This presentation was created by myself and Melanie Sage of the University at Buffalo for our visit with the College of Social Work at the Ohio State University in August 2017, where we talked about how social work faculty can harness technology for their social work scholarship.
1. Harnessing Technology
for Social Work
Scholarship
Text
Images
Data
Melanie Sage, PhD, U at Buffalo, SUNY
Laurel Hitchcock, PhD, UA at Birmingham
2.
3.
4. Today’s Agenda
Icebreaker
Learning
Objectives
Why use social
media in research
Learning Theory to
inform use of
social media
Overview of social
media; examples
from each of us &
our PLNs
Focus – Using
Infographics
References &
Resources
5. Find a partner and Google
them- find out everything you
can about them
6.
7. Learning Objectives
By the end of this presentation, we’ll teach you these things….
2. Appreciate how social media can foster and
support collaborative work among social work
academics.
3. Recognize how infographic tools can be
incorporated into research dissemination.
1. Understand the use of social
media as a dissemination tool in
social work scholarship.
8. Why share your
research on
social media?
• Widens scholarly audience
+ citation impact
• Social citation altmetrics
• Influence audiences &
Informs field
Bik, H. M., & Goldstein, M. C. (2013). An introduction to social media for
scientists. PLoS Biol, 11(4), e1001535.
Peoples, B. K., Midway, S. R., Sackett, D., Lynch, A., & Cooney, P. B. (2016).
Twitter Predicts Citation Rates of Ecological Research. PloS one, 11(11),
e0166570.
12. Who’s got the time??
What’s the cost/benefit
analysis for you?
• Pros: dissemination, reach,
recruitment, identify
collaborators, get early feedback
on work, introduce yourself to
funders, become notable in your
area of research, stay connected
to current trends, increase
citations
• Cons: requires
upkeep/management, must set
aside time, may open yourself to
critique
13. Professional Learning Networks
• Technology-based tools & processes to
network, disseminate, and stay informed
• Building professional relationships in digital
spaces
Examples:
• Following a local NASW Chapter
Facebook Page
• Table of Content Alerts from a
Journal
• Participating in a educational
technology Facebook Group
14. Social Learning
Social presence is key
• Imitation and reinforcement
• Socialization helps with identity
development
• Use of videos, social media,
avatars, discussion boards can
help reinforce social presence
• Group work
• Active/collaborative learning,
performing for public audience
Digital Literacy
understand, share and create meaning with different kinds
of technology and media:
• Understand the range of ways that social media could be used
within professional practice
• Respecting and promoting ethical practice
• Participate in a variety of platforms
• Skills to create professional content
• Share content appropriately
Connectivism/Connected Learning
learning is fast paced and connections are
needed for lifelong learning
• Non-human tools can promote learning
• Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and
concepts; peers and practitioners
• Decision-making about what to learn is a key learning
process
• Academic learning can occur outside the classroom
Communities of Practice
learners have a tribe:
• Collective competence and
willingness to learn from others
• Engaged in contributing to the
collective knowledge and resources
• Sustained and consistent interaction
• Professional topics
USING THEORY TO UNDERSTAND SOCIAL
SCHOLARSHIP
15. Social Media is used in social
research for multiple purposes
Social
interventions
1
To recruit
research
participants
2
As a primary
data source
3
To
disseminate
and network
4
16. Interventions on Social Media
Most commonly health-related
intervantions:
• Social influence (social
network) impact on health bx
such as physical activity/diet
• Live chat to increase safe sex in
consumers with high HIV risk
• Teen mom educational program
to reduce infant obesity
• Organ donation registration
17. Outreach on Social Media
Finding and working with
vunlerable populations:
• FaceBook Groups for people
with rare diseases
• Texting – text4baby and
parenting tips for low income
families
• Homeless Youth
• Ratings on Yelp or
Healthgrades.com
18. Research with Social Media
• Content and Network
Analysis of posts, images,
hashtags, etc.
