CCLI Grant: Theoretical and Applied Approaches to teaching Social Computing in
STEM Education
THE PROBLEM: Two emerging and quickly growing new areas of technology design
are social software and social computing. An important social software category is the
online learning environment. Although universities have embraced the use of online
environments to provide distance and blended science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics (STEM) courses, educators tend to focus their efforts on content delivery,
rather than building social networks. Currently, there is little research on how STEM
students establish social networks when they interact in online learning environments.
Forming social networks, relationship building, and creating social capital are the new
focal points of social media and the development of social software. To date,
undergraduate STEM students are not being trained in this important topic of technology
design. To help solve this problem, an interdisciplinary team of Rochester Institute of
Technology (RIT) professors wants to create an undergraduate STEM course on the
theoretical and practical use of social computing, with an emphasis on building social
networks and social capital in STEM online learning environments. The objective of this
course is to prepare undergraduate STEM students for careers in the design and
development of social media.
The project has two primary goals and one secondary objective. The first primary
goal is to improve technology education by introducing the new discipline of social
computing into the STEM curriculum. A measurable outcome of this goal is the level of
student understanding of social media before and after they have taken the course. The
second primary goal is the preparation of undergraduates for positions in the social media
sector of the technology industries. A measurable outcome of this goal is a student’s
perceived awareness of career opportunities in this new sector of the technology
marketplace. Data will be collected through pre- and post-test surveys to measure these
two goals.
A secondary objective of this project, is the tracking of the formation of social network
building within three different online learning environments. Analysis of this data will
provide a case study for the course and insight into how students build social networks in
different online environments. Dynamic Social Impact Theory will used to examine the
clustering of task related versus socially oriented message sharing.
Intellectual Merit: By bringing together human-computer-interaction theories with
social theory this project will help to create a theoretical foundation for future research in
the area of social media, online learning technologies, and the development of social
networks. We will gain a better understanding about how students use online learning
environments to communication task-oriented messages and maintain social interactions.
By bringing together IT and social science, the PIs will be creating a model course for
teaching the topic of social computing that can be used at other universities. In addition,
we will be starting a new interdisciplinary course of study at RIT that combines
computing with liberal arts.
Broader Impact: Presently, 380 social media companies have already been formed and
many of these companies are raising venture capital (see Jaffe, 2005). Additionally, small
and large corporations have started social software labs, including Six Apart, Meetup
Inc., IBM, Yahoo, Microsoft and Xerox PARC. By establishing start-up companies and
labs, the technology industries recognize the need to develop skills for this emerging
market. We will be preparing students with the skills needed for this emerging
technology industry. The course developed at RIT could become a model for teaching
social media at other colleges. Additionally, we will collect data to better understand
task-oriented versus socially-oriented message clusters in online learning. Moreover, by
better understanding social computing environments we could begin to engage more
women and minority students in the practice of technology development because social
media combines information technology with the study of human behavior. Social media
is a blending of IT and social science. This course will introduce social computing to
liberal arts students to present computing opportunities to a wider audience that includes
women and minorities.
RATIONALE: Currently, universities have not kept pace with the social media
industries by establishing curricula for STEM students to enter this new area of
technology development. The principal investigators on this grant want to help solve this
problem by establishing one of the first undergraduate courses (and eventually a complete
program) for STEM students on the topic of social media. This initial interdisciplinary
course will introduce the concepts of social software design, social computing, and
sociability in online communication. The course will provide STEM students with both a
theoretical understanding of social technologies and hands-on practical experience with
the social tools that apply to online learning environments.
Social media is an umbrella concept that describes social software and social
networking. Social software, is a term that was coined by Clay Shirky. “Social software
refers to various, loosely connected types of applications that allow individuals to
communicate with one another, and to track discussions across the Web as they happen”
(Tepper, 2003, p. 19). The term may be new, however the idea of social media has been
available on the Internet for a long time. Social media include bulletin boards, instant
messages, online role-play games, computer-supported-collaborative work (CSCW), and
online education.
