Teaching and Learning
Developing an Interdisciplinary "New Media Studies" Major: Challenges and Solutions
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kristen Morgan, David Pellegrini
Now in its fourth year, the interdisciplinary New Media Studies major at Eastern Connecticut State University is unique among the CT state university system. We will describe the challenges in the initial development of the program, Board of Regents approval, assessment, and continued refining of the major. We will also highlight solutions for the success of one of the most vibrant and fastest-growing majors on campus.
Social Media, Distracting or Engaging?: Student Success and the Role of Facebook
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nathalie Wesseling
I investigate the factors of student success and the influence of the use of social media for first year students in higher education. For this I use the insights provided by the highly influential and leading integration theory of Tinto and diminished the amount of variables by only using the best predictive ones. Hereby, avoiding the capitalization of chance and establishing a more easy to use model for teachers and management. Furthermore, I enriched the model with the use of social media, in particular Facebook, to better suit students’ contemporary society in the developed world. Principal component analysis on Facebook usage provided different integration/engagement components, which I coined peer-engagement and knowledge engagement. Both consisted of various purposes of Facebook use (information, education, social and leisure) and the use of different pages amongst students. To uncover if these latent variables play a significant role in student success or if Facebook is a multi-distracting platform, two models were compared using structural equation modeling with SPSS AMOS; one with and one without the peer-, and knowledge engagement variables. The fit of both models are compared using the normed fit index (NFI), the comparative fit index (CFI), the Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA). In addition, the direct influence and indirect influence of all variables are compared to provide a better insight into what kind of influence social media can have upon student success.
Mongolian Use of Social Media Products for Education of Green Lifestyle
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Bayarmaa Enkhbayar
Today, young people under the age of twenty-five are the largest generation of youth in Mongolia. Similarly, they represent half of the world’s population, living mostly in developing countries. Education about the green growth and green economy is essential to enable young people to participate fully in the transition to a low carbon, resource efficient, and socially inclusive economy. Young people are already driving change across the world. We must provide the skills to create new and green lifestyle. Building a green future must start with education and awareness. GGGI produced green lifestyle promoting media products and successfully shared with ministries and government agencies. The ministries and government agencies were impressed and satisfied with the content and quality of the videos and using them in many purposes. For instance: The Ministry of Environment and Tourism used the videos during the assembly for over 500 students and teachers of ninety-four eco clubs at eighty-nine schools. The youth-friendly, inclusive 2D animation videos promote energy and water savings, waste recycling, and air pollution reduction and prevention etc. We have extensive experience how to use social media for promoting and circulating the videos at zero cost. This is a best practice how promote young people`s education in green economy and development through cost-effective and simplified way. This is also a demonstration how to effectively use social media like Facebook and Twitter for educating young people.
Information Seeking Behaviour of the Millennials: Everyday-life News
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jamshid Beheshti, Joan Bartlett, Rebecca Katz, Anna Couch, Cynthia Kumah
Current research suggests that today’s generation, those between eighteen and twenty-four years old, may rely heavily on social media for everyday news information. To investigate further the news information-seeking behaviour of the Millennials, we surveyed 22,900 undergraduate students in a tier-one university on their use of news resources and access tools, their perceptions of credibility of resources, and factors determining credibility. The email survey in October 2017 yielded 3565 usable questionnaires (response rate 15.6%; Cronbach’s alpha ranging between 0.884 and 0.992). Data analyses, whilst supporting some of the findings of previous research, show that many Millennials rely on their family and friends as viable news resources. Following Warde’s theory on time (Boterill et al, 2015), our study suggests that time as manifested through convenience may be considered an important factor in deciding on news resources despite potential lack of credibility. Additionally, and in line with previous research (Shearer & Gottfried, 2017), we also detected a major gender effect for news resources and access tools used. However, our analysis also shows gender effect on perceptions of credibility of news resources, and factors determining credibility of resources. Future research on news information-seeking behaviour should focus on the convenience factor, and on the reasons underlying the gender effect.
