The project that this blog is designed to support is called “Learning and Teaching Science: The Realities and Possibilities of Social Media”. It is funded with a 2 year SSHRC Insight Development Grant which started in June 2011.
The project is an international collaborative project between principal investigator – Rachel Moll at Vancouver Island University in British Columbia, Canada and her collaborators – Wendy Nielsen at the University of Wollongong in Australia and Cedric Linder at Uppsala University in Sweden. Please see the Team page for more information about the collaborators and research assistants who work on this project.
The specific objectives of this project are to:
1) study students’ and teachers’ use of social media for learning science across age groups and contexts.
2) develop a model for understanding science learning through social media.
3) make recommendations for instructional practice in secondary and post-secondary science courses and elementary science teacher education.
The project is taking place through two phases of data collection:
1) Focus groups with secondary and post secondary students were conducted to explore how they use social media to support their science learning. [Fall 2011 – complete]
2) Design and conduct a survey to explore students’ social media learning behaviours. After being validated, the survey was administered to pre-service teachers in science methods courses in Australia, and to undergraduate physics students in Canada and Sweden.
A complexity thinking perspective in education (Davis & Sumara, 2006) will be used to interpret the learning potential of students social media learning behaviours. This work contributes to science teaching and learning in several important ways: it aims to establish a Canadian-led international network of science educators in this area of study; it will develop a model for interpreting learning in these contexts; and, as this project builds into an established research program, theoretically and empirically grounded curricula will be developed, tested and disseminated through workshops, conferences, publications and social media tools. This work also has the potential to inform emerging policies in education as districts and ministries of education strive to meet calls for 21st century learning in schools and post-secondary institutions.
The following papers have been published (or submitted for publication) as a result of this project:
Moll, R.F., & Nielsen, W. (under review). Development and validation of a social media and science learning survey. A paper submitted to the International Journal of Science Education in July 2015.
Moll, R. F., Nielsen, W., & Linder, C. (2015). Physics students’ social media behaviours and connectedness. International Journal of Digital Literacy and Digital Competence,
6(1), 16-34.
Nielsen, W., Moll, R., Farrell, T., McDaid, N., & Hoban, G. (2013). Social media use among pre-service primary teachers. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 10(8), 3-12. [available online]
To date results from this project have been presented at several international conferences:
Moll, R.F., & Nielsen, W. (2015, June). Development and validation of a social media and science learning survey. A paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education, Ottawa, ON. [CSSE paper May 31 final pdf]
Moll, R.F., Nielsen, W., & Linder, C. (2015, April). Physics students’ social media behaviours and connectedness. A paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Association of Research in Science Teaching, Chicago, USA. [NARST 2015 presentation pdf] [NARST 2015 paper pdf]
Moll, R., McDaid, N., Farrell, T., Nielsen, W., & Linder, C. (2013, June). Physics students’ social media learning behaviours. A poster presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education, Victoria, Canada. [CSSE 2015 poster pdf]
Exploring the use of Social Media to support Teaching and Learning in Science. A talk for Interdisciplinary Education Research Institute (IERI) Seminar, University of Wollongong, August 21st, 2012. [pdf of powerpoint] [listen to the talk mp3]
Moll, R.F., Nielsen, W.S, Hoban, G., & Linder, C. (2012, June). Learning and Teaching in the 21st Century: Realities and Possibilities of Social Media. A paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Australasian Science Education Research Association, Sippy Downs, Queensland, Australia. [ASERA presentation pdf] [ASERA paper pdf]
Moll, R.F., McDaid, N., & Linder, C. (2012, May). Googling Physics: Social Media and Science Learning. A poster presented at the Learning and the Brain: Web Connected Minds conference, Arlington, Virginia. [Learning and Brain Poster pdf]
Moll. R.F., & Hengstler, J. (2012, April). Educating with social media: Policy and
practice in British Columbia. A paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Vancouver, Canada. [AERA presentation google doc] [AERA Paper pdf]