(Repost of “Spartans featured in special journal issue…” from Michigan State University, College of Education, News 12/18/24)
Faculty, students and alums from the Michigan State University College of Education are represented in a special, double-issue of Information & Learning Sciences, available now. The October 2024 publication put a spotlight on social media’s increasing presence in today’s society and its role in “incidental and purposeful learning.”
The co-editors and authors explore how social media algorithms — or, what appears when visitors use the app or how it influences what ads users see — provide both opportunities and challenges of learning.
Jennifer Sutcliffe, current EPET Ph.D. candidate, author
“Social media algorithms can expand, disrupt and constrain how, when, where and from whom people learn,” said the co-editors in the introduction to the first special issue. “[They can also] amplify the spread of information that is accurate or inaccurate, sorting and ranking content at a speed and scale impossible for humans alone.”
Over 12 conceptual and empirical articles, scholars explore several social media platforms — such as YouTube, TikTok, Facebook and Reddit — and include studies from the U.S., Brazil and Spain. The articles examine broad contexts of learning across K-12 and postsecondary/professional learning spaces, and they also explore various learning types, such as required, invited or self-directed learning.
“Persistent and complex challenges lead professionals to engage in self-directed learning on social media, beyond solely relying on formal and locally offered supports and training programs. For instance, social media platforms like Reddit can help beginning teachers navigating the pitfalls of entering a new profession within an ever-evolving digital and social landscape,” said Staudt Willet.
“It is important that we look critically at how social media algorithms are expanding educational possibilities as well as their potential use for misinformation, manipulation, and harm. This two-part journal special issue does just that,” said Greenhow. Greenhow, and other Spartans, recently contributed to an article on artificial intelligence and its affordances and drawbacks.
Michigan State University scholars contributed to research examining current and future use cases of artificial intelligence (AI) across health, education and the workplace. The research also identified future opportunities and challenges in all three sub-areas.
Thirty-three scholars from across the world collaborated on the article. Four are College of Education Spartans: Professor Christine Greenhow, Educational Psychology and Educational Technology (EPET), Ph.D. students Aisel Akhmedova and Jennifer Sutcliffe, and 2024 Curriculum, Instruction and Teacher Education (CITE) alum Selin Akgün, now assistant professor at the University of Minnesota.
“As the world wrestles with the possibilities and pitfalls of applying AI, we were thrilled to collaborate with an international group of scholars – including two of this year’s Nobel Prize winners – to co-author this article, which maps the potential impact of generative AI on education, socioeconomic inequalities and policy-making,” said Greenhow. “We believe this work will be broadly accessible to readers who are excited by or concerned about applications of AI in our lives.”
Opportunities with AI
The MSU scholars contributed most meaningfully to the education section of the paper. The research was published in the June 2024 issue of PNAS Nexus.
Scholars identified “promising” opportunities for AI across the education spectrum, including the increased ability to translate text and homework into different languages and personalize learning experiences. In some previous research, case studies have shown that students received higher test scores when using AI that focused on personalized learning.
AI can also alleviate, expedite or inspire work for teachers. For example, some teachers have utilized platforms to grade assignments.
These are but featured highlights of the opportunities, and others not directly mentioned, in the paper.
“Aspects of generative AI that augment existing teaching practices, such as personalized learning through chatbot tutors, have already demonstrated the capacity to improve learning outcomes in some cases,” said Sutcliffe.
Jennifer Sutcliffe. Courtesy photo.
Concerns for AI use in education
However, amidst these optimistic viewpoints, concerns linger.
The paper also highlighted challenges, such as equitable access, understanding of AI applications and possible discriminatory, biased or incorrect outputs created, which could skew experiences and learning.
“While acknowledging the affordances of AI, it is also critical to discuss the source of these ethical concerns,” said Akgün. “The problem stems from how the use and consequences of AI technologies are considered as objective and neutral. However, we know that humans carry historical and systemic social, cultural and political biases; therefore, machines learn from our human biases and inherit them from humans.”
Selin Akgün. Courtesy photo.
In one sobering example, previous research found humans, generally, are unable to determine whether a text was written by a human or was AI-generated. Moreover, AI-generated text was described by one study as “generat[ing] more convincing misinformation than humans.”
The study also denoted a human-centric challenge. Females report using ChatGPT, a generative AI tool, “less frequently” than male counterparts.
For those who do use AI, regardless of gender, there is also a concern about the reliance on AI platforms. In other words, how much is too much AI usage? At what point does AI take away independent learning opportunities?
Contrarily, does learning how to use AI bolster learning opportunities and competencies?
Thinking ahead
Certainly, questions remain for AI and education, and this study doesn’t aim to resolve them.