A goal of social media is “the design of systems that supports groups with an
underlying value proposition of building social capital” (Rowland, 2004, par. 5). Social
capital is the development of an individual’s personal social network (Van Der Gaag &
Snijders, 2004). According to Wellman, Haase, Witte & Hampton (2001), social capital
is increased offline interpersonal contact, organizational and political participation, and
commitment to community. Simply stated, social software is software that enables people
to interact with each other and build social networks that increase their social capital.
The idea of social media is a new concept that has come to the public’s attention
through programs such as music and photo sharing, the press around the Dean
campaign’s use of blogging, the social networking site meetup.com and even the “Dean
for Iowa” web game used to train supporters in outreach skills. Social software is already
starting to change political, social, and personal communication patterns between
individuals and organizations in the U.S. For instance, online learning environments
provide distance education to people in remote regions. Wiki environments support
collaborative teams and the building of research communities. Web sites, such as meet-
up.com and Match.com are altering the ways in which members of political parties
organize and couples meet each other. From politics to romance, social media is
influencing how people meet and connect with each other. The current use of social
media tools has already had a profound influence on American social, professional, and
political life.
Although the technology industry is embracing the development of social media
tools, universities are not properly preparing their undergraduates for employment in this
new sector of media design. Presently, social media courses are not generally offered to
undergraduate STEM students. However, graduate programs are available at MIT’s
Media Lab and New York University’s Interactive Telecommunication Program.
To meet the need for undergraduate education in social media, RIT recently
started the first university supported Lab for Social Computing (LSC) to foster research
and content for undergraduate and graduate studies in this new area of technological
research. In moving beyond the on-going research in the LSC, the PIs want to develop
undergraduate courses that specifically teach the concepts of social media. Education
relating to social technologies involves software design, information technologies and
social science. This is an interdisciplinary area of research that combines the human
sciences (communication, psychology, sociology) with technology sciences (information
design, human-computer-interaction, software programming).
Integral to the idea of social media is the building of social networks between
students and faculty, students and students, and students and industry professionals. In
the STEM university setting, social media is often used in online education. At RIT,
online education takes two forms. First, as blended learning courses, a combination of
face-to-face and online learning environments. Second, as completely distance education
formats.
To meet the objective of this proposal, an introductory, interdisciplinary course on
social media and social software will be developed by the PIs. Content development for
the course brings together professors from the B. Thomas Golisano College of
Computing & Information Sciences and the College of Liberal Arts to explore the
theoretical and practical uses of social media and social software tools. Because our
objective is to teach the course for both theoretical and applied learning, the course will
be taught in a blended format that combines face-to-face teaching with online
assignments and interactions.
To develop a practical case study for the course, students will be broken into three
groups that use one of three different online learning environments, such as First Class,
RIT’s My Courses, Moodle, and blogs, which many faculty are adopting as an alternative
or supplement to more conventional on-line course management technologies. Students
will be evaluating social media tools, social networks, and social learning environments
as they use these tools themselves.
Our case study of the social aspects of learning environments will help to
demonstrate, how the software tools included in these programs support (or sometimes
impede) student participation and social network formation, which leads to the building
of social capital. Using three different online educational environments will provide the
PIs with a hands-on case study based on the students’ experiences with social software
environments and tools. Additionally, an evaluation of these programs can then guide the
PI’s in the selection of online learning environments for the future teaching of STEM
students in blended and distance education courses.
The course will be designed to teach concepts of social media and explore the
dimensions of social behavior developed in online learning environments. Online
learning is an important example of the practical use of social computing. In contrast to
evaluating online learning in terms of content (Berge & Collins,1998) or skills (DeWitt,
2001; Selfe, 1999), social computing examines the relationships that are built between
students, faculty, and industry professionals to collaborate and build social capital.
In addition to teaching social media from a theoretical perspective, the
undergraduate students will be engaged in learning by participating in and evaluating the
different online learning environments, employed in the different course sections. As the
students engage in online assignments, two graduate students will analyze the social
networks they develop and build. Toward the end of the quarter, the graduate students
will present their preliminary findings on the social networks being formed in the three
learning environments. Using the graduate research information, the undergraduate
students will further evaluate the social aspects of the three learning environments in a
final capstone project.