• Visual Mapping Tools
• Software: Nvivo and NodeXL
• Examples:
• Symplur Hashtag Project
• Inequaligram
19. Dissemination with Social Media
Function of the Media:
• Social Networking
• Publishing &Collaborating
• Bookmarking & Aggregating
• Microblogging
• Media Sharing
Examples:
Podcasts
Academic Blogs
Videos
Infographic CV
21. Laurel’s Digital Tools for Social Scholarship
#MacroSW
Online Community
Professional Blog
Teaching and Learning in
Social Work
TWITTER
Relationship Building &
Sharing with Students &
Colleagues
Social Work &
Technology
Google+
Community
Online Community
#SWTech
LinkedIn
Relationship
Building & Sharing
with Students,
Colleagues & Alums
22. Melanie’s Digital Tools for Social Scholarship
You
Tube
husITa/tech groups
Relationship building,
developing expertise
FB
Facebook
Personal/professional
relationship building
(people I’d invite over for
dinner)
T
Twitter
Professional relationship building, research
dissemination, reputation management
BPD Listserv
IV-E Listserv
Learning about
trends and issues
Infographics
Research Dissmenation
23.
24. Why use infographics to
disseminate your research?
Pique
interest in
your work
Effective way to
communicate:
readable and
shareableTransfer
research to
practice
25. Who knows about your research?
• Audiences
Practitioners
Consumers
Foundations
Federal, State and Local Agencies
Professional Associations
Interdisciplinary Professionals
Colleagues
Students
26. What is an infographic?
Visual images and writing put together to explain/tell a story
27.
28. Considerations for Digital Storytelling
Hardware Software Techniques Outputs Ethics
Smartphone Phone apps Record in quiet
space
Health messages Informed
consent
Video camera Storify Test sound
quality
Infographics Institutional
review
Audio Recorder Piktochart Use text to
caption video
Video shorts Professionalism
Laptop/Desktop Powerpoint for
slideshows
Train participants
to use
technology
Audio stories Confidentiality
Microphone audacity Attention span
3-5 minutes
Photo exhibits Student privacy
34. Steps to Making an Infographic
• Step 1. Identify your Message
• Step 2. Choose your platform
• Step 3. Consider design principles
• Step 4. Get feedback
• Step 5. Plan to share it
Inspiration:
Daily Infographic- a curated website of
infographics
(http://www.dailyinfographic.com/)
35. Tips for Research
Infographics
Keep it simple:
• What’s it about?
• Why’s it matter?
• What are the
findings?
• What’s the
implication?
Include contact
info/ twitter handle
or other social
media handles
Follow/tag/share with others
interested in topic- relational
38. Tell us your plans for using social
media to harness your scholarship
https://www.polleverywhere.com/
39. Questions?
Laurel Iverson Hitchcock, PhD, MPH, LICSW, PIP
Assistant Professor
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)
lihitch@uab.edu
@laurelhitchcock
Melanie Sage, PhD, LICSW
Assistant Professor
University at Buffalo
msage@buffalo.edu
@melaniesage
40. References
Bik, H. M., & Goldstein, M. C. (2013). An introduction to social media for scientists. PLoS Biol, 11(4), e1001535.
Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. (n.d.). Infographics. Retrieved May 21, 2016, from
http://www.cdc.gov/socialmedia/tools/infographics.html
Dyjur, P., & Li, L. (2015). Learning 21st Century Skills by Engaging in an Infographics Assessment. In Proceedings of the
IDEAS: Designing Responsive Pedagogy (pp. 62–71). University of Calgary. Retrieved from
http://dspace.ucalgary.ca/bitstream/1880/50860/1/7%20Learning%2021st%20-%20Dyjur%20%26%20Li.pdf
Joosten, T. (2012). Social media for educators: strategies and best practices. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Kos, B. A., & Sims, E. (2014). Infographics: The New 5-Paragraph Essay. In 2014 Rocky Mountain Celebration of Women in
Computing. Laramie, WY, USA. Retrieved from
http://scholar.colorado.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=atlas_gradpapers
Martix, S., & Hodson, J. (2014). Teaching with infographics: practicing new digital competencies and visual literacies.
Journal of pedagogic development, 4 (2). Retrieved from: http://www.beds.ac.uk/jpd/volume-4-issue-2/teaching-
with-infographics
Richardson, W., & Manacebelli, R. (2011). Personal learning networks: Using the power of connections to transform
education. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.
