Education and Information Technology 2012A Selection of AACE Award Papers

Edited byTheo J. Bastiaens, Ph.D.Gary H. Marks, Ph.D.

Published by

Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education

ISBN: 1-880094-97-5

Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education

aace.org

Education and Information Technology 2012

A Selection of A

ACE Award Papers

Education and Information Technology Annual 2012

A Selection of AACE Award Papers

Edited by

Theo J. Bastiaens, Ph.D.

Gary H. Marks, Ph.D.

Published by

AACE--Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education

Education and Information Annual - 2012(ISBN # 1-880094-97-5) is published by AACE, PO Box 1545, Chesapeake, VA 23327-1545, USA

757-366-5606; Fax: 703-997-8760; E-mail: info@aace.org Copyright 2012 by AACE

www.aace.orgAvailable at http://www.aace.org/bookshelf.htm

INTRODUCTION

The Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), http://AACE.org, founded in 1981, is an international, not-for-profit, educational organization with the mission of advancing Information Technology in Educa-tion and E-Learning research, development, learning, and its practical application.

AACE serves the profession with international conferences, high quality publications, leading-edge Digital Library (http://EdITLib.org), Career Center, and other opportunities for professional growth.

We are proud to present to you this selection of 31 award winning papers from AACEs conferences (http://AACE.org/conf). This year's selection includes papers from the annual conference of the Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education (SITE) in Nashville (TN), the Global Learn Asia Pacific conference in Melbourne (Australia), the World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications (Ed-Media) in Lisbon (Portugal) and the World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (E-Learn) in Honolulu (HI). The decision to nominate a conference paper for an award was made by peer reviewers. All authors were honored during the conference and received a certificate that serves as testimony to their outstanding research and contri-bution to the conference.

This AACE finest of 2012 book groups the award winning papers in seven parts. These seven parts provide a timely overview and record of topics that are of primary interest in educational technology this year.

We hope that the reader enjoys this selection as much as we enjoyed working with these cutting-edge scholars. It is our intention to establish a new annual tradition with this publication. We look forward to our future selections of AACEs award papers.

Thank you very much for your support and participation in AACE events and activities.

Theo J. Bastiaens

Gary H. Marks

PART 1SOCIAL MEDIA OPPORTUNITIES

The growing use of the social media phenomenon is synonymous with words such as Facebook, Twitter, Web 2.0 and blogging. Teenagers today embraced social media through their active use of multiple social network sites and what makes social media social and attractive to users is that users are encouraged to share as much information as possible with other their peers of the site. This growing trend in the use of social media opens up a possibility for researchers to harness information from this media. In chapter 1, Lee, Kim et al. describe how to use status updates from an exchange student during his time abroad to create a narrative of his experience aboard.

Being able to design interactive media is an important capacity for young people to develop in order to understand and negotiate our modern media landscape. Authors Brennan, Valverde et all, describe in chapter 2 a programming en-vironment that enables young people to create their own interactive media and share their creations within an online community. They explain the ways in which young peoples development as creators of interactive media is supported by others, using the context of the online community.

The aforementioned spread of the internet and the evolution of the Web significantly changes the way how we learn. Technology brings enhancements for learning almost on a daily basis. In chapter 3 imko, Barla et all, discuss the role and importance of content annotations in a domain of web-based learning. The authors focus on collaboration support, continuous improvements of the content quality and increase of students motivation. They introduce two basic types of activity flows within an adaptive web-based educational system and aim at annotations in both conceptual as well as practical point of view.

Nowadays podcasts are used in many university courses and often viewed as an effective way to augment undergrad-uate education. Kushnir, Berry et al. conducted research on the use of podcasts in four disciplines (Art, Dentistry, Design and Psychology). They surveyed 386 students on their opinions, perceptions, and use of podcasts and found that students had preconceived notions that the use of podcasts would help them learn. But in spite of students perceptions, the au-thors found that the use of podcasts did not have a positive impact on their learning. Variables that explain how podcasts influence learning outcomes are reviewed in chapter 4 and theories that contribute to the understanding of instructor and student misconceptions around the use of podcasts are discussed.

Chapter 5 focuses on an important and very often criticized aspect in Net Geners learning, that is, multi-modal/multi-task learning. The findings of author Zheng reveal that multi-tasks learning can induce high cognitive load and with that lower performance in learning. The chapter reveals the benefits and at the same time the constraints associated with multi- modal and multi-task learning.

PART 2 NEW PHENOMENA IN LEARNING:MOBILE LEARNING/ GAMING / VIRTUAL WORLDS

Mobile applications for teaching and learning are becoming an increasingly popular method of content delivery. Universities are being confronted with a rapid surge in the penetration of mobile devices amongst students. The chal-lenge that universities are facing today is how to design and develop device independent mobile applications which can be easily implemented and integrated and are effective for teaching and learning, regardless of the mobile device in use. In chapter 6, Khaddage & Knezek discuss mobile applications (Apps) and technologies. Further more design issues and implications are described and current methods of some proposed applications are reviewed.

In chapter 7, Moldovan & Hava Muntean discuss the educational multimedia content consumption in mobile learn-ing as one of the key factors driving m-learning acceptance. The authors proposes an original solution for enabling mul-timedia content personalization based on learners device screen resolution, as well as multimedia content adaptation based on the available network bandwidth.

Another very popular new phenomenon are Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs). In Chapter 8 Kong and Kwok aim to empirically examine four modes of collaborative knowledge creation in Massively Multiplayer Online Games; game-play, their dynamic relationship with players engagement level, duration and perceived addictiveness. Al-though an increasing number of researchers explore the use of MMOG as a new generation of educational platform, the study for examining the empirical evidence of the occurrence and dynamics of collaborative learning behavior in MMOG is still under-researched. The authors explore the aforementioned collaborative knowledge creation processes in MMOG grounded on Nonakas dynamic theory of organization creation.

A mystery game, the Lost City, was trialed in chapter 9 as a component of a national on-line problem-solving com-petition. The game was created largely from free web resources, using low-bandwidth clues released on a schedule to maximize their use in participants preparing video and stage documentaries of their virtual explorations. Author Ben-jamins findings show positive results comparable to previous online mysteries but at a cost in time and resources low enough to be attainable by individual teachers without additional funding or help.

Author Amory argues in chapter 10 that computer video games support learning when function as tools to medi-ate knowledge construction. His study makes use of two intrinsic cases as part of a collective instrumental case study to advance the theory of the use of video games in learning and teaching. Two groups of pre-service teachers participated in the study. While playing a video game on the biology of diseases groups of undergraduate students developed theoreti-cal and practical knowledge in the use of video games in teaching and learning. Postgraduate students overcame some to their misconceptions related to genetics by playing a video game that addresses such learning problems. The introduction of game puzzles into a learning activity acted as an extrinsic mediator, while the discussions between players intrinsically mediated their understanding.

Immersive experiences are debated to be one of the main advantages for using virtual worlds for educational simula-tion, however further research is required to understand how learners become immersed and how to encourage this im-mersion. Meaningful involvement in a simulation is argued to be one factor determining immersion. In chapter 11, nine users experiences of immersion within a virtual world role play simulation are described by Cram, Hedberg et al. Their results demonstrate that user involvement is an important factor in determining immersion.

In Chapter 12 the concept of a Virtual Research Arena is introduced as a framework for creating awareness about educational and research activities, promoting cross-fertilization between different environments and engaging general public. Initial results of an explorative case study are presented. Fominykh and Prasolovas study includes a practical ex-ercise in a cooperation technology course and the first Virtual Science Fair in Trondheim, Norway.

PART 3THE FORMAL CURRICULUM & TECHNOLOGY

Studying abroad has become an important asset in learning languages and acquiring intercultural competences. This results in a growing need for transparency of curricula. But not only international students need to get a fast overview of study programs in order to make well-informed decisions. This is why highly usable curriculum visualizations should complement textual documents and support students and lecturers in navigating through curricula for the sake of fast ori-entation. Kriglstein and Motschnig-Pitrik present in chapter 13 a case study on a human centered approach to developing a tool for curriculum visualization.

Armstrong, in chapter 14, describes undergraduate students experiences and perceptions of online courses based on interviews, observations, and online focus groups. In the chapter the author explains the motivational and learner characteristics within online classes, the positive and negative aspects of online courses as experienced by students, what instructors can do to improve the teaching of online courses, and how undergraduate students perceptions of the online learning environment affects the selection of their approach to learning.

