Royce Kimmons

The fragmented educator 2.0: Social networking sites, acceptable identity fragments, and the identity constellation

Social networking sites (SNS) have been used to support educational and professional endeavors. However, little research has been done to understand the relationship between educator identity and participation in SNS or to examine the implications that institutional regulation of such media may have upon educator identity. Using grounded theory, in this study we developed a framework for understanding how a group of teacher education students viewed their developing identities within social networking sites as they began the life transition to becoming educators. The theory that emerged from this study proposes that educator identity consists of a constellation of interconnected acceptable identity fragments, which are each intentional, authentic, transitional, necessarily incomplete, and socially-constructed and -responsive. This view of educator identity contrasts sharply with previous views of identity by highlighting the complicated, negotiated, and recursive relationship that exists between educator participation in SNS and educator identity. Additionally, this perspective suggests that educator participation in SNS is neither fully representative of authentic identity (as prominent SNS models imply) nor dramaturgical. These findings yield important implications for educators, researchers, educational institutions, lawmakers, and SNS developers alike, because they lead to a more sophisticated understanding of identity and online participation that is essential for developing mechanisms to support moral and legal judgments, professionalism, and social interactions relative to SNS.

Attitude, Achievement, and Gender in a Middle School Science-based Ludic Simulation for Learning

This study examined the learning experiences of 478 middle school science students using a problem-based ludic simulation over a 3-week period to learn space science. Findings from both quantitative and qualitative data revealed that use of the simulation supported student learning and that knowledge gains helped reduce gender-based achievement gaps between boys and girls in the subject matter. Student attitude was additionally linked to learning success while using the simulation. These findings suggest that student engagement and self-recognition of progress and learning are important design factors when developing problem-based learning experiences.

Online system adoption and K-12 academic outcomes

This study seeks to understand the relationship between K-12 online system adoption e.g., Blackboard, Edmodo, WordPress and school-level academic achievement ratings. Utilizing a novel approach to data collection via website data extraction and indexing of all school websites in a target state in the United States n=732 and merging these data with publicly available data on school academic achievement ratings, this study provides generalizable results of online system adoption on academic achievement ratings for the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 school years. Univariate general linear modelling is used to determine significant relationships between categories of systems e.g., any, education-specific, generic, cost, no-cost, proprietary, open-source or specific systems and school academic ratings for each year. The results indicate some general positive effects, but effect sizes remain small and account for 2% or less of variance in ratings. Implications of this study suggest that online system adoption does not impact student academic achievement at a sufficient level to justify adoption that is not meaningfully coupled with other essential factors of school development e.g., professional development, curricular development, and we propose that decision-makers should be wary of large-scale, technocentric attempts to improve schools that are not grounded in generalizable research findings.

Open online system adoption in K-12 as a democratising factor

This study seeks to understand how district size and wealth factors influence the adoption of open-source online systems in primary and secondary (K-12) education. Most schools now utilise online systems (e.g. CMS, LMS, SIS) for a number of purposes, and it is anticipated that no-cost and open-source systems could be of great value for democratising access to information system resources and improving the plight of struggling schools. By using web extraction techniques to collect all public school website data for K-12 districts in the target state (n = 133) and merging this data-set with public financial records, researchers conducted a series of one-way analysis of covariance and multivariate analysis of variance tests to determine main effects. Results indicate that larger, wealthier districts are more likely to adopt open source systems than smaller, poorer districts. These results call into question the democratising impact of open-source systems for struggling schools and suggest the importance of literacy development for supporting open adoption.

Selective openness, branding, broadcasting, and promotion: Twitter use in Canada’s public universities

Abstract Higher education institutions have embraced social media platforms. Yet, little research has examined the characteristics of institutional social media accounts and the narratives their posts construct for faculty and student life. By investigating these topics, researchers can better understand the actual and potential roles of these tools in contemporary universities. This study focused on understanding how Canada’s public universities use Twitter, reporting descriptive, inferential, and qualitative analyses of large-scale Twitter data. Findings show extensive variability in participation patterns among institutions. Although rhetoric surrounding Twitter suggests an interactive platform, institutions mostly use it to broadcast information and construct overwhelmingly positive representations of institutional life. While the identified representations are partly authentic, they are also incomplete and misleading. Such representations suggest difficulty for students and faculty seeking to use social media to accurately anticipate campus life or to interact online in these spaces.

