Learning analytics for the social media age
24 Mar 2014-pp 254-256
TL;DR: The panelists will discuss their ongoing work that seeks to understand the affordances and potential roles of social media in learning, as well as to determine and provide methods that can help researchers and educators evaluate the use ofsocial media for teaching and learning based on automated analyses of socialMedia texts and networks.
Abstract: In just a short period of time, social media have altered many aspects of our daily lives, from how we form and maintain social relationships to how we discover, access and share information online. Now social media are also beginning to affect how we teach and learn in this increasingly interconnected and information-rich world. The panelists will discuss their ongoing work that seeks to understand the affordances and potential roles of social media in learning, as well as to determine and provide methods that can help researchers and educators evaluate the use of social media for teaching and learning based on automated analyses of social media texts and networks. The panel will focus on the first phase of this five-year research initiative "Learning Analytics for the Social Media Age" funded by the Social Science and Humanites Research Council of Canada (2013--2018).
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TL;DR: An overview of the measures and potential of a multi-method approach for studying learning via social media is presented, and the theoretical discussion is augmented with study of the case of Twitter discussion from a cMOOC class.
Abstract: In just a short period of time, social media have altered many aspects of our daily lives, from how we form and maintain social relationships to how we discover, access and share information online. Now social media are also affecting how we teach and learn. In this paper, we discuss methods that can help researchers and educators evaluate and understand the observed and potential use of social media for teaching and learning through content and network analyses of social media texts and networks. This paper is based on a workshop given at the 2014 Learning Analytics and Knowledge conference, and presents an overview of the measures and potential of a multi-method approach for studying learning via social media. The theoretical discussion is augmented with study of the case of Twitter discussion from a cMOOC class.
59 citations
01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: In this article, the authors draw on literatures on online organizing, learning science, and emerging educational practice to discuss how collaboration and peer production shape learning and enable "crowdsourcing the curriculum".
Abstract: ABSTRACT Inclusion of open resources that employ a peer-generated approach is changing who learns what, from whom, and via what means. With these changes, there is a shift in responsibilities from the course designer to motivated and self-directed learner-participants. While much research on e-learning has addressed challenges of creating and sustaining participatory environments, the development of massive open online courses calls for new approaches that go beyond the existing research on participatory environments in institutionally defined classes. We decenter institutionally defined classes and broaden the discussion to the literature on the creation of open virtual communities and the operation of open online crowds. We draw on literatures on online organizing, learning science, and emerging educational practice to discuss how collaboration and peer production shape learning and enable “crowdsourcing the curriculum.”
39 citations
TL;DR: This work draws on literatures on online organizing, learning science, and emerging educational practice to discuss how collaboration and peer production shape learning and enable “crowdsourcing the curriculum.”
Abstract: Inclusion of open resources that employ a peer-generated approach is changing who learns what, from whom, and via what means. With these changes, there is a shift in responsibilities from the course designer to motivated and self-directed learner-participants. While much research on e-learning has addressed challenges of creating and sustaining participatory environments, the development of massive open online courses calls for new approaches that go beyond the existing research on participatory environments in institutionally defined classes. We decenter institutionally defined classes and broaden the discussion to the literature on the creation of open virtual communities and the operation of open online crowds. We draw on literatures on online organizing, learning science, and emerging educational practice to discuss how collaboration and peer production shape learning and enable “crowdsourcing the curriculum.”
28 citations
27 Jul 2015
TL;DR: By monitoring social messages in geo-targeted cities, it is hoped that SMART dashboard can assist researchers investigate and monitor various topics, such as flu outbreaks, drug abuse, and Ebola epidemics at the municipal level.
Abstract: We developed a social media analytics and research testbed (SMART) dashboard for monitoring Twitter messages and tracking the diffusion of information in different cities. SMART dashboard is an online geo-targeted search and analytics tool, including an automatic data processing procedure to help researchers to 1) search tweets in different cities; 2) filter noise (such as removing redundant retweets and using machine learning methods to improve precision); 3) analyze social media data from a spatiotemporal perspective, and 4) visualize social media data in various ways (such as weekly and monthly trends, top URLs, top retweets, top mentions, or top hashtags). By monitoring social messages in geo-targeted cities, we hope that SMART dashboard can assist researchers investigate and monitor various topics, such as flu outbreaks, drug abuse, and Ebola epidemics at the municipal level.
23 citations
01 Feb 2020
TL;DR: The results show that informal learning processes occurring in these two communities are determined by the reciprocal and transitive nature of communicative ties among their members, and that moderators play a key role in fostering interactions inThese two communities.
