Author Archives: JuneA

Designing and Using Social Media for Childrens’ Science Learning

Posted on by

How can we design and use social media with children? It’s a complex issue that is less explored in the research literature (for a myriad of reasons related to policy, safety, convenience etc.). Add onto that the complexity of “learning” science; how could we use social media to promote science learning for children?

I’m really excited to share our paper, which will be presented at the CSCW 2014 Conference in February, called “Selfies for Science”. It’s a case study of our 2-year design process of a social media app for kids called ScienceKit, and how new types of collaborative learning configurations can happen when we implement it in an informal science program.

Check out the paper here.

Open Education Research!!

Posted on by

Happy to report on several milestones concerning my research on open education.

Our research group has a web presence! Check us out at the CASCI page, we’re the OCEL Group (Open Communities for Education and Learning)

Had a paper on the Peer 2 Peer University appear in the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, special issue on MOOCs: http://jolt.merlot.org/vol9no2/ahn_0613.htm

Was invited to give a talk at the Canadian Institute of Distance Education Research (CIDER) at Athabasca University. I talked about new opportunities for research and design of open education. The recorded talk and slides are available here: http://cider.athabascau.ca/CIDERSessions/ahn2013/sessiondetails

Check out a very cool workshop I am co-organizing at CSCW 2013, Designing Futures for Peer 2 Peer Learning: http://p2pl.media.mit.edu/

ASIS&T 2013

Posted on by

Several papers from my projects with colleagues and students were presented at ASIS&T 2013 in Montreal, Canada. Check them out below:

Ahn, J., Butler, B. S., Weng, C., & Webster, S.A. (2013). Learning to be a better Q’er in social Q&A sites: Social norms and information artifacts. In Proceedings of the Association of Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) 76th Annual Meeting. [PDF]

Kim, J., & Ahn, J., (2013). The show must go on: The presentation of self during interpersonal conflict on facebook. In Proceedings of the Association of Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) 76th Annual Meeting. [PDF]

Waugh, A., Taylor, N. G., Subramaniam, M., Ahn, J., Druin, A., Fleischmann, K. R. (2013). Young people’s engagement in content creation: An analysis of outliers. In Proceedings of the Association of Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) 76th Annual Meeting. [PDF]

IDC 2013: Social Media and Learning Papers

Posted on by

My colleagues and I presented several papers at IDC 2013 related to our work with designing social media and alternate reality games for learning! Check out the papers below, as well as some cool videos that showcase this work:

Bonsignore, E., Hansen, D., Kraus, K., Visconti, A., Ahn, J., & Druin, A. (2013).  Playing for real: Designing alternate reality games for teenagers in learning contexts. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, New York, NY. [PDF]

Ahn, J., Yip, J., & Gubbels, M. (2013). SINQ: Designing social media to foster everyday scientific inquiry for children. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, New York, NY. [PDF]

Ahn, J., Gubbels, M., Yip, J., Bonsignore, E., & Clegg, T. (2013). Using social media and learning analytics to understand how children engage in scientific inquiry. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, New York, NY. [PDF]

 

What do we really have with MOOCs?

Posted on by

The revolution is here! The sky is falling! Popular and scholarly discussions of MOOCs vascillate between the extremes of euphoric technological utopianism or snarky vitriol that celebrates every MOOC failure (such as San Jose State University’s recent pilot with Udacity that resulted in the majority of students failing remedial math courses, see here). This state of discussion is not surprising if we think about MOOCs falling within the “hype cycle”.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/94/Gartner_Hype_Cycle.svg/559px-Gartner_Hype_Cycle.svg.png

Hype Cycle

If 2012 culminated in the peak of inflated expectations, 2013 is clearly the sharp trough of disillusionment. So what would lead us to the “slope of enlightenment” where we actually learn something about MOOCs?

We need to clearly articulate what we really have with MOOCs and also respect the large amount of research in education and learning that has largely been ignored in our discussion of MOOCs. How can we think about this in a systematic fashion?

Here are a few things to think about:

Continue reading →

CSCL 2013 Paper Accepted

Posted on by

Happy to share that my co-authored paper with colleagues Tammy Clegg, Jason Yip, Elizabeth Bonsignore and others will be presented at Computer Supported Collaborative Learning 2013.

In the paper, we utilize a social media app I have been developing with HCI student Michael Gubbels called SINQ, in an after-school cooking program with children.

The paper highlights how the app helped the children break through some barriers to collaboration that they had.

Take a look here! [PDF]

Citation:

Clegg, T., Yip, J., Ahn, J., Bonsignore, E., Gubbels, M., Lewittes, B., & Rhodes, E. (2013). When face-to-face fails: Opportunities for social media to foster collaborative learning. Tenth International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, Madison, WI.

Packed Spring Semester

Posted on by

I’ll be traveling a ton this semester (Spring 2013), presenting my research at various places, and I’d love to meet new colleagues or anyone doing related work! Please feel free to contact me if you’re interested in connecting.

Feb 13, 2013 – iConference
Experiencing Science in Informal Learning Environments – Talkes from the Field

Social Media Expo: Finalist for student-led project called SINQ – Social Media for Scientific INQuiry learning

Feb 23, 2013 – CSCW
Presenting a paper with Brian Butler on open learning environments at the CSCW and Education workshop.

April 8-12 – Learning Analytics and Knowledge
Presenting my paper about observing new media literacies from Facebook data using analytics [PDF].

April 27-May 1 – AERA
Designing Science Fiction and Online Community as Tools for STEM Literacy and Self Identity [I’ll post the paper soon].

Social Media Expo at iConference 2013!

Posted on by

The past 1.5 years, I have been working with a group of graduate students (Michael Gubbels, Jason Yip, Jinyoung Kim) to explore the design of social media tools for children’s collaborative science inquiry. The result of this project is SINQ, a social media tool for Scientific INQuiry, where we leverage features seen in popular tools like Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram to guide children to practice inquiry skills.

I’m happy to announce that our prototype was accepted to the Social Media Expo at the iConference 2013, supported by Microsoft Research (link here for more info). Check out the SINQ video, which will be shown at the Expo.