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ERIC Number: EJ1170962
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2018
Pages: 13
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1365-893X
EISSN: N/A
Evaluating the Network: A Workflow for Tracking Twitter Interactions Using Social Networking Analysis
Goodier, Sarah
Journal of Interactive Media in Education, v2018 n1 Article 2 2018
Networking plays an important role in research projects to build a community and audience around a research area. Using social media is popular in project communication as it provides the ability to engage with a group of followers daily. Such online networking tools provide the advantage of providing nearrealtime data, which can be used to evaluate communication and networking success. This does, however, present a problem of what data can be collected in a reasonable timeframe to usefully feed back into the project's strategies. This paper presents the evaluation approach the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development in the Global South (ROER4D) project has applied to understanding the project's reach and engagement on the social networking site Twitter. This evaluation considered: 1) To what extent has ROER4D built a network of OER scholars? and 2) Which of ROER4D's actions have been most effective at growing the network? Using a Utilization Focused Evaluation framework, this evaluation established a workflow through which the project's Twitter network growth and snapshots of key online interactions could be tracked over time. Systematic measuring systems were set up to collect, select and analyse the most useful data to inform the project from three sources: Twitter analytics, Twitter Archiving Google Spreadsheet, and NodeXL. The social networking analysis shows the extent to which the project is building a network of scholars and what may have contributed to this growth. The feasibility of this networking evaluation approach for use by other projects, especially in the Global South, as well as the considerations when analysing Twitter data and metrics from accounts that would generally appeal to, in this case, the open education and OER communities, are highlighted.
Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University. Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK. e-mail: jime@open.ac.uk; Web site: http://jime.open.ac.uk
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A