The rationale for this approach is to combine theory and practice. Social
computing is such a new area of study that faculty need to conduct research and develop
case studies to teach the content. Analyzing the social networks emerging as the students
learn about social media and the social computing industries, we have an opportunity to
examine how students utilize social media tools in three different online learning
environments. In addition, we will be examining the clustering of task versus social
messages. Because the undergraduates will be participating in research being conducted
by the PIs and the two graduate students, we will need to get IRB approval. Presently,
the principal PI on this project is a member of RIT’s institutional review board. Proper
permissions will be received prior to the teaching of the course.
PROJECT OBJECTIVES: The objective of the course is to present theoretical and
practical concepts used in the design and application of social media, a new segment of
the technology industries. This primary objective is designed to enhance a student’s
knowledge of career opportunities in this sector of the technology marketplace.
To meet the goals of teaching students a theoretical and applied understanding of
social media, the course content is divided into three dimensions: technical
considerations, social considerations, and usability considerations of computer-mediated
experiences.
The technical dimension of computer-mediated system design relates to the
architecture and implementation of such systems. One level of technical consideration is
the classification of computer-mediated applications, as the level of classification dictates
the technical features a developer or user would expect to be present. Technical
classifications of computer-mediated collaborations include:
 collections of static and dynamic web pages along with Internet-enabled
applications such as e-mail and newsgroups
 synchronous communication systems such as synchronous chat systems,
instant messaging systems, and video messaging systems
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web logging (blog) systems for personal journalism and community
feedback including Movable Type (Six Apart, 2005), Serendipity
(Serendipity, 2005), and WordPress (WordPress, 2005)
in-place web authoring systems for collaborative authoring of web spaces
such as Futplex (Holtman, 1996), Sparrow (Chang, 1998), Swiki/CoWeb
(Guzdial, 1998; Guzdial, 1999; Guzdial, Rick, & Kehoe, 2001), and
Wikiwikiweb (Cunningham & Leuf, 2001)
discussion forum systems such as SpeakEasy (Hoadley, Hsi, & Berman,
1995), Web4Groups (Palme, 1998), Ceilidh (Lilikoi, 2002), and phpbb
(phpbb, 2003)
collaborative document management systems such as BSCW (Bentley,
Appelt, Busbach, Hinrichs, Kerr, Sikkel, et al., 1997; Bentley,
Horstmann, Sikkel, & Trevor, 1995), Shadow (Ciancarini, Fantini, &
Rossi, 1997), and TeamSCOPE (Steinfeld, Jang, & Pfaff, 1999).
course management systems including WebCT (Goldberg, 1996;
Goldberg, Salari, & Swoboda, 1996, WebCT, 2002), Virtual-U
(Groeneboer, Stockley, & Calvert, 1997), ClassNet (Van Gorp &
Boysen, 1997), RAISE (Cleaver & Toole, 1999), and BlackBoard
(BlackBoard, 2002)
anchored collaboration systems such as CoNote (Davis & Huttenlocher,
1995), ComMentor (Röscheisen, Mogensen, & Winograd, 1995),
CaMILE/WebCaMILE (Carlson, Guzdial, Kehoe, Shah, & Stasko, 1996;
Guzdial, 1997; Guzdial 2002), Anchored Conversations (Churchill,
Trevor, Bly, Nelson, & Cubranic, 2000), and Kukakuka (Suthers & Xu,
2002)
There are a number of high-level technical considerations that must be examined
in the design of computer-mediated systems. First, computer-mediated systems must
provide mechanisms for supporting different models of spatial and temporal
collaboration. As according to Johansen, Sibbet, Benson, Martin, Mittman, and Saffo
(1991), such mechanisms can be classified into systems that support same-time/sameplace, same-time/different-place, different-time/same-place, and different-time/differentplace communications. Second, computer-mediated systems must provide mechanisms
for session management. For example, the system must provide mechanisms to
synchronize and coordinate individuals engaged in shared artifact manipulation, shared
action or activity, and shared communication based upon shared proximity clues
(Kristoffersen & Ljungberg, 1999). Third, computer-mediated systems must provide
technical considerations for searching, sorting, and filtering content. Finally, computermediated systems must provide mechanisms for access and control such that actions are
synchronized across multiple users and the potentials for illegal actions are minimized
(Jones, 1998).