In Chapter 15 the main focus is on discussion forums. After witnessing students delay in making required discussion board posts until just before the deadline, the authors, Herrick, Lin et al. postulate that a two-deadline solution, one in which initial responses were due days before peer comments, will serve to better incite dialogue among the students. Sig-nificant findings are presented and discussed.

Fluck, Ranmuthugala et al. document in chapter 16 an investigation in four Australian schools to train pupils aged ten to twelve years how to solve problems using integral calculus with computer algebra system software. After eleven lessons the students completed a test constructed from items at the level of a first year engineering degree calculus ex-amination. The average achievement was at the credit level, and students showed good understanding of the applications of integral calculus.

Twitchell, Seal et al., reports the success of the U.S. Department of Veteran AffairsVeterans Health Administra-tions efforts to share training on a large scale. In chapter 17 they report on the growth of sharing among federal health-care providing government agencies from 2004 to present and discloses cost avoidance figures through 3rd Quarter 2011. A description and architecture is proposed to optimize sharing of existing training and for all levels of aggregation (i.e., lesson, objects, and assets). They conclude that successful reuse and sharing is is a culture or frame of mind that can be cultivated and grown in any organization.

The implementation of authentic learning elements at education institutions in five countries, eight online courses in total, is examined in chapter 18. Leppisaari, Herrington et al. applied elements of authentic learning as criteria to evalu-ate authenticity. The results indicate multiple roles and perspectives and scaffolding were the most strongly implemented elements. Collaborative construction of knowledge was implemented weakly.

PART 4ASSESSMENT

The effectiveness of any educational technology depends upon teachers and learners perception of the functional utility of that medium for teaching, learning, and assessment. In chapter 19 the autors Code, Clarke-Midura et al. studied the feasibility of immersive technology to develop performance assessments of middle school students scientific inquiry. Their chapter is a report of the initial findings of a study conducted with middle school students and their perceptions of the use of immersive virtual environments for assessment.

In Chapter 20 training systems that use modern surveillance technology and that can automatically track and assess students exercising physical-motion skills are introduced. Rowe, Houde et al. describe two systems, one with inexpensive nonimaging sensors and one with multi-camera fusion, to track U.S. Marines during training and assess how well they are performing. The key challenge here was to visually summarizing the data and their results show that interesting phe-nomena can be seen in the visualizations that are otherwise often difficult to see.

Chapter 21 presents an empirical study grounded in the Community of Inquiry framework and employs quantitative content analysis of student discourse and other artifacts of learning in online courses in an effort to enhance and improve the framework and offer practical implications for online education. As a theoretical framework the purpose of the model is to describe, explain, and predict learning in online environments. The major question addressed here is whether the model adequately explains effective learner behavior in fully online courses and to articulate a new conceptual element

learning presence. The Author, Shea, identifies instances and conditions under which learning presence is evident in online courses.

PART 5LITARACY

In chapter 22 qualitative research examines the impact of multimedia web-authoring tools on the composing pro-cesses of literacy learners. The authors, OByrne, Bailey et al. propose that the multimodal features of those tools facili-tate and extend the range of literacy processes and products and that the shifting between and among the different tools enriches the construction of knowledge. Two interventions demonstrating learner engagement with multiple tools were investigated. Using a case study method, some early markers were identified that demonstrated the impact of web-author-ing tools on the composing processes of grade two and grade eleven students.

With the increasing number of online programs offered by institutions of higher education, it is important to find ways to provide information literacy instruction to support off-campus students and to help them succeed in such pro-grams. Chapter 23 is concerned with the aim of designing instruction appropriate to the needs and existing skills of online graduate students. The authors, Kumar & Ochoa, conducted a needs assessment of students information literacy skills before beginning the online program. The results were used to design library instruction intended to fill the gaps in graduate students information literacy skills and research abilities.

PART 6ROLES, COMPETENCIES & ATTITUDE

The rapid growth of online education in higher education is calling for further research on the knowledge, skills and competencies required for successful online teaching. In chapter 24, the authors Baran, Correia and Thompson critize teaching approaches that tend to organize teachers roles without making connections between content, pedagogy, tech-nology and the contextual dynamics that teachers engage in their teaching practices. A literature review on online teach-ing focused on online teaching roles and competencies, and exemplary online teaching was conducted and limitations of existing research on online teacher roles, competencies, and paths to exemplary online teaching were explored.

Researchers across disciplines seek to discover common themes, extraordinary patterns, causal relationships, and ultimately any evidence that will give insight into how the Internet is changing the world. While many researchers are searching for answers, their findings paint a conflicting picture. The author of chapter 25, Trombley, describes an un-derlying glitch in studies of Internet use and that is the fact that scholars use the terms sex and gender interchangeably. Because Internet usage is a specific human behavior gender should play a more essential role than sex in predicting that behavior. With this in mind, her study provides support for the idea that gender (i.e., a persons psychological identity) is a better predictor of Internet use than sex.

Meeting International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) competencies creates a challenge for teachers. In chapter 26 authors Skoretz and cottle provide a problem-based video framework that guides teachers in enhancing 21st century skills to meet these competencies. Focusing on content and teaching the technology skills only at the point the students need to use them are suggested. Furthermore an example is provided on how the problem-based video frame-work was applied in a higher education setting and the benefits and challenges for using video within a problem-based learning context are discussed.

Chapter 27 is a report on the validation of a new version of the Computer Attitude Questionnaire (CAQ) which is an instrument for measurement of student attitudes toward computers (comfort and learning with), empathy, creativity, and school. The new version was developed by the authors, Mills, Wakefield et al. in response to a request for a more brief instrument to be used for a National Science Foundations Innovative Technology Experience for Students and Teachers program research project. The instrument was found to have strong internal consistency reliability, content validity, and criterion-related validity. It was judged to be acceptable to very good for measurement of student attitudes toward learning with computers in middle and high school years.

Web-based digital video tools enable learners to access video sources in more constructive ways. To leverage these affordances teachers need to integrate their knowledge about the potentials of a technology with their professional

knowledge about teaching. In Chapter 28, Krauskopf, Zahn et al. suggest that in a first step this is a cognitive process, which is strongly connected to a teachers mental model of the tools affordances. Considering the TPCK-framework the authors investigated aspects of pedagogical knowledge (PK) in a sample of German pre-service teachers as a predictor for their mental models of YouTube and how these affect the potential instructional use of this technology. They describe those mental models of YouTube and present quantitative analyses revealing PK as predictor for the participants intend-ed and ideal instructional use of YouTube with students. Additionally, this relation is mediated by the mental models for ideal instructional use.

Despite the continued growth of distance education, many institutions have not considered how best to support and develop online adjunct faculty. As numbers of online adjunct faculty increase, forecasting their employment needs is essential. Author Larcara studies, in chapter 29, online adjuncts perceptions of what is important in their work. Her re-search questions examine perceptions of online adjuncts in finding and retaining work, motivation to teach online, and professional development. Her study gives voice to an important stakeholder in distance education who directly serves students, impacts the student experience, and facilitates student learning and achievement.

PART 7E-LEARNING ADAPTION

E-learning has been integrated into the university programmes for some time. Although universities have invested in resources as well as provided training and support teams to encourage teachers to adopt e-learning in their professional practice, it is according to authors Huan and McKay not welcomed by all teachers in Taiwan. Between the interaction of universities and their teaching staff, there are many emergent factors that they academic staff to fully embrace e-learning. In Chapter 30 their aim is to investigate Taiwanese teachers experience in adopting e-learning and then, to explore the factors affecting their adoption behaviour in Taiwan higher education.

In the final chapter the authors Fischer and Khler introduce empirical findings of a research project Adoption of e-learning innovations in Higher Education. The aim of the project is the characterization of teachers as potential adopt-ers of e-learning innovations. Therefore the needs, motivation and attitudes of teachers in Higher Education toward e-learning innovations were analyzed. By using multivariate analysis (cluster analysis, factor analysis) four adopter types could be identified: young professionals, experienced explorers, preservers and reward seekers. Their empirical findings can be used for designing target group-specific change management strategies during introducing e-learning innovations in academic teaching.

