Workshop given at Georgia Southern University College of Education, January 2015

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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 Context4

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The Social Media Mindset
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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?
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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
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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
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¨ 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
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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 Classroom32

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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 …34
¨ 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
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Analytics: Gmail
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Analytics: Slideshare
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Analytics: Slideshare
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Analytics: Slideshare
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Analytics: Slideshare
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Tools: Hootsuite
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Tools: IFTTT
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Tools: Storify
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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
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¨ 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
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¨ “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
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¨ What are your ideas?
¨ What are your questions?
Thank you!
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¨ You can connect with me at:
¤ vdennen@fsu.edu
¤ @vdennen
¤ slideshare.net/vanessadennen
¤ Also on: diigo, linkedin, pinterest, goodreads …