Folksonomies vs. Bag-of-Words: The Evaluation & Comparison of Different Types of Document Representations

published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

The Analysis of Online Communities using Interactive Content-based Social Networks

published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Write While You Search: Ambient Searching of a Digital Library in the Context of Writing

We consider ideas for a tighter integration of searching a digital library while writing a paper. A prototype system based on web services is described which allows us to explore the design space of ambient search tools to support and inspire the writing process.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Hacking the storage and preservation of social media data

The growing availability of social media has afforded researchers the ability to conduct large-scale research projects using social media data. Social media platforms will come and go, but what is constant is the fact that in order to foster the sharing of data and encourage research innovation, there is a pressing need for the research community to develop a strong set of data stewardship principles, standards, and protocols around social media data preservation. The hackathon will bring overlapping research communities of Information scholars together to identify the major challenges, opportunities, and possible interventions to address the preservation and storage of social media data

Learning Analytics Dashboard for Teaching with Twitter

As social media takes root in our society, more University instructors are incorporating platforms like Twitter into their classroom. However, few of the current Learning Analytics (LA) systems process social media data for instructional interventions and evaluation. As a result, instructors who are using social media cannot easily assess their students’ learning progress or use the data to adjust their lessons in real time. We surveyed 54 university instructors to better understand how they use social media in the classroom; we then used these results to design and evaluate our own Twitter-centric LA dashboard. The overarching goals for this project were to 1) assist instructors in determining whether their particular use of Twitter met their teaching objectives, and 2) help system designers navigate the nuance of designing LA dashboards for social media platforms

Learning within Digital Media: Investigating the Relationships Between Student Citation Networks, Assignment Structures, and Learning Outcomes

Students are comfortable sharing digital content with others, yet the effect of sharing of digital media for learning remains largely unexplored. Building on research in social network analysis and learning analytics, this research explores the use and sharing of digital media in learning activities, analyzing the effects of the design of the learning activities on the resulting networks of students and their cited resources, and exploring relationships between attributes of these citation networks and students’ perceptions of the learning outcomes. Results suggest that the extent to which an assignment is well-structured and converges towards a single solution positively influences the density and clustering coefficient of the resulting citation network, and that these network measures in turn have a positive influence on students’ perceptions of learning from the assignment

Social Media for Informal Learning: a Case of #Twitterstorians

Open, online environments like social media are now a mainstay of life-long informal learning. Social media like Twitter help people gather information, share resources, and discuss with other participant-learners with similar interests. This paper seeks to test and validate the ‘learning in the wild’ coding schema in the context of discussions on Twitter, an approach first developed for studying learning communities on Reddit. The schema considers how participant-learners are leveraging social media to facilitate self-directed informal learning practices, exploratory dialogue, and communicative exchanges. We apply the coding schema on a sample of tweets (n=594) from the History Twittersphere community (#Twitterstorians) to provide a more nuanced understanding of the different kinds of discursive practices, resource exchanges, and ideas being shared and communicated outside traditional classroom settings

Is Aggression Contagious Online? A Case of Swearing on Donald Trump’s Campaign Videos on YouTube

This study explores whether aggressive text-based interactions in social media are contagious. In particular, we examine swearing behaviour of YouTube commentators in response to videos and comments posted on the official Donald Trump’s campaign channel. Our analysis reveals the presence of mimicry of verbal aggression. Specifically, swearing in a parent comment is significantly and positively associated with the likelihood and intensity of swearing in subsequent ‘children’ comments. The study also confirms that swearing is not solely a product of an individual speech habit but also a spreadable social practice. Based on the findings, we conclude that aggressive emotional state can be contagious through textual mimicry.