ED-MEDIA World Conference on Educational Multimedia,Hypermedia & Telecommunications

E-Learn World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate,Healthcare, Government, and Higher Education

SITE Society for Information Technology and TeacherEducation International Conference

Adding soon! Global Learn Asia Pacific Global Conference on Learningand Technology

Global TIME Global Conference on Technology,Innovation, Media & Education

www.EdITLib.org

Free access to abstracts so you can try the Digital Library at no cost! Conduct research Keep current on the latest research and publications in your field

Access and fully search publications Create and store personal collections of articles by topic Receive table of contents alerts prior to journal publication

Share article abstracts and search results with colleagues via email and include your comments Export citations to BibTex, EndNote, and RefWorks

EdITLib is your source for 15+ years (with your subscription) of peer-reviewed,published articles (20,000+) and papers on the latest research, developments, andapplications related to all aspects of Educational Technology and E-Learning.

Individual subscriptions$19/month

Journal ArticlesConference Papers

Special Topic BooksConference Invited Speaker Talks

VideosConference Presentation Slides

Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia International Journal on E-Learning(Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education)

Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching Journal of Interactive Learning Research Journal of Technology and Teacher Education AACE Journal(electronic)

Contemporary Issues in Technology & Teacher Education(electronic)

Ten (10)Academic Journals

including:

Four (4)Conferencesincluding:

Email: info@aace.org Phone: 757-366-5606 Fax: 703-997-8760

Does Your LibrarySubscribe?

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART 1 SOCIAL MEDIA OPPORTUNITIES

1 Creating the intercultural learning narrative using social network sites status updates: An innovative approach in using social media Jason Wen Yau Lee, Beaumie Kim, and Mi Song Kim.................................................................................................152 More than code: The significance of social interactions in young peoples development as interactive media creators Karen Brennan, Amanda Valverde, Joe Prempeh, Ricarose Roque, and Michelle Chung............................................233 Supporting Collaborative Web-Based Education via Annotations Marin imko, Michal Barla, Vladimr Mihl, Maro Unk, and Mria Bielikov....................................................334 Lecture Capture: Good Student Learning or Good Bedtime Story? An Interdisciplinary Assessment of the Use of Podcasts in Higher Education Lena Paulo Kushnir & Kenneth Berry, University of Toronto, Canada; Jessica Wyman, Florin Salajan.....................435 Findings from Net Geners Multi-Modal and Multi-Task Learning Robert Zheng.................................................................................................................................................................55

PART 2 NEW PHENOMENA IN LEARNING: MOBILE LEARNING/ GAMING/ VIRTUAL WORLDS

6 Device Independent Mobile Applications for Teaching and Learning: Challenges, Barriers and Limitations Ferial Khaddage and Gerald Knezek............................................................................................................................617 Towards Personalised and Adaptive Multimedia in M-learning Systems Arghir-Nicolae Moldovan and Cristina Hava Muntean..................................................................................................678 Knowledge Creation in MMOG: An Empirical Study Joseph Siu-Lung Kong and Ron Chi-Wai Kwok..........................................................................................................799 The Lost City: Development of a National-Level On-Line Mystery Game Using Freeware and Low Budget Technology Tom Benjamin.................................................................................................................................................................910 Play games to learn: Pre-service teacher development Alan Amory.................................................................................................................................................................10111 Beyond Immersion Meaningful Involvement in Virtual Worlds Andrew Cram, John Hedberg and Maree Gosper.........................................................................................................11112 Virtual Research Arena: Presenting Research in 3D Virtual Environments Mikhail Fominykh and Ekaterina Prasolova-Frland.................................................................................................121

PART 3 THE FORMAL CURRICULUM & TECHNOLOGY

13 The Curriculum as an Ontology - A Human Centered Visualization Approach Simone Kriglstein and Renate Motschnig-Pitrik..........................................................................................................13114 Students Perceptions of Online Learning and Instructional Tools: A Qualitative Study of Undergraduate Students Use of Online Tools David Armstrong.........................................................................................................................................................14115 Online Discussions: The Effect of Having Two Deadlines Michael Herrick, Meng-Fen Grace Lin and Charlotte Huei-Wen...............................................................................14716 Calculus in elementary school: an example of ICT-based curriculum transformation Andrew Fluck, Dev Ranmuthugala, Chris Chin and Irene Penesis..............................................................................15517 Green Training: Chronicling the Reuse of Government Healthcare Instruction David Twitchell, Mitchell Seal and Christopher Lynch................................................................................................163

18 Authentic e-Learning in a Multicultural Context: Virtual Benchmarking Cases from Five Countries Irja Leppisaari, Jan Herrington, Leena Vainio, and Yeonwook Im.............................................................................173

PART 4 ASSESMENT

19 Student Perceptions of Immersive Virtual Environments for the Meaningful Assessment of Learning Jillianne Code, Jody Clarke-Midura, Nick Zap, and Chris Dede................................................................................18520 Visualizing summaries of performance for instructors assessing physical-motion skills Neil Rowe, Jeff Houde, Rey Osoteo, Riqui Schwamm, Cory Kirk, Ahren Reed, Saad Khan, Chris Broaddus and Chris Meng...........................................................................................................................................................19521 Learning Presence in the Community of Inquiry Model: Towards a Theory of Online Learner Self- and Co-regulation Peter Shea....................................................................................................................................................................207

PART 5 LITERACY

22 Literacy in Multimedia Environments: Preliminary Findings Barbara OByrne, Diana Bailey and Stacey Murrell...................................................................................................21523 Student-Centered Library Instruction: An Assessment of Online Graduate Students Information Literacy Skills and Needs Swapna Kumar and Marilyn Ochoa............................................................................................................................221

PART 6 ROLES, COMPETENCIES & ATTITUDES

24 Paths to Exemplary Online Teaching: A Look at Teacher Roles, Competencies and Exemplary Online Teaching Evrim Baran, Ana-Paula Correia and Ann Thompson..................................................................................................22925 Virtual Gender Roles: Is Gender a Better Predictor of Internet Use than Sex? Amy Trombley.............................................................................................................................................................23726 Meeting ISTE Competencies with a Problem-Based Video Framework Yvonne Skoretz and Amy Cottle.................................................................................................................................24327 Validating the Computer Attitude Questionnaire NSF ITEST (CAQ N/I) Leila Mills, Jenny Wakefield, Anjum Najmi, Dean Surface, Rhonda Christensen and Gerald Knezek......................24928 Leveraging the Affordances of YouTube: Pedagogical Knowledge and Mental Models of Technology Affordances as Predictors for Pre-Service Teachers Planning for Technology Integration Karsten Krauskopf, Carmen Zahn and Friedrich W. Hesse..........................................................................................25729 Supporting the Online Adjunct in Higher Education: A Delphi Study Marie Larcara..............................................................................................................................................................265

PART 7 E-LEARNING ADAPTION

30 The Factors Influencing E-learning Adoption by Academic Staff: A Case Study in Taiwan Kuo-Tung Huan and Elspeth McKay............................................................................................................................27331 Adopter Types of E-Learning Innovations in Higher Education. Empirical Findings Helge Fischer and Thomas Khler................................................................................................................................285

AUTHORS AND EDITORS CONTACT INFORMATION

Chapter 1 Creating the intercultural learning narrative using social network sites status updates: An innovative approach in using social media

Jason Wen Yau Lee, Beaumie Kim & Mi Song Kim, National Institute of Education, Singapore E-mail: jasonleewy@gmail.comChapter 2 More than code: The significance of social interactions in young peoples development as interactive media

creators Karen Brennan, MIT Media Lab, USA; Amanda Valverde & Joe Prempeh, Harvard University, USA; Ricarose

Roque & Michelle Chung, MIT Media Lab, USA E-mail: kbrennan@media.mit.eduChapter 3 Supporting Collaborative Web-based Education via Annotations Marin imko, Michal Barla, Vladimr Mihl, Maro Unck & Mria Bielikov, Slovak University of Technology,

Slovakia E-mail: {simko, barla}@fiit.stuba.skChapter 4 Lecture Capture: Good Student Learning or Good Bedtime Story? An Interdisciplinary Assessment of the Use

of Podcasts in Higher Education Lena Paulo Kushnir & Kenneth Berry, University of Toronto, Canada; Jessica Wyman, OCAD University, Canada;

Florin Salajan, North Dakota State University, USA E-mail: lena.paulo.kushnir@utoronto.caChapter 5 Findings from Net Geners Multi-Modal and Multi-Task Learning Robert Zheng, University of Utah, USA E-mail: NO EMAIL AVAILABLEChapter 6 Device Independent Mobile Applications for Teaching and Learning: Challenges, Barriers and Limitations Ferial Khaddage, Deakin University School of Information Technology, Australia; Gerald Knezek, University of