Peoples, B. K., Midway, S. R., Sackett, D., Lynch, A., & Cooney, P. B. (2016). Twitter Predicts Citation Rates of Ecological
Research. PloS one, 11(11), e0166570.
Hinweis der Redaktion
Melanie to start
The use of digital and social technology (mobile devices, social media, and more) is omnipresent in our daily lives, and ahead of practice, policy, and ethics in social work. This presentation will show how social media platforms and applications can be tools to help social work academics and practitioners discover and share knowledge as well as build relationships for collaborative work. Special attention will be paid to the creation and use of infographics in the dissemination of scholarship.
Cover the first five items before the break and last ones after
Melanie
What do you want people to know about your research when they google you? What do you want them to do with the information?
Give five to search, five minutes with partner; What did you find?
Our debrief- How much was about your research agenda? Was it more personal? Professional?
Melanie
Melanie
Melanie – first half
Laurel – second half
Laurel
usage - views, downloads, holdings, document delivery, ILL
captures - favorites, bookmarks, saves, readers
mentions - blog posts, Wikipedia articles, news stories, comments, reviews
social media - tweets, +1s, likes, shares, ratings
citation - Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, PubMed, patents
With the explosion of “big data,” we can find out more about articles and other research output, and we can do it on a faster timeline than in the past. Altmetrics have the potential to do the following: "provide a broader, more diverse view of the impact of any piece of scholarship, to reflect the impact of the article itself, not its publication venue, to track impact outside the academy, to track the impact of influential but uncited work, and to track track impact from sources that aren't peer-reviewed." (source: http://altmetrics.org/manifesto)
Laurel
Example from Jonathan: Here’s how all of this plays out in real life. Over the course of a year, Kim O’Brien, Mary LeCloux and I wrote an article about psychotherapies for suicidal youth. In August 2016 Child & Adolescent Social Work Journal published the article online (Singer, O’Brien, & LeCloux, 2017). Since Child & Adolescent Social Work Journal is not listed in the Impact Factor journal list, I decided to run my own experiment on social media to see if posting about the article on a regular basis would increase reach as measured by altmetrics. I set up a daily tweet through the app If This Then That (ifft.com) that said “Online access to Theory & Techniques for ABFT, DBT & I-CBT for #suicidal adolescents http://rdcu.be/ntfQ #SPSM #Socialwork #psychology”. So, what happened as a result of this daily tweet? The article quickly became the most tweeted article from the journal and in the Top 5% of all research articles tracked by altmetrics. At least one person per day (other than me) shared the article with their followers. See Figures 3 and 4.
Laurel
When the publisher notified me that the article was being published in the physical journal I went to the journal website. I saw that the article had been shared 429 times and downloaded 262 times. There were 8 other articles in the issue. The second most widely downloaded article had 166 downloads and 0 shares.
Figure 4. Shares and Downloads on March 4, 2017 by Jonathan B. Singer
Melanie
What are your goals? Using social media for scholarship is not for everyone.
Laurel
One more reason to share on social media
A professional learning network (also known as a personalized learning network) includes technology-based tools and processes used by a social worker to stay up-to-date and share information about current news, practice knowledge and the latest research findings.
Why? - Life-long or Career Learning - Ethical practice for Social Workers - Rapid pace of change requires active strategies to stay up-to-date
Reflection: What do you need? – self-reflection and what are your reasons for networking relationship-building (networking) ; dissemination & Feedback (; learning (what topics)
Introduce the topic – PLN
http://griffinfarley.typepad.com/propagation/2009/08/new-ground-swell-researh-on-social-technology-adoption.html (Ground Swell)
Clay Shirky
Self-Reflection on Current Strategies- What topics do you need to stay abreast of?
How do you current keep up on new developments?
When you need to know something, to whom to you go?
Handout with resources: one-page handout; worksheet to map out
Professional Development Plans from Education
Melaine
Define Social Scholarship: . The use of social media in scholarship has been called social scholarship (Greenhow & Gleason, 2014). Disseminating scholarship through blogs, podcasts, and other forms of social media makes content accessible to the general public and is therefore consistent with the Social Work values of social justice and service.