However, the research does suggest what comes next in terms of policy and practice.
“[Education stakeholders should] redefine the skills and competencies necessary to effectively utilize generative AI,” wrote the paper’s authors.
Aisel Akhmedova. Courtesy photo.
To put it in another context, the scholars offer this analogy: “Calculators did not remove the need for students to learn the properties of algebra and develop mathematical reasoning.”
Therefore, the paper continues: “[C]urricula must teach how to successfully describe and share ideas, both with and without assistance from generative AI.”
An argument could be made that AI can reduce independent learning – but the scholars also argue that its integration (particularly for predictive text capabilities) could be used to teach students critical thinking skills. After an AI platform provides an output to a prompt, the students could evaluate the text and keep iterating the prompts to produce clearer, more correct results.
Thus, AI also provides an opportunity to bolster fact-checking competencies.
According to the paper, “among more than 3,000 U.S. high school students and undergraduates, 96% did not know how to evaluate the trustworthiness of websites.”
The scholars suggest improving fact-checking understanding could yield to beneficial results for teachers and students alike.
“Applications of AI are perhaps most successful with a knowledgeable human collaborator who iteratively vets and shapes the outcome,” said Greenhow. “AI has the potential to assist education but only if we understand and address its challenges.”
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a field of study that combines the applications of machine learning, algorithm productions, and natural language processing. Applications of AI transform the tools of education. AI has a variety of educational applications, such as personalized learning platforms to promote students’ learning, automated assessment systems to aid teachers, and facial recognition systems to generate insights about learners’ behaviors. Despite the potential benefits of AI to support students’ learning experiences and teachers’ practices, the ethical and societal drawbacks of these systems are rarely fully considered in K-12 educational contexts. The ethical challenges of AI in education must be identified and introduced to teachers and students. To address these issues, this paper (1) briefly defines AI through the concepts of machine learning and algorithms; (2) introduces applications of AI in educational settings and benefits of AI systems to support students’ learning processes; (3) describes ethical challenges and dilemmas of using AI in education; and (4) addresses the teaching and understanding of AI by providing recommended instructional resources from two providers—i.e., the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Media Lab and Code.org. The article aims to help practitioners reap the benefits and navigate ethical challenges of integrating AI in K-12 classrooms, while also introducing instructional resources that teachers can use to advance K-12 students’ understanding of AI and ethics.
Cite this article
Akgun, S., Greenhow, C. Artificial intelligence in education: Addressing ethical challenges in K-12 settings. AI Ethics (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-021-00096-7
Social media use has spiked around the world during the COVID-19 global pandemic as people reach out for news, information, social connections, and support in their daily lives. Past work on professional learning networks (PLNs) has shown that teachers also use social media to find supports for their teaching and ongoing professional development. This paper offers quantitative analysis of over a half million Twitter #Edchat tweets as well as qualitative content analysis of teachers’ question tweets (n = 1054) and teacher interviews (n = 4). These data and analyses provide evidence of the kinds of supports that teachers in the United States and Canada sought on social media during the rapid transition to emergency remote teaching in Spring 2020 and how these supports informed teaching practices. These results provide insights into PLN theory and teachers’ social media use during times of disruption and crisis. Open access article here: https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13097
Suggested tweet New research! Inquiring tweets want to know: #Edchat supports for #RemoteTeaching during COVID‐19 https://bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjet.13097#.YVnI5xnr3gk.twitter
Citation: Greenhow, C., Staudt Willet, K.B. & Galvin, S. (2021). Inquiring tweets want to know: #Edchat supports for #remoteteaching during COVID-19. British Journal of Educational Technology, 52(4). https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13097
Social media platforms can play an important role for teaching students. Check out the first comprehensive review (open access) of over 13 years of research on teaching and teacher learning with social media in K-12 education. This review from Michigan State University (@MSUCollegeofEd) researchers and published in Teachers College Record (@tcrecord) can help teachers and instructors think through and execute research-informed practices with social media to enhance traditional in-person or online learning.
This research synthesis found that using social media, students engaged in active learning, self-directed learning, and critical thinking; created deeper interactions between teachers and students (which is so important when classes move online); and expanded learning communities beyond school walls. It’s not surprising since students use social media in almost every other aspect of their lives.
“Due to lack of research synthesis in this field, educators and teachers have had very little guidance on research-informed practices,” Greenhow said. “This has been a problem since a quarter of U.S. teachers surveyed turned to social media to interact with students when the pandemic began and were rapidly required to teach online. This synthesis of will help educational professionals understand how their social media use can help students and support their own rapid learning — during the pandemic and beyond.”
The research also showed that through social media, teachers can enhance interactions between students, between students and teachers, and with people and resources outside the classroom. All are important for a student’s sense of belonging in an educational community.