Northern Texas Department of Learning Technologies, USA E-mail: fayekhaddage@gmail.comChapter 7 Towards Personalised and Adaptive Multimedia in M-learning Systems Arghir-Nicolae Moldovan & Cristina Hava Muntean, National College of Ireland, Ireland E-mail: amoldovan@student.ncirl.ieChapter 8 Knowledge Creation in MMOG: An Empirical Study Joseph Siu-Lung Kong & Ron Chi-Wai Kwok, Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong,

Hong Kong E-mail: slkong@student.cityu.edu.hkChapter 9 The Lost City: Development of a National-Level On-Line Mystery Game Using Freeware and Low Budget

Technology Tom Benjamin, New South Wales Department of Education & Training, Australia E-mail: thomas.benjamin@det.nsw.edu.auChapter 10 Play games to learn: Pre-service teacher development Alan Amory, University of Johannesburg, South Africa E-mail: aamory@uj.ac.zaChapter 11 Beyond Immersion Meaningful Involvement in Virtual Worlds Andrew Cram, John Hedberg & Maree Gosper, Macquarie University, Australia E-mail: andrew.cram@students.mq.edu.auChapter 12 Virtual Research Arena: Presenting Research in 3D Virtual Environments Mikhail Fominykh & Ekaterina Prasolova-Frland, Program for learning with ICT, Norwegian University of Science

and Technology, Norway E-mail: mikhail.fominykh@svt.ntnu.noChapter 13 The Curriculum as an Ontology - A Human Centered Visualization Approach Simone Kriglstein & Renate Motschnig-Pitrik, University of Vienna, Faculty of Computer Science, Austria E-mail:

simone.kriglstein@univie.ac.at

Chapter 14 Students Perceptions of Online Learning and Instructional Tools: A Qualitative Study of Undergraduate Students Use of Online Tools

David Armstrong, University of San Francisco, USA E-mail: DArmstrong@scu.eduChapter 15 Online Discussions: The Effect of Having Two Deadlines Michael Herrick, Meng-Fen Grace Lin & Charlotte Huei-Wen, University of Hawaii, USA E-mail: mherrick@hawaii.eduChapter 16 Calculus in elementary school: an example of ICT-based curriculum transformation Andrew Fluck, Dev Ranmuthugala, Chris Chin & Irene Penesis, University of Tasmania, Australia E-mail: Andrew.Fluck@utas.edu.auChapter 17 Green Training: Chronicling the Reuse of Government Healthcare Instruction David Twitchell, Department of Veterans Affairs, USA; Mitchell Seal & Christopher Lynch, US Navy, USA E-mail: david.twitchell1@va.govChapter 18 Authentic e-Learning in a Multicultural Context: Virtual Benchmarking Cases from Five Countries Irja Leppisaari, Central Ostrobothnia University of Applied Sciences, Finland; Jan Herrington, Murdoch University,

Australia; Leena Vainio, HAMK University of Applied Sciences, Finland; Yeonwook Im, Hanyang Cyber University, Korea, Republic Of

E-mail: irja.leppisaari@cou.fiChapter 19 Student Perceptions of Immersive Virtual Environments for the Meaningful Assessment of Learning Jillianne Code, University of Victoria, Canada; Jody Clarke-Midura, Harvard University, USA; Nick Zap, Simon

Fraser University, Canada; Chris Dede, Harvard University, USA E-mail: jcode@uvic.caChapter 20 Visualizing summaries of performance for instructors assessing physical-motion skills Neil Rowe & Jeff Houde, U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, USA; Rey Osoteo, U.S. Naval Posgraduate School, USA;

Riqui Schwamm, Cory Kirk & Ahren Reed, U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, USA; Saad Khan, Chris Broaddus & Chris Meng, Sarnoff Laboratories, USA

E-mail: ncrowe@nps.eduChapter 22 Learning Presence in the Community of Inquiry Model: Towards a Theory of Online Learner Self- and Co-

regulation Peter Shea, University at Albany, State University of New York, USA E-mail: Chapter 22 Literacy in Multimedia Environments: Preliminary Findings Barbara OByrne, Diana Bailey & Stacey Murrell, Marshall University Graduate College, USA E-mail:Chapter 23 Student-Centered Library Instruction: An Assessment of Online Graduate Students Information Literacy

Skills and Needs Swapna Kumar & Marilyn Ochoa, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA E-mail: pshea@uamail.albany.eduChapter 24 Paths to Exemplary Online Teaching: A Look at Teacher Roles, Competencies and Exemplary Online Teaching Evrim Baran, Ana-Paula Correia & Ann Thompson, Iowa State University, USA E-mail: evrimb@gmail.comChapter 25 Virtual Gender Roles: Is Gender a Better Predictor of Internet Use than Sex? Amy Trombley, The University of North Texas, USA E-mail: amytrombley@my.unt.eduChapter 26 Meeting ISTE Competencies with a Problem-Based Video Framework Yvonne Skoretz & Amy Cottle, Marshall University, USA E-mail: NO EMAIL AVAILABLEChapter 27 Validating the Computer Attitude Questionnaire NSF ITEST (CAQ N/I) Leila Mills, University of North Texas, USA; Jenny Wakefield, Anjum Najmi & Dean Surface, UNT, USA; Rhonda

Christensen & Gerald Knezek, University of North Texas, USA E-mail: leilamills@yahoo.com

Chapter 28 Leveraging the Affordances of YouTube: Pedagogical Knowledge and Mental Models of Technology Af-fordances as Predictors for Pre-Service Teachers Planning for Technology Integration. Karsten Krauskopf, Carmen Zahn & Friedrich W. Hesse, Knowledge Media Research Center, Germany

E-mail: k.krauskopf@iwm-kmrc.deChapter 29 USA Supporting the Online Adjunct in Higher Education: A Delphi Study Marie Larcara, Canisius College E-mail: NO EMAIL AVAILABLEChapter 30 The Factors Influencing E-learning Adoption by Academic Staff: A Case Study in Taiwan Kuo-Tung Huan &

Elspeth McKay, SBITL RMIT University, Australia E-mail: kuotung.huan@rmit.edu.auChapter 31 Adopter Types of E-Learning Innovations in Higher Education. Empirical Findings. Helge Fischer & Thomas Khler, Prof. Dr, Media Center, Technical University Dresden, Germany E-mail: helge.fischer@tu-dresden.de

Editors

Theo Bastiaens is professor of Educational Technology at the Fernuniversitt in Hagen, Germany and part time professor at the Open University, The Netherlands. He is a member of the AACE board of directors E-mail: Theo.Bastiaens@fernuni-hagen.de

Gary Marks is CEO and founder of AACE.E-mail: info@aace.org

Creating the Intercultural Learning Narrative Using Social Network Sites Status Updates 15

PART 1 SOCIAL MEDIA OPPORTUNITIES

Chapter 1

Creating the Intercultural Learning Narrative Using Social Network Sites Status Updates: An Innovative Approach in Using Social Media

JASON WEN YAU LEE*, BEAUMIE KIM, AND MI SONG KIM

1.0 Introduction

In recent years, there has been a push by the software industry as a whole in the development of social software that has enabled people to express themselves freely and collaboratively. This has caused the use of social media applications to steadily increase over the past years, coupled with the increasing number of such applications developed and pushed across the Internet. Even major news portals such as CNN and the BBC have integrated social media applications into their site. For example, readers of such sites are able to easily share any news articles that they find interesting on their social bookmarks such as Delicious, StumbleUpon and Facebook; or they can leave comments on the articles that others can see. Humans are essentially social beings and technology has enabled these social applications to be integrated into our daily lives. It is quite inconceivable that the average urban teenagers today in developed nations not have some form of their social presence publically viewable online.

With this growing trend of the usage of social media, it is very likely that teenagers will be actively using these social media in their daily lives. The amount of time spent by teenagers on social network sites has been steadily incre-asing over the past few years (Lenhart, Purcell, Smith, & Zickuhr, 2010) and it is not surprising that there is a wealth of information being posted on their daily lives in these sites. Due to the informal nature of these sites, a person is likely to be feeling more free and more comfortable with expressing him or herself as compared with a more formal environment such as interviews, field observation or to an extent, journal writing.

