Drew Paulin

Uses and Gratifications factors for social media use in teaching: Instructors’ perspectives:

This research was motivated by an interest in understanding how social media are applied in teaching in higher education. Data were collected using an online questionnaire, completed by 333 instructors in higher education, that asked about general social media use and specific use in teaching. Education and learning theories suggest three potential reasons for instructors to use social media in their teaching: (1) exposing students to practices, (2) extending the range of the learning environment, and (3) promoting learning through social interaction and collaboration. Answers to open-ended questions about how social media were used in teaching, and results of a factor analysis of coded results, revealed six distinct factors that align with these reasons for use: (1) facilitating student engagement, (2) instructor’s organization for teaching, (3) engagement with outside resources, (4) enhancing student attention to content, (5) building communities of practice, and (6) resource discovery. These factors accord with a Uses and Gratifications perspective that depicts adopters as active media users choosing and shaping media use to meet their own needs. Results provide a more comprehensive picture of social media use than found in previous work, encompassing not only the array of media used but also the range of purposes associated with use of social media in contemporary teaching initiatives.

Crowdsourcing the curriculum: Redefining e-learning practices through peer-generated approaches

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.”

Tweet to Learn: Expertise and Centrality in Conference Twitter Networks

As Twitter use at academic conferences becomes the norm, this discussion backchannel provides attendees with the opportunity to learn from others engaged in tweeting information immediately relevant to the conference. This study uses social constructivist and connectivist learning theories to examine the role of more knowledgeable others (MKOs) in learning networks, and asks how the positions they occupy in the social network allow them to share knowledge. To examine their role, social network analyses were conducted on Twitter network data collected from the Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference 2014. Findings indicate that more knowledgeable others occupy highly central positions in the network, and that these positions allow them to effectively provide attendees with access to their expertise and knowledge.

Social Media in Educational Practice: Faculty Present and Future Use of Social Media in Teaching

This paper presents results from a questionnaire (n=333) designed to gain an understanding of instructor motivations and experience with social media use in educational practice. Data on overall use of social media, and instructors’ use of social media in classes are applied to assess factors leading to present and future use of social media in teaching, using a framework based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) model. Our findings show use in teaching is driven by factors associated with UTAUT’s Performance Expectancy construct, i.e., personal engagement with social media, and Moderating Condition of age, with older participants making greater use of social media in teaching. Other constructs associated with use are Habit (experience teaching online), Social Influence (colleagues using social media), Effort Expectancy (awareness of barriers, staying informed), Facilitating Conditions (institutional technology support) and Moderating Conditions (teaching at a two-year college).

Linking Online Identities and Content in Connectivist MOOCs across Multiple Social Media Platforms

In this paper, we examine how multiple social media platforms are being used for formal and informal learning by examining data from two connectivist MOOCs (or cMOOCs). Our overarching goal is to develop and evaluate methods for learning analytics to detect and study collaborative learning processes. For this paper, we focus on how to link multiple online identities of learners and their contributions across several social media platforms in order to study their learning behaviours in open online environments. Many challenges were found in collection, processing, and analyzing the data; results are presented here to provide others with insight into such issues for examining data across multiple open media platforms.

Media multiplexity in connectivist MOOCs

In this poster, we present work on exploring use of multiple social media platforms for learning in two connectivist MOOCs (or cMOOCs) to develop and evaluate methods for learning analytics to detect and study collaborative learning processes.

Learning in the wild: coding for learning and practice on Reddit

ABSTRACT Learning on and through social media is becoming a cornerstone of lifelong learning, creating places not only for accessing information, but also for finding other self-motivated learners. Such is the case for Reddit, the online news sharing site that is also a forum for asking and answering questions. We studied learning practices found in ‘Ask’ subreddits AskScience, Ask_Politics, AskAcademia, and AskHistorians to develop a coding schema for informal learning. This paper describes the process of evaluating and defining a workable coding schema, one that started with attention to learning processes associated with discourse, exploratory talk, and conversational dialogue, and ended with including norms and practices on Reddit and the support of communities of inquiry. Our ‘learning in the wild’ coding schema contributes a content analysis schema for learning through social media, and an understanding of how knowledge, ideas, and resources are shared in open, online learning forums.