There are also a number of low-level considerations that must be examined.
These include the development of collaborative systems from the context of web-based
network protocols (Fielding, Gettys, Mogul, Frystyk, & Berners-Lee, 1997), markup
languages (W3C, 1999), client-side web browser technologies (ECMA, 1997; Wood et
al., 2000), as well as server side technologies including server-side scripting languages
(Microsoft Corporation, 2002; PHP Group, 2003; Sun Microsystems, 2003a, 2003b) and
database technologies (mySQL AB, 2005; PostgreSQL, 2005).
The social dimension examines the interconnections made between people
experiencing a computer-mediated activity. The social dimension addresses the
individual’s perception of belonging to a community (see McMillan & Chavis, 1986) as
well as the organization of relationships in terms of roles, responsibilities, and activities
(Donath, 1999; Dyson, 1997; Hiltz & Wellman, 1997; Jones, 1998). Social
considerations include the formation and maintenance of social networks as well as the
creation of social capital (Prell, 2003; Van Der Gaag & Snijders, 2004; Wellman, Haase,
Witte, & Hampton, 2001), the formation of identity by the individual and the perception
of identity by other users (Turkle, 1995; Donath, 1999), trust and reputation (Chopra &
Wallace, 2003; Jensen, Davis, & Farnham, 2002), social and activity awareness (Dourish
& Bellotti, 1992; Gutwin & Greenberg, 1998; Steinfeld, Jang, & Pfaff, 1999), individual
motivation (Chung & Zhao, 2004), and perceptions of ownership, contribution, access,
and control (Jones, 1998).
The usability dimension examines whether a particular design of a system
satisfies the needs and requirements of its users (Constantine & Lockwood, 1999;
Nielsen, 1993). As defined by Nielsen (1993), the usability of a system can be described
though five basic attributes, including:the system should be easy to use to accommodate
novice users; the interaction between the user and the user interface of the system should
be efficient such that work can be done in a productive manner; the system design should
help users remember common as well as complex actions and activities; the system
should reduce the error rate encountered by users; the interaction experience should
provide users with a sense of satisfaction.
Usability considerations can be addressed at a number of levels, including
guidelines for design and aesthetics (Borges, 1998; Borges, Morales, & Rodríguez, 1996;
Johnson, 1997; Nielsen, 2000; Spool, Scanlon, Schroeder, Snyder, & DeAngelo, 1997;
Whitaker, 1998) as well as qualitative and quantitative usability measures ranging from
questionnaires pertaining to the user experience through overall user satisfaction (Ivory &
Hearst, 2001), content analysis methodologies through word count and positioning (Ivory
& Hearst, 2001; Ivory, Sinha, & Hearst, 2001), keystroke capture models based upon
GOMS techniques (see Card, Moran, & Newell, 1983 for keystroke GOMS; Ivory &
Hearst, 2001), interaction capture models (Ivory, Sinha, & Hearst, 2001), and usability
inspection techniques such as heuristic evaluation (Nielsen, 1994) as well as cognitive
walkthroughs (Wharton, Rieman, Lewis, & Polson, 1994).
In all, the three dimensions represent an overall arc in the development and use of
computer-mediated systems. The technical considerations frame the potential for
appropriate forms of communication within a system. The social considerations frame
the communication process as well as the community building process within the system.
The usability considerations reflect upon how well the system lives up to its
technological and social potential. As part of the course structure, the interrelationships
between the three dimensions will be examined, as well as analysis as to what happens
when the relationship between one dimension and the others becomes unbalanced.
Creating a balanced system is central to social software design. STEM students
must understand the technological, social and usability issues associated with social
software design and development. This course will introduce the integration of these
three factors to undergraduate STEM students to prepare them for potential industry
careers in the social media sector of the technology industries. Our overall objective for
establishing the SCL and designing this course to better prepare STEM students for
careers that use and develop social software and its tools.