In this paper, we described how we use the status updates to create the intercultural learning story of a participant on an intercultural exchange program. Traditionally, researchers wanting to understand the intercultural learning experience of participants on exchange programs used blogs, journal writing, surveys, and interviews (e.g., Cushner & Karim, 2003; Hansel, 2008; Koskinen & Tossavainen, 2004; ONeill, 2008). In this paper, we propose a more naturalistic digital ethno-graphy approach in trying to understand the learning experience. This is achieved by using a collection of status update over the period of intercultural exchange abroad and we created a narrative of the experience using these status updates.

2.0 Situating the study

Ethnography

Ethnography is a study where the researcher goes to the field and returns to report their stories. Essentially, the ethnographic approach study people in everyday setting with attention to the participants meaning-making process (An-derson-Levitt, 2006). People make meanings and learn by interacting with others, interpret their experience, and generate behaviors based on what they learn (Spradley, 1980). This means that our ways of behaving are acquired through social interactions and may change according to the situations and people that we encounter. This shared culture of how to in-teract with each other in a community is what ethnographers are interested in their studies.

As we move into the digital age, researchers have begun to leverage on social network technologies in their re-search methods (e.g., Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007; Lee, Kim, & Kim, 2010; Mazer, Murphy, & Simonds, 2007; Raja Hussain & Ng, 2010). Despite this change, the epistemology underpinning digital ethnography remains the same, which is to understand the behavior of people but in a digital environment. With the availability of new media, ethno-graphers can leverage the use of these technologies as avenues for understanding the meaning making process of study participants. Blogs, online questionnaires, forums and social networking can be thought as digital spaces where people can mingle around and hang out in a virtual environment. With these technologies, ethnography has gone digital, which changes how the participants are observed in this borderless environment.

16 Lee, Kim & Kim

Social media for research

Figure 1 is a compilation of social media technologies that are popularly used today. These technologies are plot-ted along the asynchronous-synchronous technologies vs. private-public space. Synchronous technologies allows for real time communication such as instant messaging while asynchronous communication does not occur in real time such as forums or emails. We further divided these technologies to public space and private space. Technologies that are classi-fied to be in the public space can be viewed by everyone while those in the private space are restricted to those privy to the information. For example, blogs can be both public and private depending on the privacy level set by the user. SNSs provide an interesting case as it contains both asynchronous (e.g., wall message, private message) and synchronous com-munication (Facebook chat) functions within the site. With the privacy control afforded in most SNS, users can choose to have the information within their profile be public or restricted to friends but a direct connection to friends is required in order to have full access to a persons social network profile.

Figure 1. Social media in the public-private and synchronous-asynchronous dimensions. (Adapted from Hernandez-Ramos, 2004)

The term social media has come to encompass a wide variety of applications such as blogs, wikis, Twitter, and social network sites. Although these technologies had humble beginnings once mainly accessible only to the technologically sa-vvy, it has now become widely available to the mass. Blogs are perhaps one of the oldest technologies that have evolved to become part of the social media. It is social as readers are able to leave comments or receive feedback from their rea-ders and able to interact in an asynchronous manner. Blogs are also been used by researchers (e.g., Hernndez-Ramos, 2004; Lin & Yuan, 2006) as a source of insights into student reflection during the learning process.

However, as we move towards a more instantaneous world, the use of technologies that allows for quick access to information has become increasingly popular. While blogs were useful for one to write down some reflective thoughts, microblogging allows for a person to quickly broadcast what he thinks in a short sentence burst. Microblogging is a form of asynchronous communication that has gained popularity to broadcast ideas, thoughts and even as a marketing tool for companies where these short messages are archived on a microblogging site similar to how blogs are archived. What dis-tinguishes these microblogs from blogs are the amount of words able to be published, typically under 500 characters thus

Creating the Intercultural Learning Narrative Using Social Network Sites Status Updates 17

requiring the users to be concise with their postings. Among the popular microblog services are Twitter, Tumblr, Jaiku, and Sixapart but these features are not limited exclusively to these microblogging sites. Social network sites also have their own built in microblog services, such as status updates in Facebook that can seamlessly connect with each other through certain protocols. A user only needs to update one of these services and the content can be aggregated over mul-tiple services.

Although blogs and microblogs provide an avenue for people to express their feelings and thoughts, they do not provide the ability for people to easily connect with each other as microblogs are developed mainly to publish content. In parallel to the increasing popularity of microblogs, social network sites began to develop as an avenue for people to connect with each other. One of the earliest popular SNS was MySpace whose helm is now taken over by Facebook. For active users of such SNS, a considerable amount of time would have gone into the content creation process of their pro-file page, which is an extension of the users online social presence. The vast amount of information that is being posted on the users SNS page creates the possibility to give an understanding into what the person is experiencing in their life. For researchers, the term social network site has been gaining much attention. There has been also a steady and growing empirical research being published to investigate the use of social network sites (e.g., boyd & Ellison, 2008; Lee, et al., 2010; Raja Hussain & Ng, 2010; Zywica & Danowski, 2008). However, it was not until the early 2000s when Web 2.0 technologies (OReilly, 2005) such as AJAX and other lightweight programming languages that powered SNS has reached maturity to enable the growth of SNS as we know today.

While the journal writing process is often a private affair, a more recent alternative is to use blogs as tools for re-flective writing (Jonassen, 2008). Blogs are a collection of entries of commentary written by individuals or groups of individuals and displayed in reverse chronological order. It gained mainstream popularity as a way for people to express their views and thoughts online. Blogs have shown to be useful in motivating students to actively reflect on their learning experiences and expressed positive responses to their learning experience (Lin & Yuan, 2006). Park (2003) called blogs as a successor to the learning journal as it serves as a vehicle for individual reflection. While blogs seems to be a promi-sing avenue for students to reflect on their experiences, Hall and Davison (2007) cautioned that some students may not be as enthusiastic or encouraged when using blogs to reflect on their experiences.

3.0 Using SNS to create the intercultural story

We center the discussion of this paper on a popular SNS called Facebook. Facebook is one of the most popular SNS which has over 500 million users are logged in on a daily basis with a total of 700 billion minutes spent per month on Facebook (Facebook, 2010). The term friend is loosely defined on SNS. In a SNS, friends are people whom one share a virtual social connection. For example, family members, acquaintances, co-workers or even strangers can be considered as friends on SNS. To make adding friends easier, one of the features within Facebook is the system would suggest friends to users based on mutual friends that they share. However, adding friends on Facebook is a bi-directional process where confirmation is required in order for such a social connection to be built. Once another user has been approved as a friend, they will have more access to information that would otherwise be restricted.

3.1 Facebook Status Updates

Status update is a feature within Facebook that lets users post short messages of up to 420 characters. Status updates are essentially a short shout-out or emotional expression that a person wishes to share with friends. On Facebook, users are encouraged to post their current status where prompted by the question Whats on your mind? when they log into their Facebook page. When a status update is posted, it is published and appears on the users wall and on his friends news feed, which is the main landing page upon login to Facebook . Friends can also leave comments on the status up-dates.

These status updates and corresponding comment are archived with a timestamp and respondents name, thus pro-viding researchers an insight on the interaction that has taken place within this space. These postings within the SNS are the digital equivalent of a short conversation between friends. Unlike an asynchronous chat or forum posting, status update postings and responses are limited by a word count thus making the conversation more concise. If users post a status update that is interesting, a rich conversation can sometimes flourish from this status update as illustrated in Figure

18 Lee, Kim & Kim

3. This unstructured conversation between friends in an informal environment gives the users freedom to express them-selves. For the researcher, this is important as exchanges of meaning in this environment occur in a naturalistic yet virtual setting.

3.2 Analyzing Facebook Status update postings

To illustrate how we can use SNS in intercultural research, we take a closer look at Nick, a 17-year old from Malay-sia who is on exchange to the United States for a 6-month program. Nick is a regular user of Facebook who updates his status from several times a week to several times a day. During his time abroad to the United States, he posted 102 status updates to his wall.

We found that one of the most common purpose of his status updates were to share his experiences with his friends. Occasionally, we also observed that the status updates are sometimes used to brag to friends on anything they find excit-ing to them. These experiences of differences (such as culture, weather or people) can be a useful source of information for the researcher to understand what a person is going through in their intercultural learning process. As status updates are often short burst of expressions or experiences, a single status update may not be able to provide a rich account of the experience. However, a collection of status updates over a longer period of time can show a trajectory of the experience a person values and finds important.

