Group items tagged

In this article, researchers created a MOOC focused on assisting professors understand and apply the Carpe Deim design method to designing their own courses. In addition to using the LMS Blackboard as the vehicle for MOOC publishing, facilitators were interested in studying the effects social media had on MOOC participants. MOOC facilitators used Facebook and Twitter as the two main social media platforms. Facebook was used to ask questions, seek help and discuss issues. Twitter was used to share information and resources and participants were encouraged to share their thoughts and experiences using #CDMOOC. Upon completion of the MOOC, Facebook was the most used site compared to Twitter. Out of 1000 MOOC participants who were surveyed at completion, 29 agreed to be further interviewed about their social media engagement; half used at least one of the social media platform revealing "the most used form of social media was Facebook (used by 31%), a small minority (3%) used Twitter only, while 14% of interviewees utilized both Facebook and Twitter". Three themes that emerged from the study related to MOOC and social engagement revealed three themes. One, social media did enhance online collaborative learning for participants. Two, the ability to engage with diverse knowledgeable professionals was enjoyed by many participants. Three, main objections why participants did not engage with social media include a belief it may be a waste of time, unfamiliarity with platforms and identity concerns.

Were you able to share your annotations because it was a web version of the article rather than the .PDF? I tried to do that with mine but couldn't get it to work.

Tess (2013) provides a great review of the literature on the role of social media in the higher education context. Tess (2013) suggests that as instructors look for ways to incorporate technology to mediate and enhance their instructions as well as promote active learning among students, they increasingly turn to different social media tools. The author argues that the current literature on the integration of social media in higher education are limited to self-reported data and content analyses. Therefore, he provides a summary of literature on the role of social media in the higher education classroom as well as discusses their limitations. Various studies (cited below) explored the role of social media and SNSs in different contexts of education -teaching learning process. These studies have demonstrated interesting and useful results. Tess (2013), in addition to keyword-specific searches, used a "snowball" method for finding the articles from the relevant articles cited in the literature reviewed. To narrow the range of the review, he chooses articles on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blog and LinkedIn. Tess (2013) provides a brief definition of each of these five SNSs. He also looks at the social impact of these popular SNS tools. The author looks at the factors motivating the educators to use social media in higher education classrooms, such as: the changing nature of the student, the changing knowledge consumption relationship, and the de-emphasis of institutionally provided learning and emergence of "user-driven" education (Selwyn, 2010). The author provides platform-specific affordances and drawbacks in terms of their application in the higher education space. Tess (2013) argues that although the infrastructure to support social media's presence exists in most universities today, instructors have been slow in adopting the tool as an educational one. Those who are adopting are still likely in the experimental stage. He admits that his literature rev

In this article, two Australian researchers investigated whether Twitter can be used to foster enhanced student engagement within a university level sport marketing course. 68 students participated in the study. 59% of the class did not have an existing Twitter account and had to sign up for one to participate in the study. There were two aspects of Twitter user during the course. First, students would participate in two discussion lectures, which was structured much the same as a Twitter chat, with questions posted in advance of the actual discussion. The second aspect was to regularly post contemporary issues in sport marketing that coincided with the course content. Much like EME 6414, students used a hashtagged course code to be able to track the activity and respond to their classmates. I thought it was interesting that the researchers explicitly advised existing Twitter users that they did not have to censor their regular Twitter activity, as the instructor would only follow the course hashtag. This appears to be a clear acknowledgement of the potential for context collapse when social media is incorporated into an educational setting. Questionnaires were administered to broadly measure aspects of student engagement. The results suggest that Twitter was effective in the university classroom as engagement levels increased over the semester. Twitter made it easier for students to connect with both the instructor and other students and extend that connection beyond the lecture time in the classroom. These networking tools also allow students to take on a more active role in the co-creation of the course content. I think this is one of the most significant advantages of incorporating social networking elements into the classroom. The biggest limitations of the study were its small sample size and homogeneous population. Future studies should include more students from various disciplines.

It took me a very long time to find the comment button to add another thought to my original post. Not nearly as noticeable as other discussion platforms. Anyway...I wanted to add that this article was very appropriate right now because the TA for EME 5608 is currently conducting research on a very similar topic, specifically "when and how social media apps like Instagram are used by students (without instructor participation) to support social interaction and build social connections in online courses." I know some of you are also in that course and I'm curious what your opinions are on the experiment? Do you think that interacting on Instagram has increased your social connections and added benefit to the learning experience?

It also took me a long time to find the comment button! You are not alone in that!

This blog post introduces tools for social media analytics (particularly Twitter). Some of them may support cross platform analysis (not just Twitter). Have you played with any of them before? I've explored TAGS and Socioviz just a little bit.

This is a beginner's guide to social media analytics. This article covers what social media analytics are, common social media platform analytics (and what they are called, ex. Facebook can be found on "Insights tab", and steps on how to track analytics.

A humorous look at social media lurkers.

This article offers a rethinking of Lev Vygotsky' s social constructivism theory Applied in the classroom use of social media. Presenting two case studies, one with media literacy course using Facebook page and the other with communication in justice course using Wiki for collaboration, the article provided both professors' and students' perspectives on advantages and challenges of using social media for learning.

I appreciate the explanation in this article about context collapse. It makes sense. This article definitely made me want to go back and check privacy settings and to think more about my likes.

Thought this was a neat tool, and free, for those wishing to research content. Simply give us an address, we'll scan the website and provide reports on each page for all the major social networks that are easy to understand. Track your own website's progression or see how you stack up against another website, why not? It's free and easy to get started within a minute!

You could say there's a universe of ways people measure the ROI from their social media marketing. Some of the more popular methods, like counting Facebook "likes" and re-tweets, have very little meaning to the CFO, while other newly developed formulas around engagement can be, well, rather creative.

Tagging because I want to read it, but thought some of you might be interested as well.

Interesting piece. I've heard lots about the debate over scholarship versus service, and thought that Bessette's analogy to blogging as service was fascinating. Knowledge sharing may not be scholarship in the traditional sense, but it certainly plays an important role in pushing higher education forward, so maybe it should be considered a real part of a scholar's contributions to the field.

I know some bloggers who are actively lobbying to consider their blogs as scholarship. Some have submitted archives as part of promotion dossiers. Generally, they're not at R1 universities -- although there are plenty of R1 scholars who see how blogging and other social media interactions can enhance their scholarship via promoting their work and building their networks. And many have also talked about the effect it has had on their writing. I think I'll blog about that sometime in the next week.

This was interesting... students who were heavy users of social media did not spend less time studying - so social media is neutral on grades on that point. Students who are on social media about what they are studying have slightly higher grades.

This blog makes the statement that social media helps students relate their life to their school work via social media... making school work more "active."

This tool was created based on research that identified barriers higher ed instructors faced when incorporating social media into their classrooms. After completed some questions, the tool uses algorithms based on pedagogical principles to suggest tools, strategies and guidelines for incorporating social media in higher ed classrooms.

This article by Fischbach and Zarzosa outlines use of a social media analytics assignment for business students. The article outlines the value of social media analytics in business education and defines associated terminology. Specific details about implementation of the assignment are provided. The appendix provides suggested student instructions.