Abstract
This chapter provides a case study in the development of a data mining approach to assess blogging and microblogging (‘tweets’) in a higher education setting. Data mining is the use of computational algorithms to analyse large datasets, and this chapter describes the use of the Leximancer software tool to perform a conceptual analysis of the blogs and tweets published by students in an undergraduate course about social media. A Leximancer analysis is represented visually as a ‘concept map’ showing the relationships between the concepts and ideas drawn out of the data automatically, rather than using predefined terms and keywords. In this chapter, Leximancer is used to produce a concept map of the student blogs and tweets to enhance the evaluation of conceptual understanding of the syllabus, as well as more general observations about the use of these social media tools in higher education. This suggests a possible approach to analysing the potentially large volume of text-based information that can be produced by students in these social computing settings.
Keywords
- Social Medium
- Data Mining Approach
- Social Computing
- Collaborative Learning Environment
- Social Media Tool
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Boyd, D.: Why youth (Heart) social network sites: The role of networked Publics in teenage social life. In: Buckingham, D. (ed.) Macarthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning: Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume. MIT Press, Cambridge (2007)
Corbin, J.: Grounded theory. In: Somekh, B., Lewin, C. (eds.) Research Methods in the Social Sciences, pp. 49–55. Sage Publications, London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi (2005)
Finlayson, A., Cameron, D., Hardy, M.: Journalism education as a perpetual beta test: notes on the design and delivery of tertiary ‘Social Media’ subjects. In: Journalism Education Association of Australia. Perth (2009)
Fisk, K., Cherney, A., Hornsey. M., Smith, A.: Rebuilding institutional legitimacy in Post-conflict societies: an Asia Pacific case study – phase 1a. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development (AOARD), University of Queensland (2009)
Hustler, D.: Ethnography. In: Somekh, B., Lewin, C. (eds.) Research Methods in the Social Sciences. Sage Publications, London (2005)
Java, A., Song, X., Finin, T., Tseng, B.: Why we twitter: understanding microblogging usage and communities. In: Joint 9th WEBKDD and 1st SNA – KDD Workshop (2007)
Kennedy, G.E., Judd, T.S., Churchward, A., Gray, K., Krause, K.L.: First year students’ experiences with technology: Are they really digital natives? Australas. J. Educ. Technol. 24(1), 108–122 (2008)
O’Reilly, T.: What is web 2.0?. http://oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html?page=4(2005)
Strauss, A.L., Corbin, J.: Basics of Qualitative Research. Sage Publications, Newbury Park (1990)
Viégas, F.B.: Bloggers’ expectations of privacy and accountability: an initial survey. In: Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(3) p. 120 (2005)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cameron, D., Finlayson, A., Wotzko, R. (2011). Visualising Social Computing Output: Mapping Student Blogs and Tweets. In: White, B., King, I., Tsang, P. (eds) Social Media Tools and Platforms in Learning Environments. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20392-3_20
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20392-3_20
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-20391-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-20392-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)