AERA 2023 Conference Activity
Early Career Scholar Award, from the Technology as an Agent of Change in Teaching & Learning (TACTL) SIG
Discussant: Teacher Use of Social Media for Teaching and Professional Development (4/13/23)
Presentation 1 - I Wanna Go Where Nobody Knows My Name: Affinity and Anonymity in the r/Teachers Subreddit (Hunhui Na & Bret Staudt Willet)
Presentation 2 - From “Greatest Teachers’ Lounge!” to “As Stupid as the Internet Gets”: Educator Perceptions of TikTok (Jeff Carpenter, Scott Morrison, Catharyn Shelton, Nyree Clark, Sonal Patel, & Dani Toma-Harrold)
Presentation 3 - “I Love Feeling Connected Still”: Educator Preparation Program Alumni Engagement Through Social Media (Jeff Carpenter, Scott Morrison, & Josh Rosenberg)
Presentation 4 - The Teacher-to-Teacher Online Marketplace of Ideas: A Case Study of Teachers’ Pedagogical Design Capacity (Rachelle Curcio, Lisa Lundren, & Stephanie Schroeder)
Presentation 5 - Why Is There a Picture of Me on Snapchat? Educational Approaches to Social Media Oversharing (Gulhan Sari & Dan Krutka)
Slides
Meeting Notes: Design & Technology SIG (4/15/23)
Roundtable: The Nature of Online Discussions: Structure, Content, and Discourse in Whole Class vs. Small Groups (4/15/23)
Mete Akcaoglu & Bret Staudt Willet
Keywords
online learning, online discussions, class discussions, social network analysis
Purpose
In this paper, we discuss the outcomes from an intervention where graduate students in an asynchronous online course were placed in a whole group discussion for four weeks, and into small discussion groups during the following four weeks. Previous research indicated this intervention led to increased social presence perceptions among students. In the current study, we found that the intervention led to positive changes in the social network structure, as well as increased vocabulary indicating social belongingness, as measured using computational linguistic analyses. We discuss the findings and implications in light of asynchronous online learning and benefits from such simple interventions.
Pre-Print
Presentation: Social Media’s Impact on Instruction: Beginning Teachers’ Self-Directed Professional Learning (4/15/23)
Bret Staudt Willet
Keywords
beginning teachers, early-career teachers, self-directed learning, professional learning networks, pedagogical content knowledge, social media
Purpose
Beginning teachers face numerous challenges as they start their careers. Although social media offer new opportunities for teachers’ ongoing professional learning through access to extra resources and broader expertise (Trust & Prestridge, 2021), these platforms also introduce new complications and challenges: beginning teachers must juggle more outlets for professional learning and potentially competing voices for what and how to teach. Through qualitative research, I explore social media’s impact on beginning teachers’ instructional practice.