TEACHING METHOD: The cognitive educational model for the course is based on
constructivist and the situative perspectives about learning. “The developing pedagogical
issues around technology suggest a renewed focus on student-centered, constructive
work” (Paris, 2001, p. 100). The constructivist view of learning is rooted in the ideas of
Lev Vigotsky (1978, 1986) and Jerome Bruner (1966, 1996). Learning is viewed as a
building process by active learners interacting with the physical and social world. How
the social world is build through interactions in online learning environments is a
fundamental issue in this project. The purpose of social software design is to facilitate
the building of personal and professional social networks. How this happens in learning
environments is the focus of the case study planned for this course.
The situative perspective argues that behavior should be measured through
practical activity and context (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wertsch, 1998). The practical
activity will be direct student involvement and evaluation of three different online
learning environments. In the design of situative educational assessment, the
fundamental unit of analysis is a mediated activity. Social media provide a new mediated
context in which learning can occur. Because social software and computing are in an
introductory stage, there is an opportunity to use online learning environments as a case
study to demonstrate how software tools can facilitate the formation of social networks
between students and students, students and faculty, and students and professionals. As
part of the hands-on learning process, the PIs propose to develop a case study that tests
three different online learning social software tools during the ten week course. By
having STEM students work in different learning environments they will develop the
practical ability to evaluate social software tools. Three different teaching assistants (one
for each of the three learning environments be studied) will be working with three of the
PIs (Barnes, Egert, and Jacobs) to monitor online discussions, provide technical
assistance to students, assist in grading and answer questions about projects. Each
teaching assistant will remain in one online environment.
In addition to the undergraduate participation, two graduate students will be
working independently from the course instruction to track the types of social
connections fostered by the three different online learning environments. These students
will be working with the fourth PI (DiFonzo). Do different online educational
environments foster task oriented message exchange or do students bring their social
experiences with computers into the learning environment to share off-topic messagers?
Research assistants goal will be to apply Dynamic Social Impact theory in an analysis of
the three different educational environments to see how social networks form, tasks are
completed, and social capital develops. “Latane’s (1981) theory of social impact holds
that social influence is a multiplicative function of the strength, immediacy, and number
of people affecting any given individual” (Latane & Herrou, 1996). The theory is often
studied using computers as “derivation machines to cut through the complex dynamics of
social systems” (para 10). After examing the clustering of the three environments, the
graduate student research will be presented to the undergraduates about week eight of the
course to provide a case study and information for a capstone undergraduate student
project. In addition to their preliminary report to the undergraduates, the research
assistants will help the PIs collect data to prepare articles and papers.
Creating New Learning Environment: The major focus of this grant is to develop new
STEM content and explore innovative ways to teach that content. Because the project is
connected to the Lab for Social Computing at RIT, this course is an example of how we
want to integrate faculty and graduate research projects with undergraduate STEM
education. By involving students in social media projects they acquire a better
understanding of the theories being presented. Additionally, social media is a new
research topic, which is just gaining attention from scholars and industry professionals.
As a result, much academic research is not yet available on this topic. By incorporating
the students in the class in a case study, we will be adding to the limited body of research
currently available.
Moreover, the social interaction developed through online learning environments
is central to the study of social media. The design of different online learning
environments may help or hinder the development of social networks between STEM
students, faculty and industry professionals. By teaching the same content to students
and having them interact in different learning environments, we will be able to use online
learning environments as a case study in the course. With the aid of graduate students,
the faculty and students will additionally evaluate which of the learning environments is
the best for fostering social networks and the building of social capital. The graduate
students will concentrate on the theoretical aspects of building social networks as the
undergraduate students analyze the applied features of the online STEM learning
environments.
For the past two years, RIT has been developing blended learning environments,
which RIT defines as a formal and intensive combination of face-to-face teaching with
online interaction, where both aspects of the learning experience are given significant, if
not equal, weight. The PIs are experienced teachers with the blended format. This course
will be taught as a blended course, and will be designed to combine a large lecture (2
hours/per week with 90 students) with break-out discussions (1 hour/per week) and
online course assignments (1 hour/per week).
This course is the first of a series of courses that we want to develop for a
concentration in the study of social media. Because the course will be part of the new
Lab for Social Computing, we want to create it as an example of courses that combine
undergraduate STEM course content with Lab research.
After the course is taught once, it will be further developed and submitted to the
College of Liberal Arts, the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing & Information
Sciences, and RIT’s University wide Curriculum Committee for final course approval.
