Sarah Gilbert

The Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS): A New Instrument to Characterize University STEM Classroom Practices

To help institutions collect information on undergraduate teaching practices, the authors developed a new classroom observation protocol known as the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS). This protocol allows college science, technology, engineering, and mathematics faculty, after a short training period, to reliably characterize how faculty and students are spending their time in class.

Transforming Science Education at Large Research Universities: A Case Study in Progressxs

There are countless reports stressing the economic and societal benefits to be gained from improved science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education for all students. But although there ...

The Teaching Practices Inventory: A New Tool for Characterizing College and University Teaching in Mathematics and Science

The teaching practices inventory characterizes the teaching methods used in university science and mathematics courses, including the extent of use of research-based teaching practices. Data from many courses across five departments are presented.

Learning in a Twitter-based community of practice: an exploration of knowledge exchange as a motivation for participation in #hcsmca

ABSTRACT Through participation in communities of practice (CoPs), those with a common interest can share in learning about and improving practices within their domain (Wenger, E. (2006). Communities of practice: A brief introduction. Retrieved from http://wenger-trayner.com/theory/). As CoPs move online, there is increased potential for more expansive and diverse membership. By providing a space in which a global population of members can engage with each other and access and contribute information and knowledge, social media may be used to support online CoPs. Although not originally designed for community development, Twitter is one social media platform that is being used in innovative ways to support communities. This study explores learning as a motivation for participating in the successful Twitter-based CoP Health Care Social Media Canada (#hcsmca). #hcsmca uses tweet chats (planned synchronous discussions aggregated by a hashtag) to engage in robust dialogues associated with learning and knowledge creation. Interviews with 24 #hcsmca community members show that learning is a fundamental motivator for participation in the community. Twitter was found to be a platform that enables learning for #hcsmca members, albeit not universally. Four thematic elements of learning in #hcsmca were identified. For interviewees, learning was a motivation for participating in the community because they were able to access and share expertise, discover who knows what within the healthcare community, access novel information through interactions with members who have diverse personal and professional backgrounds, and learn information that they could apply in their personal and professional lives.

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.

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).

Portraits of Participation: Exploring the Relationship between Social Motivators and Facets of Participation in a Twitter-based Community

Twitter is a platform where people can coalesce around a common interest, signaled by a hashtag, and form a community of practice. As with all online initiatives, questions remain about what motivates people to follow and contribute to communities, and why they participate in varying degrees. This paper explores social motivations for participation in the Twitter-based community of practice, #hcsmca (Healthcare Social Media Canada), formed in 2010 to discuss issues in healthcare within a Canadian context. Analysis of 24 semi-structured interviews identified three important social motivations: tapping into a social network of people with a common interest, developing personal and professional relationships, and the community ethos. Portraits of participation based on three facets of participation, length of time as a community member, depth of engagement in the community, and frequency of participation, were developed to describe community members’ motivations at varying levels of participation.

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.

Motivations for Participating in Online Initiatives: Exploring Contributory Behaviour Across Initiative Types

Online initiatives, a term that describes goal-oriented systems such as crowdsourcing, peer production, and online communities, are increasingly popular ways to source work from and harness the skills of distributed populations. The explosion of online initiatives in recent years has inspired scholarship examining why people contribute to these initiatives. While there is an abundance of case studies on motivation, there is a dearth of research that explores motivation between initiative types. Through case studies of two online initiatives, my dissertation research explores relationships between initiative structure, engagement, and participant role on motivation.