And by using social media themselves, teachers can receive professional benefits through just-in-time teaching-related resources and social or emotional support outside their own school or district, she said.
Greenhow said the research provides an understanding of the impact social media has on teaching and learning, which will help teachers prepare for a combination of in-classroom and online learning likely expected this fall.
“Faced with uncertainty about what form their fall teaching will take, these insights on the advantages of using social media will help teachers address common teaching challenges,” Greenhow said. “The constant challenges of promoting students’ active learning and sense of connection are issues that educators often struggle with, but especially so when they have to turn on a dime to recreate in-person classes online.”
Greenhow’s co-authors are Sarah Galvin and Emilia Askari with MSU and Diana Brandon of Florida State University.
As new technologies shape and are shaped by human practices, educators and researchers must consider the impact that participating in social media—to access, reflect upon, question, evaluate and disseminate scholarship—is having on their professional development and practices. This paper investigates how members of the educational research community use social media to advance professional learning and scholarship dissemination in online–offline networks. Specifically, we examine whether and how participating in the microblogging service, Twitter, as a conference backchannel, facilitated professional learning and participation in the annual meetings of American educational researchers in 2012 and 2016, respectively, and the nature of that participation. Insights from this paper will benefit educators of varying disciplines and experience levels interested in the changing nature of social media in education, scholarship, and professional learning ecologies.
Research is rarely created for private use; researchers publish their work so that others can read and use it, to advance the collective understanding of a field and impact people’s lives. Yet traditional approaches to scholarship, which emphasize publication in subscription-based rather than open access journals, inhibit not only the dissemination of research but also its usefulness, particularly outside of academia. Across all fields, scholars, educators, and members of the public benefit from scholarship which is easily accessible. Open science and public, social scholarship can break down these barriers to accessibility and utility. In this age which calls for a more informed citizenry, the use of social media to share and promote discussion of research could change not only the nature of scholarly communication but also the nature of scholarship and scholars’ roles. In this conceptual article, we argue that practicing public, social scholarship and increasing the use of social media to promote scholarship are the civic responsibility of citizen-scholars, so that research becomes more widely accessible, shareable, and usable in the public sphere. View Full-Text
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).
Citizen-Scholars: Social Media and the Changing Nature of Scholarship http://www.mdpi.com/405184 @MDPIOpenAccess #mdpipublications
Citation: Chapman, A.L.; Greenhow, C. Citizen-Scholars: Social Media and the Changing Nature of Scholarship. Publications2019, 7, 11.
In Dignity of the Calling: Educators Share the Beginnings of Their Journeys (2018), edited by Dr. Andrew Kemp, faculty share their stories from PhD to entry into higher education. These stories focus on the deeply personal nature of the new academic. Framed around the idea that life experience guides what we do, this collection of memoirs, recollections, and personal narratives allows the reader to share these lived experiences.
CONTENTS
Foreword—Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? William Ayers.
Introduction—Imposter: A Postmodern Reflection on Life, Higher Education, and Authenticity, Andrew T. Kemp.
SECTION I: TRANSFORMATIONAL SCHOLARS.
Teaching and the Neverending Story: Some Reflections on My Reflections, Peter McLaren.
Toward Becoming a University Professor Who Teaches Education: Some Note for Possible Deliberation, O.L. Davis, Jr.
My Life in an Evolving University, Marcella L. Kysilka.
Reflections on Reward and the Hidden Curriculum of Academe, William H. Schubert.
VIGNETTES I: JOURNEYS OF TIMES AND SPACE, Christine Greenhow (Check out my story on telecommuting as an academic), Alison G. Dover, Lisa Brown Buchanan, Comfort Ateh, Scott Farver, Angela W. Webb, Richelle Marynowski, and Seungho Moon.
VIGNETTES II: JOURNEYS OF PERSPECTIVE, José Rios, Byung-In Seo, Cassandra Trousas, Jennifer Hall, Mahauganee D. Shaw Bonds, Nancy Arrington, Meg White, Natasha Veale, and Jessica A. Heybach.
SECTION II: CONTEMPORARY SCHOLARS.
Strange Roads Are the Easiest Roads: Academic Journeys of the 21st Century, David Callejo Perez.
First Year Lessons: Striving for Imperfection, David Flinders.
Telephone Books, Teddy Bears, and the Tenure Track, Brian D. Schultz.
VIGNETTES III: DISCOVERING A PLACE: A JOURNEY, Allyson L. Watson, Misty M. Kirby, Veena Paliwal, Joe Norris, Patricia Sánchez, John A. Cassell, Ritesh Shah, Mandy Stewart, Kenneth J. Fasching-Varner, Lucila T. Rudge, and Sabrina Ross.
