Pastplay: Teaching and Learning History with Technology

In the field of history, the Web and other technologies have become important tools in research and teaching of the past. Yet the use of these tools is limited—many historians and history educators have resisted adopting them because they fail to see how digital tools supplement and even improve upon conventional tools (such as books). In Pastplay, a collection of essays by leading history and humanities researchers and teachers, editor Kevin Kee works to address these concerns head-on. How should we use technology? Playfully, Kee contends. Why? Because doing so helps us think about the past in new ways; through the act of creating technologies, our understanding of the past is re-imagined and developed. From the insights of numerous scholars and teachers, Pastplay argues that we should play with technology in history because doing so enables us to see the past in new ways by helping us understand how history is created; honoring the roots of research, teaching, and technology development; requiring us to model our thoughts; and then allowing us to build our own understanding

Extending Ethos in Digital Rhetorics

This dissertation researched the concept of ethos, or appeal to authority or trust, on the social media platform, Twitter. Looking at collections of tweets, I found that the characteristics of the Twitter platform, as well as the general qualities of writing online, pushed users to use short cuts to trust, such as focusing in on specific buzz words, or through referencing well known organizations and individuals. Users also used internet culture as its own source of authority. They demonstrated that they were up to date on the latest trends and memes, and so were trustworthy accounts to follow. Users appealed to ethos this way because Twitter conversations occurred faster and farther, and with people who most users were either unfamiliar with or who were completely anonymous. Essentially, Twitter user rely on the short cuts to trust and authority in conversations because they are less often engaging with a stable, known audience. Twitter users must continually reassert and define themselves again as their posts circulate widely across and beyond the platform

#Becoming: Emergent Identity of College Students in the Digital Age Examined Through Complexivist Epistemologies

This dissertation explores the possibilities and limitations of conducting research on college student identity in the digital age. Utilizing philosophical theories from complexity theory, post-qualitative research, and new materialisms, I interrogate, question, disrupt, and challenge current theories and models of college student identity, largely developed from a positivist, modernist, empiricist perspective. Conducting research on college student identity in the twenty-first century may benefit from discarding the old ‘developmental’ language of the twentieth century, replacing this discourse and understanding with a language drawn from complexity theory. In this regard, I believe educators, researchers, and practitioners should begin talking about identity emergence and becoming. I explore how to embrace more complexivist epistemologies, moving educators, practitioners, and researchers away from traditional research methodologies. Drawing on emerging theoretical work of post-qualitative researchers, particularly Karen Barad (2008a), Alecia Youngblood Jackson and Lisa Mazzei (2012), my post-qualitative research agenda explored in this study used processes of digital immersion, interviewing, theoretical reading, and online blogging tools to create a research process viewed as a living system, exploring college student identities in the digital age as an emergent phenomena. This research highlights seven college students actively engaged in multiple distributed social media spaces. I refer to these seven college students as human becomings. In addition to following and intra-acting with these students in distributed social media spaces, I also conducted two interviews: issues of identity, digital practice(s), digital presentation(s), meaning-making, digital materiality, agency, and discourse were discussed. I conducted a process of dat(a)nalysis, highlighting dialogue, conversation, and observations on each human becoming. Further, I begin a process of entangling with theoretical, philosophical, and discursive research, creating the complexivist epistemologies so critical to understanding research on identity in the digital age. I end this dissertation discussing cyber-currere: viewing digital social media spaces as educational spaces where the processes of human becoming and subjectification occur as emergent phenomena: nonlinearly, non-hierarchically, and synchronously. In my closing remarks, I articulate how educators, particularly college student educators and curriculum theorists, might view digital spaces as always authentic, partial, and ontological – and what such an approach means for practice and future research

Social Media and Workplace Practices in Higher Education Institutions: a Review

This literature review investigates how the impact of social media has been studied with regard to a broad range of higher education workplace practices, that extend beyond teaching and learning, into areas such as research, administration, professional development, and the development of shared academic cultures and practices. Our interest is in whether and how the educational research community, through its research and publication practices, promotes particular views of social media in education at the expense of others. A thematic analysis of a sample of recent (2010-17) research on social media in education finds the field influenced by perspectives, particularly the managerial, that are prominent in the institutionalized discourses around which HE is structured.  These discourses are largely shaping practice in 21st century education, despite their lack of attention on how social media alter the processes of knowledge development within education, changing practice at deeper, institutional levels. We hypothesize that the implication of such research failing is that the academic community fails to reflectively and critically address how academic practices and the classroom itself are being shaped by certain “institutionalized” uses and conceptions of social media

The Role of Social Media Editors in Television Newsrooms: An Exploratory Study

More Americans are using social media in their daily lives and finding news and information on sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Media organizations are using social media sites to locate sources and verify information to increase ratings and circulation. Reporters and editors are interacting with audiences more than ever before. The result is a weakening of news organizations’ systems of editorial control and, consequently, their traditional gatekeeping function. To assist with disseminating information about news stories and engage with their audiences more, some media organizations are creating a new position at newspapers and broadcast stations, known as a social media editor, producer or manager. They are more common in larger news organizations and differ from website editors because social media editors focus on creating conversations with the audience. Their place in the newsroom, however, is developing and uncertain, especially at the local news level. This study aims to understand their developing role in the local television newsroom and discover their functions and how editorial decisions about made about what content will be posted to social media. Through long interviews with 23 participants in social media editor positions around the country, this study shows how individuals in these positions are responsible for a variety of roles and functions, and many others in the newsroom depend on their expertise, training and suggestions to carry out their daily tasks. There is a need for positions like these in media organizations, and they are challenging the traditional gatekeeping role by relying heavily on audience interest and engagement in decisions about posting content to social media and less on traditional news values

ALT-C 2012 Abstracts

This is a PDF of the abstracts for all the sessions at the 2012 ALT conference. It is designed to be used alongside the online version of the conference programme. It was made public on 7 September 2012

Lawrence University Course Catalog, 2022-2023

https://lux.lawrence.edu/coursecatalogs/1020/thumbnail.jp

Social Media Good Practices

It was the start of summer 2014 when the University of Notre Dame (ND)’s Kresge Law Library (KLL) started to make its entry into social media with a Twitter account@NDLawLibrary. The accountgrew a following to focus on library related topics. In Fall 2014, the KLL conducted a social media survey focusing on graduate students.Participants in the survey included 355 graduate students that completed the survey out of the 629 that received it. Of the participants that responded to the question as to whether they would follow the KLL in social media,66% (212 of 320) of participantsresponded that they would. In response, the Kresge Law Library started the Facebook fanpage Kresge Law Library and continued with the Twitter account in an effort to increase communication between the Library and the graduate students