For example, in the following five status updates, we demonstrate Nicks experience with the weather. Nick first re-ferred to the weather in a negative manner when he ranted that typing in the cold makes his hand numb (turn 1) and how the cold weather is wrecking his skin (turn 3). Subsequent status updates were more positive when he refers to how he is loves seeing the snow cascading down (turn 2) and how he marvels at the snow storm (turn 4). Being from a tropical climate, he feels such an experience perhaps exciting and worthwhile sharing. As the seasons changed, he continued to update his status to describe his feeling of the weather. In turn 5 he updated his status describing how he is enjoying the weather in spring.

Table 1: Status updates on experiences valued by NickTurn Date Status Update12345

Jan 21Feb 21Feb 23Feb 27Apr 18

Nick says typing in the cold is not fun with your fingers going numb :(Nick loves looking at the snow cascading down from above :)Nick hates how the cold is wrecking his skin :[Nick marvels at the snow storm taking place outsideNick just laid on the grass at the park shirtless. Ahh... spring :)

3.3 Creating the intercultural narration

Using the status updates collected in the previous section, we can use these status updates to create a story of the participants intercultural learning experience. While the status updates may not mean much by itself, analyzing the sta-tus updates and the corresponding responses over a period of time can yield a more important account on the experience. However, this will require the researcher to interpret these status updates to create a meaningful story on the experience. In this section, we will status updates similar to those in Table 1 to create a short narrative on Nicks experience abroad with a focus on his adjustment back to his home country after the program.

Nick is a 17-year old Malaysian who was selected to participate on an exchange program to the United States for 6 months. He was excited about his exchange when he updated his status that he was ready to take on America. Several days later, he updated his status to indicate he has received his host family placement. To show his excitement on this new development, he ended the status update with a *dances* to describe the action dancing. During the first few days upon arrival to the United States, he updated his status several times on his safe arrival to his host family and that they were super nice.

Being from a tropical climate, Nick may not be used to the cold weather he was experiencing at that time. In his sta-tus update postings, Nick referred to the cold weather several times during the initial part of his stay. For example, Nick described the cold weather negatively by posting a status update describing how his fingers were going numb from the

Creating the Intercultural Learning Narrative Using Social Network Sites Status Updates 19

cold weather and that it was not fun typing that way and that how the cold weather was wrecking his skin. On the other hand, the cold weather was also something that Nick found interesting when he updated his status to describe how he marvels at the snow cascading from above and how he marvels the snow storm that was taking place outside his home.

One of the biggest challenges that Nick will face is to adjust to his new environment. While the weather was some-thing different for Nick, the host family plays an important role in the acculturation and adjustment process by making Nick feel welcomed to his new environment. This was observed in his Facebook status update after arriving two weeks when Nick updated his status to say that he loves his host family and several days later that he is fitting in just fine.

The process of assimilating and learning a new culture is something that occurs over a period of time. It is important is that the learner reflects on their experience and the realization that changes are happening within themselves is a pow-erful tool in learning. Nick made this important reflection a month after he arrived when he updated his status asking if he does really speak with an American accent. Although he speaks English well, his reflection that he speaks with an American accent shows that he realized that he has unknowingly begun the assimilation process into his new host cul-ture.

It is common that sojourns develop a sense of homesickness when they start to reminisce memories of home or feel like a stranger in the new environment. Sojourns are known to miss things that are familiar to them such as food, people or the environment. Nick was no different that the other exchange students when he also gone through a period of home-sickness. His first status update reflected this in mid February when he asks if it is wrong to feel this way and he wants to feel familiar. As this status update was posted in the initial stages during his exchange, it is likely that this is the begin-ning of his cultural assimilation process when he begins to realize the subtle cultural differences that were not apparent earlier on. A month later, we also observe a similar statement when he updated his status to indicate that he craves for cheesecake from a caf back home and asks why he feels so. He ended the status update with a :( emoticon to indicate his unhappiness with feeling that way.

Nick also experienced many positive experiences during his exchange that he wanted to share with his friends. Dur-ing his exchange, he used his status updates inform his friends on the places he visited such as the Mall of America, watched a basketball game, and traveling to New York and to Los Angeles. In a way, these status updates serve as a way for Nick to brag to his friends about his experiences and is a form of social comparison where he is letting his friends know that he is doing well and also able to travel around during his time abroad.

Three more months into the middle of his exchange program, Nick began to have conflicting feelings about return-ing home. This was indicated where he ended both of the status updates with an emoticon that indicates sadness. Despite feeling homesick two weeks ago, Nick updated his status to indicate that he was not ready to return home just yet. In his next status update, he shows conflicting emotions about returning home when he post a rhetoric question to indicate that he misses home but does not really want to return home. It a contrast as compared to when he first arrived in January where he was feeling homesick but the thought of an impending end to his exchange in 3 more months created this con-flicting feeling of missing home but not ready to return home.

Although there were no further status updates referring to his departure in April and May, Nick started making sev-eral references in June as he approached closer to the end of the exchange program. He clearly had very conflicting emotions where he felt that he did not want to leave his American family (See turn 6). He reflected this in a status update when he posted before I came, I was afraid. Now as my time here draws to a close end, my legs are trembling and my lips quiver (turn 7). It is common to see exchange students having a strong sense of not wanting to return home as they approach closer to their return back home as they have started to grown accustomed to their new environment.

Table 2: Status updates towards the end of Nicks stay abroad67

89

June 15June 16

June 29June 30

Nick mood took a 360 degrees turn. I dont wanna go home yet.Nick before I came, I was afraid. Now as my time here draws to a close end, my legs are trembling and my lips quiver.Nick I dont want to leave. I really dont want to leave right now.Nick misses his american home already. Not joking. All this waiting is killing me. Gah!

Upon returning home to Malaysia, Nick continued using Facebook to reflect on his recent experience abroad by posting his thoughts on Facebook. He was having mixed feelings when he realizes that his exchange has come to an end and that the task of re-assimilating back to his home culture is something daunting. In Nicks next status update, he made

20 Lee, Kim & Kim

a very important realization that the task of re-assimilation is not as effortless as he thought it would be. Such reversal of feelings is something that most exchange students experience upon returning back home and the reentry process back to the home culture can be as difficult as the initial assimilation to the foreign culture.

And thus, this concludes the story of Nicks intercultural learning experience abroad of 6 months. While the intercul-tural learning experience does not end after his return We can see how Nicks thoughts have changed and how he has de-veloped intercultural competence over time. Initial status update postings such as those in turn 1 through turn 15 relates to superficial cultural observations such as the weather, his feelings on how great it was to be there and places that he was to visit. Towards the end of the program, his status update postings reflected heavily on his experiences during his time abroad. Although the statements made had negative emotions related to it, it was an important learning process that Nick had to experience before any intercultural learning can occur. This is based on an intercultural learning perspective where the ability to recognize cultural differences and make sense of the new knowledge is the most important aspect on how learning can occur.

4.0 Discussion

The central aim of this paper is to create an account of the intercultural learning experience through Facebook status updates. To achieve this, we created the story through a careful selection of status updates posted by a participant on a 6-month intercultural exchange program called Nick. The story that was created is by no means a full account of the en-tire experience but we demonstrated how a researcher could use these status update postings to interpret the intercultural learning experience in a more naturalistic manner.

The creations of these digital artifacts in an informal space such as a SNS gives an alternative insight into a partici-pants feelings and emotions that was once limited to using written accounts such as blogs and journals or oral accounts such as interviews. As researchers interested in understanding the intercultural learning process, we view these digital artifacts as a digital extension of their experience during their time abroad on the intercultural exchange program. Similar to journals or blogs, postings on SNS can be used as an avenue for a participant to express their feelings. By analyzing these digital artifacts over a period of time, researchers are able to gain insights into emotions and critical incidences that are otherwise difficult to obtain through interviews or surveys. In the previous section, we described an example how we created a quick snapshot into an exchange students experience of traveling to the United States, adjusting to the culture there and adjusting to the culture back home by collecting and analyzing his status updates postings over a period of 7 months.

