Using social media and learning analytics to understand how children engage in scientific inquiry

Abstract

Children are increasingly using social media tools in their lives. In addition, there is great interest in understanding how to design and evaluate social technologies to aid in children's learning and development. We describe two research endeavors that begin to address these issues. First, we introduce SINQ, a social media application that encourages children to practice Scientific INQuiry skills through collaborative participation. Second, we conducted a case study of SINQ with six children, ages 8-11, and collected log data of their interactions in the app. We applied learning analytics on this log data using a visual analytic tool called LifeFlow. The event-sequence visualizations showed how children engaged with scientific inquiry within the SINQ app, and most importantly illuminated how inquiry is not a linear process with a defined start and end. The children in our study traversed the inquiry process via diverse pathways, all of which were supported by the SINQ app.

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“…(e.g., Fails et al, 2010;Ahn et al, 2013;Rubegni and Landoni, 2014;Abid et al, 2019;Badillo-Urquiola et al, 2019;Lamarra et al, 2019;Kawas et al, 2020;Bhatti et al, 2021;Papadakis, 2021). CCI research has also invited children to take part in the design of such apps, rather than simply using those designed by adults (Fails et al, 2010;Ahn et al, 2013;Rubegni and Landoni, 2014;Badillo-Urquiola et al, 2019). However, limited literature can be found on inviting children to engage as app designers, which is the focus of our work.…”

“…Nevertheless, some CCI literature can be found explicitly connecting children's participation and mobile application design (Daily and Brennan, 2008;Fails et al, 2010;Ahn et al, 2013;Rubegni and Landoni, 2014;Campos and Garcia, 2018;Badillo-Urquiola et al, 2019;Lamarra et al, 2019). Some of the studies have been more focused on exploring a topic with children rather than app development, such as one where children designed a social media application in intergenerational teams to explore danger from strangers (Badillo-Urquiola et al, 2019); however, children have also been involved in projects focusing more clearly on mobile application development, such as one in which child designers created a mobile social media application for learning scientific inquiry skills during a 15-month project in which learner-centered PD and design research methods were utilized (Ahn et al, 2013). PD has also been carried out with children with special needs, such as children with cancer, with young users developing mobile applications for improving the mental health of children (Lindberg, 2013).…”

"It helped me do my science."

“…In many ways, the mediated-interaction enabled in SINQ often alleviated face-to-face tensions and breakdowns that occurred with this learner group [15]. In addition, the data culled from SINQ showed how different children entered into and followed individual, unique pathways through the inquiry process [4]. Some began by observing others' posts before embarking on their own inquiry, others started by developing project ideas before considering hypotheses, and yet others followed a formal process of designing questions, hypotheses, and projects.…”