Once the course is officially approved, it will become part of RIT’s regular course
offerings.
Developing Faculty Expertis: Social media, in all its forms, is a new area of study. In
the process of designing the content and testing the online learning environments, the
faculty will be developing new expertise and a better understanding about how software
tools influence the building of social networks and social capital.
More important, the course will be team taught by professors from Information
Technology and the Department of Communication. The study of social media requires
an interdisciplinary team to combine areas of expertise from the Liberal Arts with
Information Technology and Software Design. The course content will be thematically
structured around Egert’s (2003) concepts of the social, technical and usability
dimensions of collaborative systems.
This will be the first collaboration at RIT between faculty from these different
areas of expertise. Moreover, it will be the first time that we have organized an entire
course around the idea of social media and the building of social networks. The faculty
will be exposing each other to interdisciplinary research and ideas to build stronger
bridges between the technological and social aspects of the study of social media.
Implementing Educational Innovation: There are two educational innovations
associated with this project. First, it is designed to improve a student’s knowledge of
social media. Second, the course will prepare students for careers in the new social
media sector of the technology industries. Presently, the content area of social media is a
new topic of study for undergraduate STEM education. Moreover, the course will be
teaching STEM students about social computing tools and how these tools can be utilized
to develop social capital in their future courses and careers.
The case study selected for this proposal has a dual goal. The primary goal is to
provide practical hands-on experience for students enrolled in the course. The secondary
goal is the study of building social networks in STEM online learning environments. A
focus on the social relationships built between students and students, students and faculty,
and students and industry professionals in STEM education is a new type of educational
innovation. Both content and social networking is essential for a STEM student to learn
in a constructionist tradition of education. Moreover, after the course is developed, it can
be used as a model for other schools interested in creating social media curricula.
Conducting Research on Undergraduate STEM Teaching: This course combines a
theoretical and applied approach to the study of social media. In addition to the content
evaluations associated with the course, two graduate students will be working with the
faculty to develop a case study that tracks the different types of online social networks
developed by the students during the 11week quarter. Building social networks, directly
relates to the concept of social capital. Van der Gaag and Snijders (2004) have developed
measurements for the evaluation of social capital. Our case study will adapt portions of
Van der Gaag and Snijder’s questions that relate to specific goal productivity. Students
will be assigned a specific online task. We will then evaluate the building of social
capital using two methods, software tools and attitudinal survey. This dual approach
supports the constructivist approach to educational assessment. Both STEM student
attitudes and the measurements of the the three learning environments will be examined
in terms of building social networks.
First, Graduate students will be measuring the types of social networks forming
through the software and transcripts of the interactions. One measurement will be based
on technical issues relating to the software tools. In general, on-line learning
environments can track metrics on any or all of the following: frequency of participation;
duration of participation event; size and length of participation even; relation of
comments, etc on a given topic; number of participants on a given topic; on-line polling;
on-line Testing; customization of the environment itself (where allowed); and social
noise or clutter (off-topic messages).
The ability to measure and analyze any of the characteristics from the above list,
and others, varies from package to package. Packages evolve constantly, at the
commercial, institute wide and (in some cases) the individual user level. While its given
that the study will measure and evaluate a subset of the list above at minimum, the full
range of these measurements cannot be defined until just before the study begins. In
cases where groups of users or individuals can modify the environments in use, these
measurements may even evolve during the study.
A second attitudinal measurement will be administered in the form of a survey for
the STEM students to complete. Questions will be developed that relate to five cognitive
areas of goal attainment: 1) private productive activities; 2) personal relationships ; 3)
private discretional or recreational activities; 4) public productive activities; and 5) public
relationships (see Van Der Gaag & Snijders, 2004). Examples of social capital questions
include:
1. Do you know anyone who participates in a social media environment, such as
Facebook?
2. Do you have a personal friend who could help you with the class assignments?
3. Do you participate in a social network or attend a club meeting, such as the
Social Computing Club or MacRIT that could help you with the class assignment
4. Can you contact a professional or expert outside of class for help with your
class assignments?
5.
5. Do your classmates and professors help you with your class
assignments?
6. Did you have face-to-face interaction with any of your classmates before the
course began?
