I am currently a third year in the EPET program, and am the proud owner of two bachelor’s degrees. One from the University of Colorado in Physiology, and one from Western Michigan University in Secondary Education. I currently TA an online section of TE 150 after teaching a face to face section of TE 150 for the past two years. I am also an RA on one of my adviser’s grants (and have been for the past 2 years). I am lucky to have had an equal exposure to research and teaching thus far in my graduate school experience.
I initially sought out a PhD for two reasons. 1) I taught at an online high school for 3 years and was already starting to feel bored and stuck teaching the same content year after year. I loved education, but needed more intellectual stimulation. 2) I also saw MANY of my students struggling with motivation and extreme disengagement. I started wondering WHY so many of my students found seemingly simple tasks (responding to an email, taking a test, turning in literally ANYTHING) so difficult. I started graduate school in hopes of answering, or at least pursuing the answer to, some of those questions. Now as a third year I have started to clarify my goals a bit. I hope to develop expertise in statistics and data manipulation, specifically using R. I also hope to continue to develop a strong theoretical base around motivation and engagement in virtual high school settings. Although I have not completely turned away from an academic career I am reasonably certain will not pursue a tenure tracked faculty position at an R1 institution. Smaller institutions are more likely. One of my ideal jobs would be to work at a university in a non-tenure tracked faculty position. I will also consider options in the private and non-profit sector related to statistics, data management, motivation, and engagement.
One topic I am interested in relevant to this course is understanding the role that more education specific social media might play in increasing student motivation and engagement in virtual settings. For example, Flipgrid is a service I recently started using, and it seems like a great way outside of traditional social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) for students to communicate with one another and increase social interaction at a distance. Another interest I have is to clarify the role I want social media to play in my own professional life. I am not a Tweeter, nor can I ever see myself being a big Tweeter, or Facebook poster, or Instagramer, or any other prolific content creator on social media; however, I also understand the power of social media to connect people and ideas. I find myself with an increasing desire to leverage social media professionally, especially as I start to approach the job search.
I hope to become more adept at using social media platforms of my choosing to help me connect with people and ideas of interest to me. It would be great to read some articles around research based best practices surrounding professional use of social media. Additionally, I am looking forward to the process of submitting a paper to a journal. I have not yet gone through this process, and I am excited for the extra guidance that our small class allows!
Hi Matthew,
Thanks for your introduction. It sounds like you and Matt share an interest in exploring the range of careers for folks with a PhD in Education and in EPET specifically. Many PhD students share your interest in exploring employment opportunities within smaller institutions (or big institutions in a non-tenure track role) as well as private industry and non-profits. In fact, AERA has done panels for grad students on the range of careers open to you and Karen Kelsky’s book, The Professor is In, addresses this topic in one of her chapters.
To help address your interests we will try to incorporate readings on the role social media can plan in student motivation and engagement in our SUPPLEMENTAL READINGS LIST. Having just done a review of the social media in education literature (2004-2018) I can tell you that almost all the studies address the prominent, global social media: Facebook, Twitter, and to a lesser extent Instagram but some studies look specifically at social media designed for educational purposes like Ning. Of course “social media” mean different things to different people, which we will talk about, but I think we can definitely pull in studies related to the relationship between motivation and student engagement and social media, broadly defined. Because Flipgrid is so new, and research almost always lags behind technological advancements, I’m not aware of any studies specific to Flipgrid, but we will look!
Finally, your interest in professional uses of social media overlaps with Matt’s interest in authorship and identity. In this class, we will try to turn the critical lens on ourselves as scholars and ask: What does the literature say about how we as scholars are — or how should we be — using social media for professional networking, to cultivate our identity/reputation, to disseminate our work, etc. What do we know about “best” or “promising” practices, if anything?
Great to have you in the course!
Chris
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