Learning analytics for the social media age

Abstract

In just a short period of time, social media have altered many aspects of our daily lives, from how we form and maintain social relationships to how we discover, access and share information online. Now social media are also beginning to affect how we teach and learn in this increasingly interconnected and information-rich world. The panelists will discuss their ongoing work that seeks to understand the affordances and potential roles of social media in learning, as well as to determine and provide methods that can help researchers and educators evaluate the use of social media for teaching and learning based on automated analyses of social media texts and networks. The panel will focus on the first phase of this five-year research initiative "Learning Analytics for the Social Media Age" funded by the Social Science and Humanites Research Council of Canada (2013--2018).