VIGNETTES IV: JOURNEYS OF THE SELF, Roxanne Greitz Miller, Lisa L. Beymer, Chad Everett Allan, Wendy Bollag, Marc Pietrzykowski, Lauren Madden, Edward Podsiadlik and John Bond, Cathy Smeltzer Erb,Regina Murphy, Kristan Venegas and Araceli Espinoza, and Nosisi N. Feza.
SECTION III: EMERGING SCHOLARS.
From Oz to Reality: A Personal Journey in a Wonderful Land, William L. White.
What’s Love Got to Do With It? Explorations on Emotion as a Tool for Professional Growth and Transformation, Samara Dawn Akpovo and Cynthia B. Dillard.
Out to Save the World, Dana L. Haraway.
The Road to Somewhere: The Passing and Evolution of an Academic, C. Steven Page.
A Doctorate, a Baby, and a Professorship—Oh My! It’s All About Perspective, Erin Evans.
Humanizing the Tenure Process: Toward a Pedagogy of Heart, Lilia D. Monzó.
Origins and Payment Forward: Reflections on My Path to Social Justice Education and Advice to New Faculty, Joseph Flynn.
VIGNETTES V: TRAVELING COMPANIONS, Natasha S. Reid and Patricia J. Spafford, Travis York and Tiffanie Lewis, Kate Newburgh
and Paul Michalec, Farveh Ghafouri, Monica McGlynn Stewart, and Shelley Murphy, Chris Carger, Michelle Gimenez Hinkle, David A. Fuentes, Ellen Pozzi, and Manina Urgolo-Huckvale, Paige M. Bray and Regina Miller, Shelley B. Harris, Rebecca West Burns, Jeffrey S. Kaplan and Elsie L. Olan.
VIGNETTES VI: AN ACADEMIC TRAVEL GUIDE, Eve R. Bernstein, Randall Deppensmith, Marcus Roberts and Ryan Silva, Laquore J. Meadows, Betina Hsieh, Jason Paul Siko, Erika C.Bullock and Christopher C. Jett, Ellis Hurd, Ismael Flores Martí,and Nancy P. Gallavan.
The Curriculum I Am/We Are, Andrew T. Kemp (I am) and C. Steven Page (We are). The Travelers.
WHERE TO BUY: It is available to order on the publisher’s website https://www.infoagepub.com/products/Dignity–of–the–Calling and on Amazon and on all major online retailer sites throughout the world. The book will be/is available as an eBook on Google, Apple, as well as over 25 other online outlets.
Are you interested in learning, teaching and policy issues related to social media in education? If so, we invite you to participate via a streaming zoom session in #Cloud2Class: Exploring the Disruption and Reorganization of Educational Resources in the Age of Social Media Conference, which will be held at Michigan State University on October 29-30, 2018. Our goal for this event is to bring together a group of regional, national and international thought leaders to brainstorm the future direction of education in the age of social media and facilitate collaboration and an exchange of ideas among a diverse group of leaders. We hope can attend some or all of this exciting event remotely! All you need to do is RSVP here. Tweet with the hashtag: #cloud2class
Conference overview. Today, one-third of the world’s population use social media to find other people and resources for real-time information and connection across geographical, cultural and economic borders. In this growing social media space educational researchers, policymakers, administrators, teachers and others must better understand how to leverage online communities, communication, and collaboration. Those engaged in the work of education must bridge cloud to class, developing “network literacy” across physical schoolhouse boundaries, advancing professional knowledge, and distributing quality instructional resources within changing organizational contexts. This conference convenes an international, interdisciplinary group of influential researchers, policymakers and practitioners to create a research agenda in five key areas toward advancing understanding of the educational activities happening within and around social media, their connection to classroom and school practices, and their impact on teaching, learning, and school improvement efforts and policies.
We anticipate many positive outcomes from this event, including two special issues in premier journals: American Journal of Education and Teachers College Record. This will consist of a collection of published articles and critical commentaries from various participants/stakeholders that are disseminated through traditional and new channels, including a social media campaign, #Cloud2Class.
Additionally, we hope that the conference will provide participants with the opportunity to form new partnerships and collaborate on a variety of projects.
During the February 2018 All-University Awards, Associate Professor Christine Greenhow was recognized with a Teacher-Scholar Award by Michigan State University.
Greenhow is one of six faculty selected through a university-wide competition. The annual honor celebrates faculty early in their careers who have demonstrated excellence in scholarship and teaching, with effective teaching approaches closely linked to and informed by their research. Greenhow is the 26th person in the College of Education and the 10th faculty member in her department to win this award in its 33-year history. The award is supported by the Office of University Development.