Abstract: Social media has emerged as a space in which people engage in both formal and informal learning, often as people interact with one another. Some of these interactions form the basis for learning ties and learning networks. In this chapter, we study how learning ties are formed and sustained among users of Reddit, a popular social media site. By using a social network analysis approach, we hope to understand how networked members on this site contribute to collaborative learning processes in those communities where we know that learning, and particularly informal learning, is likely to happen. Our overarching goal is to apply what we learn about group dynamics from these more successful communities on Reddit to other communities and even other social media platforms. As a case study for this chapter, we examined two online communities on Reddit: AskStatistics and AskSocialScience. Our results show that informal learning processes occurring in these two communities are determined by the reciprocal and transitive nature of communicative ties among their members. We also found that moderators play a key role in fostering interactions in these two communities.
17 citations
References
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01 Jan 1999
683 citations
TL;DR: It can be concluded that microblogging should be seen as a completely new form of communication that can support informal learning beyond classrooms.
Abstract: Microblogging is one of the latest Web 2.0 technologies. The key elements are online communication using 140 characters and the fact that it involves ''following'' anyone. There has been a great deal of excitement about this in recent months. This paper reports on a research study that was carried out on the use of a microblogging platform for process-oriented learning in Higher Education. Students of the University of Applied Sciences of Upper Austria used the tool throughout their course. All postings were carefully tracked, examined and analyzed in order to explore the possibilities offered by microblogging in education. It can be concluded that microblogging should be seen as a completely new form of communication that can support informal learning beyond classrooms.
579 citations
"Learning analytics for the social m..." refers background in this paper
...Recent research in this area suggests that whether one is submitting questions via Twitter, blogging about current events related to general themes of the class, or using Facebook to carry out class discussions, students’ class participation, engagement, and sometimes even performance, are likely to increase once social media are introduced into the mix [2], [13], [17]....
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TL;DR: This analysis of one person’s Twitter network shows that it is the basis for a real community, even though Twitter was not designed to support the development of online communities.
Abstract: The notion of “community” has often been caught between concrete social relationships and imagined sets of people perceived to be similar. The rise of the Internet has refocused our attention on this ongoing tension. The Internet has enabled people who know each other to use social media, from e-mail to Facebook, to interact without meeting physically. Into this mix came Twitter, an asymmetric microblogging service: If you follow me, I do not have to follow you. This means that connections on Twitter depend less on in-person contact, as many users have more followers than they know. Yet there is a possibility that Twitter can form the basis of interlinked personal communities—and even of a sense of community. This analysis of one person’s Twitter network shows that it is the basis for a real community, even though Twitter was not designed to support the development of online communities. Studying Twitter is useful for understanding how people use new communication technologies to form new social connections and maintain existing ones.
567 citations
"Learning analytics for the social m..." refers background in this paper
...In particular, the panelists will discuss some of the common automated approaches for social network discovery from social media data, such as Twitter, blogs, social bookmarking data and forums in the learning context (see, for example, [3], [4], [5], [6])....
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TL;DR: It is suggested that communication and social networks should be central elements in a distributed learning environment and the addition of personality theory to structural analysis contributes to an enhanced picture of how distributed learners build their social and intellectual capital in the context of CSCL.
Abstract: The aim of this study is to empirically investigate the relationships between communication styles, social networks, and learning performance in a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) community. Using social network analysis (SNA) and longitudinal survey data, we analyzed how 31 distributed learners developed collaborative learning social networks, when they had work together on the design of aerospace systems using online collaboration tools. The results showed that both individual and structural factors (i.e., communication styles and a pre-existing friendship network) significantly affected the way the learners developed collaborative learning social networks. More specifically, learners who possessed high willingness to communicate (WTC) or occupied initially peripheral network positions were more likely to explore new network linkages. We also found that the resultant social network properties significantly influenced learners' performance to the extent that central actors in the emergent collaborative social network tended to get higher final grades. The study suggests that communication and social networks should be central elements in a distributed learning environment. We also propose that the addition of personality theory (operationalized here as communication styles) to structural analysis (SNA) contributes to an enhanced picture of how distributed learners build their social and intellectual capital in the context of CSCL.
448 citations
01 Apr 2011
448 citations
"Learning analytics for the social m..." refers background in this paper
...For example, in the United States, MOOCs are being offered by institutions such as MIT, Harvard, and Berkeley....
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...The use of social media has been growing in university classrooms, with some surveys reporting adoption rates as high as 80% among university classrooms in the United States [15]....
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