7. Did you have on-line interaction with any of your classmates before the course
began?
In the first step, the technological data will collected for the three different
groups. Individuals will be separated by their participation in one of the three different
learning environments. Second step, attitudinal data will be collected in the form of a
survey from the students registered in the course. Step three, data collected from
evaluating the software tools combined with the attitudinal questions will be compared to
each other. After the group data are collected, the three groups will be compared using
Dynamic Social Impact Theory to better understand the clustering and building of taskoriented and socially-oriented message exchange that occurred with each individual
student who participated in the course and between the three different learning
environments.
EVALUATION OF OUTCOMES: RIT’s standard course evaluations will be used in
the class. Additionally, evaluation of the course content will include both quantitative
and qualitative evaluation of the outcomes of the course content pertaining to the three
content areas (technical, social, usability) of course design. The quantitative analysis in
constructivist environments is based on how students use the online learning environment
and the social media tools. These measures include frequency of messages, depth of
threads, proportionality of messages, degree of reuse of prior messages, cross connections
between messages and student activity or engagement that occurs in the three different
environments. Additionally content analysis will be conducted to measure the percentage
and percentage attributed to a particular author of the amount of discussion attributed to
each of the three content areas (technical, social, and usability)
On a qualitative level, students will be given a pre and post course openended questionnaire on their attitudes and perspectives toward social media and working
in the social media and/or social computing industries. Attitudinal outcomes will include
1) change in perception regarding the use of social tools and 2) the transfer of perceptions
and beliefs from the course context towards the development and use of other online
collaborative technologies. Concepts developed in this course should be extensible to
other form of collaborative and social technology beyond online learning environments.
Data will be gathered using pre- and post-tests, surveys, focus groups, and interviews
along with constructivist assessment techniques. including authentic, performance, and
portfolio assessment (Brooks & Brooks, 1999; Cizek, 1997; Ellis, 2001; Reeves & Okey,
1996). Questions will cover the following areas:
General
Previous experience with social media and social computing; perceptions about
social media and social computing; nature of the software; participation in the
industry; perceptions of the social media industry; perceptions about skill sets.
Technology
Classification of tools that facilitate collaboration; what is a collaborative
technology; what features are important (abilities to sort and filter);
technological software features that support communication
Social
Roles and responsibilities in the system; how do you build small group social network;
how do people form and perceive identity cues; trust and reputation of users; need for
administration and monitoring of activity; awareness, and notification of messages; sense
of ownership versus community property.
Usability
Appropriateness of the user interface for collaborative interaction;
appropriateness of the user interface to support social networks and the
building of social capital;
ability of the interface to support
constructivist activity; how customizable is the user interface for group
and individual use.
The first year will allow for an assessment of the pilot of this course. Prior to
deployment, the PI’s will design the course to incorporate aspects of technical, social, and
usability considerations into the course curriculum. The course content will be taught in
using blended education. Two hours a week of group lectures run by Barnes, Jacobs, and
Egert along with two hours of online task oriented assignments, which will be taught with
the aid of three teaching assistants to help monitor the discussions. The course curriculum
will be disseminated and evaluated by other social computing personnel and members of
the LSC Advisory Board, including Nicholas DiFonzo and Alex Halavais. The online
learning environments will be used by students and faculty involved in the course as both
a means of communication for course activities as well as a case study by which abstract
course concepts will be concretely grounded. By taking this approach, it is the PIs’ intent
that each of the three dimensions of study will appeal to particular segments of the
student population. Students with different levels of technological ability and skills may
prefer different social computing environments.
In addition to the standard course content evaluation forms administered by RIT
faculty and staff, an evaluation to assess student attitude towards the class material and
the online learning environments will be performed at the end of year one. Assessment
of attitudes towards the course material, its relevance to the technology, and the degree to
which the student builds social capital within the course structure, will be started in year
one and completed in year two.
At the end of the first year, graduate students will complete their analysis of the
communications within the online learning environments in order to determine the degree
of social network formation. The first part of the investigation will be the construction
and/or modification of a social network and/or social capital instrument for the evaluation
of online communication within online learning communities. In the second year, the
research assistants will focus on the dynamic social impact analysis to examine the
clustering of task messages to social interaction.