Public comment sentiment on educational videos: Understanding the effects of presenter gender, video format, threading, and moderation on YouTube TED talk comments

Scholars, educators, and students are increasingly encouraged to participate in online spaces. While the current literature highlights the potential positive outcomes of such participation, little research exists on the sentiment that these individuals may face online and on the factors that may lead some people to face different types of sentiment than others. To investigate these issues, we examined the strength of positive and negative sentiment expressed in response to TEDx and TED-Ed talks posted on YouTube (n = 655), the effect of several variables on comment and reply sentiment (n = 774,939), and the projected effects that sentiment-based moderation would have had on posted content. We found that most comments and replies were neutral in nature and some topics were more likely than others to elicit positive or negative sentiment. Videos of male presenters showed greater neutrality, while videos of female presenters saw significantly greater positive and negative polarity in replies. Animations neutralized both the negativity and positivity of replies at a very high rate. Gender and video format influenced the sentiment of replies and not just the initial comments that were directed toward the video. Finally, we found that using sentiment as a way to moderate offensive content would have a significant effect on non-offensive content. These findings have far-reaching implications for social media platforms and for those who encourage or prepare students and scholars to participate online.

Religious implications of social media in education

Abstract Widespread social media adoption has introduced threats and opportunities for religious and educational institutions alike, and each institutional type has responded in its own way to them. In this literature review, we (a) explore how world religious leaders have sought to use social media as a means for supporting religious expression, (b) establish how the research literature has encouraged educational institutions to essentially colonize these spaces for informal and formal learning purposes, and (c) identify some tensions that these two institutional forces introduce into the lives of social media users who must simultaneously navigate educational and religious aspects of use.

Can I Use This? Developing Open Literacies or Understanding the Basics and Implications of Copyright, Fair Use, and Open Licensing for e-Learning

Open educational resources (OER) have garnered increased attention in recent years as a means for driving down educational costs, addressing differentiation and adaptability needs, improving accuracy and quality of materials, and supporting collaboration in the design of digital coursework. Perhaps one of the greatest identified barriers in the adoption of OER has been a lack of literacy regarding copyright, fair use, and open licensing. These concepts are commonly misunderstood in educational institutions. Many instructors and educational leaders struggle with understanding what is copyrighted, when it is copyrighted, what it means if it is copyrighted, and what open means. This leads educational leaders and their programs to either improperly use these materials (i.e., illegally or unethically) or to be fearful when using them in legitimate, allowable ways. Through this chapter, we seek to provide educational leaders with an understanding of what is necessary to make full and safe use of both copyrighted and open educational resources.

Mining social media divides: an analysis of K-12 U.S. School uses of Twitter

ABSTRACT This study utilizes public data mining to explore participation divides of all available K-12 institutional Twitter accounts in the U.S. (n = 8275 accounts, n = 9,216,853 tweets). Results indicated that U.S. schools used Twitter to broadcast information on a variety of topics in a unidirectional manner and that hashtags included a variety of intended purposes, including affinity spaces, education topics, emotive language, and events. Those schools in wealthier, more populated areas were more likely to use Twitter, with wealthy, suburban schools being the most likely to use it and poor, rural schools being the least likely. Furthermore, factors such as charter school status and urbanity influenced the content of school tweets on key issues, with schools in more populated areas tweeting more about coding and college than schools in less populated areas and charter schools tweeting more about college and the politicized educational issue of common core than non-charters. These results reveal participation differences between schools based upon demographics and provides a basis for conducting future large-scale work on publicly available artifacts, such as school tweets, that may be meaningfully used as education research data.