seek expert feedback ¨  Create collaborative evidence collections

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Curation Tools

¨  Diigo ¨  Delicious ¨  Learnist ¨  Pinterest ¨  Storify ¨  ScoopIt!

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Curation Ideas 21

¨  Curate a collection of course-related resources for your students or with your students

¨  Curate and share class projects ¨  Engage in visual brainstorming ¨  Do pre-work for research and design projects ¨  Create artifact stories (history, current events,

scientific discovery, fiction) ¨  Develop specialized expertise among students

Communication and Networking Tools

¨  Prominent social media networks ¤ Twitter ¤ Facebook ¤ LinkedIn

¨  Built into most other platforms ¤  Integrated tools (e.g., friend/sharing tools) ¤ Connection to major third-party tools

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Communication and Networking Ideas

¨  Create a backchannel ¨  Crowdsource information needs ¨  Seek expert/community feedback ¨  Build a personal learning network

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Summing Up: Knowledge and Learning Activities

Knowledge

¨  Collect ¨  Curate

¨  Share

¨  Negotiate

¨  Broker

Learning

¨  Collaborative Writing ¨  Collaborative Visualization

¨  Presentation/Sharing

¨  Curation

¨  Communication/Networking

In a class setting, we use learning activities to provide the overall structure for student interactions. Within any learning activity we ask students to engage in one or more knowledge activities.

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Assessment Issues and Ideas

¨  What do you assess? ¤ Process or outcome? ¤  Individual or group?

¨  Some ideas (other than work products): ¤ Portfolios ¤ Archives ¤  Illustrated reflection papers

n Archived interactions n Tracking/analytic data

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Before You Begin …

¨  Make sure YOU know how to use the tool, know the tool’s Terms of Service, etc.

¨  Test all components of the activity (use friends or multiple accounts)

¨  Consider comfort, privacy, identity, and FERPA issues

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Prepare the Learning Environment

¨  Use prompts ¨  Communicate expectations ¨  Create models / examples ¨  Interact along with students

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Turn Concerns Into Guidelines

¨  What if students don’t participate? ¨  What if students participate at the deadline? ¨  What if some students don’t get any replies? ¨  What if students are unkind to each other? ¨  What if students post inappropriate content? ¨  What if students get overwhelmed? ¨  What if students are uncomfortable posting their

thoughts/ideas?

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Social Media Lesson Considerations

¨  Fit with social Internet ecosystem ¨  Sensitivity of learning domain/topic ¨  Learner age / experience ¨  Efficiency / time ¨  Visibility of learners/learning

It’s not always the best choice.

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Areas of Concern

AKA opportunities for education J ¨  Privacy ¨  Copyright ¨  Digital footprints and legacies ¨  Inappropriate oversharing

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Don’t Assume What Learners Want 31

Dennen & Burner (2104) Strongly Agree

Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree

Would like to use Facebook in a class

Users 17 (10%) 66 (41%) 57 (35%) 22 (14%)

Non-‐users 0 (0%) 1 (14%) 1 (14%) 5 (71%)

Comfortable being Facebook friends with instructors

Users 16 (10%) 72 (44%) 59 (36%) 15 (10%)

Non-‐users 0 (0%) 1 (14%) 2 (29%) 4 (57%)

Comfortable using Facebook Groups with instructors

Users 27 (17%) 99 (61%) 32 (20%) 4 (2%)

Non-‐users 0 (0%) 2 (29%) 0 (0%) 5 (71%)

Source: Dennen & Burner (2014)

What do you want to research?

Research on SM in the Classroom 32

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Framing Your Research

¨  Is it *truly* about social media use? ¨  Or is the social media tool just a means to an end?

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Adding to your methodological repertoire …

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¨  Content Analysis ¨  Computer Mediated Discourse Analysis (CMDA) ¨  Social Network Analysis ¨  Analytics

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Tools for Research

¨  Analytic Tools ¤ Built into many SM tools ¤ Third party tools/extensions

¨  Archiving Tools ¤ Save items shared via various SM channels ¤ Searches by hashtag, keyword, tool

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Analytics: Blogger 36

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Analytics: Gmail 37

Analytics: Slideshare 38

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Tools: Hootsuite 42

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Tools: IFTTT 43

Tools: Storify 44

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Some tools you might want to play with

¨  Social Network Analysis tools: ¤ NodeXL: http://nodexl.codeplex.com ¤  SNAPP: http://www.snappvis.org ¤ UCINET: https://sites.google.com/site/ucinetsoftware/

¨  Social Media Analytic/Archiving tools: ¤  Twitter Analytics: https://analytics.twitter.com/about ¤  Tweet Archivist: https://www.tweetarchivist.com ¤ Hootsuite: https://hootsuite.com/

¨  Content analysis tools: ¤  Tagxedo: http://www.tagxedo.com/ ¤  TAPOR: http://taporware.ualberta.ca/~taporware

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Practical Do’s and Don’ts

¨  Keep field notes ¨  Test things in advance

¤ Archiving ¤ Data processing ¤ Analysis

¨  Archive in a timely manner

¨  Blindly adopt analysis frameworks (coding schemes)

¨  Overlook backchannels, offline interactions, etc.

¨  Misjudge privacy levels or concerns

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DO DON’T

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IRB Issues 47

¨  Often the technology is not understood by the reviewer ¨  Need to explain the nature of the virtual space

¤  The public-private continuum ¤ Who can access it ¤ Connections between real/online identities

¨  Consider asking for waiver of consent when: ¤ Chasing down each participant might be challenging ¤  The data and/or analysis results in structural/quantitative,

non-identifiable reporting ¤  You need a full complement of data points (e.g., to depict a

network)

Ethical Issues 48

¨  “Private” is a matter of personal perspective ¨  Participants may not know how to manage their own

privacy settings effectively ¨  Google-ability of quoted data sources

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YOUR research 49

¨  What are your ideas? ¨  What are your questions?

Thank you! 50

¨  You can connect with me at: ¤ [email protected] ¤ @vdennen ¤  slideshare.net/vanessadennen ¤ Also on: diigo, linkedin, pinterest, goodreads …

Using Social Media in Teaching and Research

Education

class class

social media environments

based learning

learning objective

independent learning

active learning mooc

collaborative building

class external