From our analysis of over 3000 status update postings by 16 participants in another study, we observed that there is a vast amount of information that is contained within Facebook and does not include other features such as notes, wall comments or photo comments that could possibly yield a richer account of the intercultural learning experience. Al-though status updates are short messages of up to 420 characters, we have demonstrated that it is possible for researchers to obtain rich amount of information through the analysis of short text collected over a period of time. Comments from friends and the interaction between them can further provide information that is similar to a recorded conversation. The researcher can then use the research questions to focus on these status updates and comments to triangulate any findings that they may obtain from interviews, questionnaires or any other sources.

For example, researchers interested in understanding how social support affects the adjustment process in a foreign culture for example our previous study (See Lee, Kim and Kim (2010)) where we described using status updates to gain an understanding into critical emotional related incidences that may affect the intercultural learning process. A researcher interested in understanding what role this social support play can use SNS as an avenue for their observation. Due to the informal nature of this environment, a person is more likely to speak candidly about their problems and the ability to crowdsource their problem to many people simultaneously makes it an attractive avenue for people to seek social sup-port.

While the use of SNS remains largely popular among the Net savvy generation, we would like to caution that not everyone will be an active user of SNS. Although an individual may have an account on multiple SNS, it does not mean that they would be actively updating the site with what they are doing. These passive users do not produce contents such as status updates, sharing links or write notes. Such individuals use SNS to casually keep in contact with friends and not use such sites to disseminate information. Due to the lack of updates or comments to friends, they may seem to be an inactive user of SNS. A researcher using SNS should be cautious of the fact that although technology is an enabler, it can

Creating the Intercultural Learning Narrative Using Social Network Sites Status Updates 21

be a barrier for those who are not technologically inclined as they may require more time to familiarize themselves with the technology.

Despite us advocating the use of SNS as a research methodology, there are several concerns that researchers may have to consider when using this new media. In the next section, we will discuss some of the issues researchers should consider when using SNS as a tool for research.

5.0 Summary

In this paper, we described a novel approach in using social network sites to gain insights into the intercultural learning process of participants on an exchange program. This study contributes to the growing literature on SNS that we hope will have methodological implications in both the field of computer mediated communication and intercultural learning. We took into account an extensive discussion by boyd and Ellison (2008) on social network sites and proposed a methodology for using SNS status updates to provide a rich ethnographic account using intercultural learning as a con-text how this methodology can be applied,

The examples described in Section 3 of this paper provides several examples of the types of information a resear-cher may obtain from analyzing the status updates. As compared to journal writing or interviews, the informal nature of SNS also allows for the users of such sites to express themselves in a more relaxed manner and also provides a different perspective. When triangulated with other sources such as journals or interviews, we can use these artifacts from SNS to corroborate any findings.

However, we observed that there are two groups of SNS users. One group are individuals who are not too comforta-ble with sharing information online and on the other hand are individuals who have no reservations with sharing anything and everything that comes into their minds. Therefore, we suggest that it is still important that analysis of SNS be used in conjunction interviews, surveys or questionnaires in order to have a clearer understanding on the learning process of the intercultural learner.

While the use of social media is relatively new, we attempt to propose the use of social network sites as a non intru-sive research tool rather than as an intervention. With the increasing interest in the use of social media in research, we have shown in this study how social network sites can be used as a source for gaining insights into intercultural learning for participants on a student exchange program. The affordances within social network sites allow researchers the op-portunity to tap into a resource that can potentially be a powerful research tool. This study demonstrated just one of the many potential from analyzing status updates and comments posted by participants on an intercultural exchange pro-gram. We also see SNS as one of the sources for gaining a better understanding on the intercultural development process. There are also many other affordances within a social network site that a researcher can further tap into for their own research purposes. What is clear is that researchers will be finding more novel approaches in using social media in their research in the near future.

References

Anderson-Levitt, K. (2006). Ethnography. In J. Green, G. Camilli, P. Elmore, A. Skukauskaite & E. Grace (Eds.), Handbook of complementary methods in education research (pp. 279-296). Washington DC: US: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

boyd, d., & Ellison, N. (2008). Social network sites: Definition, history and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Com-munication, 13(1), 210-230.

Cushner, K., & Karim, A. U. (2003). Study abroad at the university level. In D. Landis, J. M. Bennett & M. J. Bennett (Eds.), Handbook of intercultural training (3rd ed.). London:UK: Sage.

Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The Benefits of Facebook Friends: Social capital and college students use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 12(4), 1143-1168.

Facebook. (2010). Facebook | Statistics. Retrieved November 29, 2010, from http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

Hall, H., & Davison, B. (2007). Social software as support in hybrid learning environments: The value of the blog as a tool for reflective learning and peer support. Library & Information Science Research, 29(2), 163-187.

Hansel, B. (2008). AFS long term impact study: Looking at intercultural sensitivity, anxiety, and experience with other cultures. New York: AFS International.

22 Lee, Kim & Kim

Hernndez-Ramos, P. (2004). Web logs and online discussions as tools to promote reflective practice. The Journal of Interactive Online Learning, 3(1), 1-16.

Jonassen, D. (2008). Meaningful learning with technology (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.Koskinen, L., & Tossavainen, K. (2004). Study abroad as a process of learning intercultural competence in nursing. Interna-

tional journal of nursing practice, 10, 111-120.Lee, J. W. Y., Kim, B., & Kim, M. S. (2010). An exploration on the use of Facebook as a tool for social support on an intercul-

tural exchange program. Paper presented at the Global Learn Asia Pacific 2010, Penang, Malaysia.Lenhart, A., Purcell, K., Smith, A., & Zickuhr, K. (2010). Social media & mobile internet use among teens and adults. Retrieved

from http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults.aspxLin, H. L., & Yuan, S. M. (2006). Taking blog as a platform of learning reflective journal Advances in Web Based Learning -

ICWL 2006 (pp. 38-47): Springer.Mazer, J. P., Murphy, R. E., & Simonds, C. J. (2007). Ill see you on Facebook: The effects of computer-mediated teacher

self-disclosure on student motivation, affective learning, and classroom climate. Communication Education, 56(1), 1 - 17.ONeill, E. J. (2008). Intercultural competence development: Implementing international virtual elementary classroom activities

into public schools in the U.S. and in Korea. University of Virginia, Virginia.OReilly, T. (2005). What is Web 2.0: Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software. Retrieved Feb

20, 2009, from http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.htmlPark, C. (2003). Engaging students in the learning process: the learning journal. Journal of Geography in Higher Education,

27(2), 183-199.Raja Hussain, R. M., & Ng, H. Z. (2010). A case-study: The adoption, adaptation and transformation of Facebook as eportfolio

in Higher Education. Paper presented at the Proceedings of Global Learn Asia Pacific 2010, Penang, Malaysia.Spradley, J. P. (1980). Participant observation. New York: US: Holt, Rinehart and Winston Zywica, J., & Danowski, J. (2008). The faces of Facebookers: Investigating social enhancement and social compensation hy-

potheses; predicting Facebook and offline popularity from sociability and self-esteem, and mapping the meanings of popu-larity with semantic networks. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14(1).

More than code: The significance of social interactions in young people's development as interactive media creators 23

Chapter 2

More than Code: The Significance of Social Interactions in Young Peoples Development as Interactive Media Creators

KAREN BRENNAN, AMANDA VALVERDE*, JOE PREMPEH*, RICAROSE ROQUE, AND MICHELLE CHUNG

INTRODUCTION: INTERACTIVE MEDIA CREATION AND SCRATCH

Think about all of the forms of interactive media that surround young people: video games, online social networks, wikis, etc. Although they are engaged with these media forms, young people participate primarily as consumers of inter-active media, rather than as producers of interactive media. Young people play video games, but dont design their own games. They provide content for social network platforms, but dont construct their own infrastructure for exchanging social information. They use services like Wikipedia and even sometimes contribute content to wikis, but dont question the mechanisms that enable them to share their work online. The use of interactive media is important, certainly but understanding and designing interactive media will increasingly become capacities necessary for understanding and ne-gotiating our interactive media landscape.

Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu) is a programming environment that enables young (and not-so-young) people to create their own interactive media. Unlike most programming languages, which require the creator to type text-based program instructions (such as Java, Python, C++), Scratch presents program instructions as visual blocks. Thus, just as one can build physical creations using LEGO bricks, a creator can build interactive media by snapping together Scratch blocks in stacks. Arbitrarily complex and highly diverse programs can be built up this way a choose-your-own-adven-ture story, a maze game, a simulation of the effects of gravity on objects (Fig. 1).

Figure 1: The Scratch programming environment, screenshots from four sample projects (clockwise from upper left: an interactive navigation through the layers of the earth, a LEGO model creator, a digital logic toolkit, a rescue game), and an example of a stack of Scratch blocks.

In addition to the Scratch programming environment, there is a website the Scratch online community where young people are able to share their interactive creations (Fig. 2). The online community, launched in May 2007, has more than 680,000 registered members sharing, discussing, and remixing one anothers Scratch projects (Resnick et al., 2009). Each day, members (mostly ages 8 to 16) upload approximately 1500 new Scratch projects to the website on average, a new project every minute.

24 Brennan, Valverde Prempeh, Roque and Chung

Figure 2: The home page of the Scratch online community, where young people can share projects and interact with other creators and creations.

Beyond enabling people to upload their projects, the site was designed with features typical of community-based content-creation sites like Flickr and YouTube. Members can leave comments on projects, annotate projects with tags, indicate admiration of projects by clicking the Love It link, and bookmark others projects in a list of favorites. Members can also mark other members as friends, create galleries or collections of projects with others, and participate in discus-sion forums. Each member has a profile page that displays their alias and country, as well as their contributions and inter-actions lists of projects, favorites, friends, and galleries.

More than code: Studying interactive media creators development

Given the considerable number of young people who are engaged as interactive media creators with Scratch, we were interested in exploring two key questions related to their engagement: How are young people participating and de-veloping as interactive media creators? How can we, as researchers, represent this participation and development?

Our first approach to responding to these two questions was to examine projects posted on the website. Each Scratch members profile page is a portfolio of projects and we considered measuring development by examining the elements of code (the programming blocks) that make up each project. By looking at projects over time, we could examine the blocks that a Scratcher was using and determine whether they were creating more programmatically sophisticated arti-facts. But we soon abandoned this approach, recognizing that a Scratch project is more than the sum of its programming elements. With code as the primary unit of analysis, we would have ignored other important aspects of interactive media creations, including diversity of creation, experimenting with aesthetics and genres.

We then considered a more holistic approach. Inspired by the work of Barron (2007) and of Plaisant (1996), we worked on developing individual Scratcher timelines or biographies. We hoped that a timeline/biography approach would better represent the process of interactive media creation, by examining creators project notes and discussions around the artifacts, in addition to more quantitative, product-oriented measures of participation. But as we studied projects, notes, comments, and forum posts, it became clear that an individual Scratcher was too narrow as a unit of analysis. The complex interactions between Scratchers, which were significant for supporting each others development, made the ex-amination of individual Scratchers challenging from a research perspective.

The central problem was that our code-only and our more holistic portfolio approaches both insufficiently acknowl-edged the social nature of participation on the Scratch website. Inspired by Paperts Mindstorms, the website draws on a samba school model, where people of all ages come together with shared goals, to support each others learning and col-laborate on endeavors that are more substantial than could be achieved individually (Papert, 1993). More broadly, theo-ries about communities of practice and situated learning have provided ways of thinking about how community settings

More than code: The significance of social interactions in young people's development as interactive media creators 25

can support the learning of a practice by providing learners access to others and opportunities to explore the activities, artifacts, and ideals of the practice (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Lave & Wenger, 1991). Given the social intercon-nections, trying to trace an individuals development as a Scratcher became an increasingly complex task - so much of an individual Scratchers development was dependent on how others helped them, and how they in turn helped others. Other members were so central in the development of Scratchers who participate in the Scratch online community that our key research question became: How do others support an individuals development as a creator of interactive media with Scratch?

The role of others: Case studies of participation

In responding to our research question, we adopted a predominantly qualitative approach. The study took place over a four-month period. For two months, the five members of our research team conducted ethnographic observations of the online community. We first looked at Scratch as a whole, taking note of how users interacted with various aspects of the website, mapping an individuals potential navigation pathways. These general observations allowed us to see the various ways that each Scratcher could interact with the site, including (but not limited to) learning skills from posted tutorials, reading posts on the discussion forums, and browsing projects highlighted on the homepage.

Based on these initial ethnographic observations, we segmented the Scratch population (based on age, geographic location, duration of participation in the community, magnitude of participation, visibility of participation, and project genre and sophistication) and selected a sample of 10 Scratchers to study in greater depth to achieve coverage of these different segments.

We created user profiles for each of these Scratchers, which served as comprehensive summaries of their different modes of participation. We looked at a broad spectrum of activities for each user, cataloging what types of projects they made and with what frequency. Additionally, in order to have a more complete view of each user, we expanded our view beyond an individuals creations to see how they connected with other users. We observed the channels of communica-tion available on the site, including feedback in comment postings, as well as forum discussions where users asked for programming assistance, got to know other users with similar interests, and interacted with others to form collaborative work groups.

Over the next several weeks, we conducted hour-long interviews by phone or Skype with six of the ten Scratchers that we had profiled. These six were selected based on two factors: (1) achieving satisfying coverage based on our initial coding of the ethnographic observations and profiles, and (2) availability of particular Scratchers to participate in the interviews. The interviews were conducted in researcher pairs and were semi-structured. Examples of questions that we asked in the interviews include: How did you get started with Scratch? What do you do with Scratch? Why do you use Scratch? Throughout the four months of the study, the research team met on a weekly basis, to share and discuss our data collection and analysis experiences. These meetings served as inter-coder reliability checks, making sure that the analysis was approved by all research team members. Approval for this study was granted by the universitys ethics committee and all interview participants gave informed consent.

Through the process of coding our observations, profiles, and interviews, we identified particular roles of participa-tion that were recurrent in our data. There was not one way in which others supported a Scratchers development, but rather a cluster of symmetric roles (roles in which the individual and others were more equal, such as collaborator) and asymmetric roles (roles in which the individual and others had differentiated roles, such as teacher or moderator) that members transitioned between at various points in time during their development as interactive media creators.

We present our analysis of roles here as a series of six cases studies. Each case study represents an archetype of par-ticipation: The Newcomer, The Remixer, The Collaborator, The Teacher, The Moderator, and The Contributor. The case studies are centered on individual Scratchers, but emphasize their relationships in the social context of the Scratch online community and how that social context has supported their development as interactive media creators.

The Newcomer: Kylie, 9, Australia

Well, its just that there are endless possibilities. Its not like you can just make this project, or this project, and thats all that you can make.

26 Brennan, Valverde Prempeh, Roque and Chung

Kylie is a precocious 9-year-old home-schooled by her mother, passionate about her four pet guinea pigs, and dreams of one day owning a caf or being a piano teacher. She is an avid Scratcher. Although Kylie is a relative new-comer (having only been a member of the Scratch community for 15 weeks), she has been a prolific creator of projects, uploading more than 240 projects to share with others in the community. She visits the Scratch website every day to browse through the messages left for her by other Scratchers, to interact with new projects that others have posted, and to share her latest Scratch creations.

Kylie was shown the basics of Scratch programming by a friend, and she was excited about the possibilities of expressing herself creatively in this new medium. This creative excitement is demonstrated in the diversity of her proj-ects: an interactive random-number-generating dragon, a role playing game about virtual pets, an interactive encyclope-dia project that lists facts about guinea pigs, and dozens of community-organized coloring contest entries. She regularly explores others projects, downloading and learning from the work created by other Scratchers. She values access to the collective experience of other users, saying that you can search for what it is you are stuck on and have a look at other peoples scripts.

A few weeks after joining the community, one of Kylies projects was selected by a Scratch community administra-tor to be featured on the website home page. Being featured enabled Kylie to be introduced to a greater number of com-munity members and to get more feedback on her work, both of which supported her deepening engagement with the community and her development as an interactive media creator. Kylie appreciates these benefits, but she is not primarily motivated by peer recognition or acknowledgment from site administrators although she recognizes that others are. When asked why some Scratchers abandon the site after only a brief period of time, Kylie suggested that it was due to a lack of visibility: Some people [leave] for popularity but I dont think thats a good reason to quit.

Having her project featured allowed her to become connected with a wider array of users and added to her enjoy-ment, but has not ultimately defined why she is such an involved creator. She is passionate about her ideas and about creatively expressing those ideas with Scratch; she is enthusiastic in her explorations and continually seeks out new ex-periences. It is not important to her to be popular, but she recognizes the value of being connected to others. When asked whether she thought that it would be as fun to work on Scratch if she could not communicate with her peers on the site, Kylie invoked the Scratch online community motto probably not because its imagine, program, share. You have to share wha