Melanie
Melanie - Social media is now also being used for intervention research- not just as a dissemination tool
Melaine
Melanie
In this slide, we will cover some of the different types of social media platforms that are available and widely used. Generally, social media are used to share and create digital content. Because the number and brands of social media change rapidly, I will cover some general ways that social media are used today with a few brand examples. Understanding the function of social media will help you to keep up with the ever changing landscape of social and digital media.
The first and probably most popular type of social media platform are for social networking, which are designed to help people connect with each other, share information and view information about each other. Users share information about themselves, follow each other and respond to each others’ comments. Examples are Facebook or Linked In, a professional networking site.
A second type of social media includes software that allow for creating, publishing and collaborating on content. For example, Google Documents include web-based word processing software that allow more than one person to access at the same time. This means that multiple people can write and edit one document together. This content could then be published on a website using blogging software such as Wordpress or Blogger.
Microblogging is creating short posts with text and/or images to be shared with others. There is usually a word or image limit to the posts. Twitter is the most popular of these platforms.
Another type of social media are bookmarking and aggregating apps. These services allow a user to collect, organize and then share content around specific topics. This is also known as digital curating. Pinterest is a great example as it allows users to create virtual bullet boards with images and text on content such as recipes, fashion ideas and more. Professional groups such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also have boards that share information about current public health issues.
Finally, there are numerous media sharing platforms that allow users to upload content that is created by the user to share publicly or privately with others. Examples include Flickr and Instagram for photos and YouTube for videos.
Because the nature of social media is to promote public sharing, users can follow other users (known as friends, followers,etc) with most of these sites, and like or comment on content or posts. Thus, writing and posting comments can be considered another important function of social media.
Social Media = forms of electronic communication
Digital Media = digitized content
Mobile Devices
Laurel – decision on what your goals and don’t have to do it all; we don’t do it all; targeted
Laurel Examples of how use social media for dissemination
Melanie – one minute
BREAK
Laurel – SWKers with Pinterest Boards
Research
Stop and think about your research
Research for practicing social workers.
How can you best reach these individuals
What is one research project you are working on?
Who needs to know about it? Audience? Change
How do you currently share your research?
Thinking about your research and who do you want to reach from this list.
Keep it simple:
What’s it about?
Why’s it matter?
What are the findings?
What’s the implication?
Melanie – example of research turned into an infographic
Melanie
Melanie
Melanie – take pics
Laurel
If, for example, you have a broad topic like cookies, narrow it down to something such as: "How do cookie flavors rank around the world?“
https://piktochart.com/blog/choosing-the-color-palette-part-iii-the-rule-of-3-colors/
Adopt the rule of three: pick three primary colors, with the lightest being the background. Stay within that color palette.
Laurel
If, for example, you have a broad topic like cookies, narrow it down to something such as: "How do cookie flavors rank around the world?“
https://piktochart.com/blog/choosing-the-color-palette-part-iii-the-rule-of-3-colors/
Adopt the rule of three: pick three primary colors, with the lightest being the background. Stay within that color palette.
Laurel
Laurel
Infographics are visual representations of information. They can include numbers, text, images, or any combination of the three. Just as in traditional writing assignments, infographs can take on any of the various rhetorical modes — informative, instructive, descriptive, persuasive, etc. Infographics provide authors with a quick way to convey a lot of information. For example, this infographic on infographics conveys interesting data much more concisely than another paragraph inserted here could have:
Laurel
What are the main goals for your lesson? What steps will get to your goal(s)? How can these steps be visualized? What learning story are you telling? What’s the ultimate “aha” moment, and how will you represent it visually? Gather and organize your data or information to create a big picture of what you’d like to share with your students.
Sketch out your steps and make sure they make sense before you start. There is nothing more frustrating than having to start a whole design over on the computer.
Step 2. Choose your platform
There are many ways to represent your ideas. Choosing a format will help you refine the visual approach that you’d like to take. There is no right or wrong format, so pick something that is appealing to you and that you think your students will find meaningful and easy to remember.
Piktochart provides a useful flowchart to help you decide which format is best for you.
Below is a list of the most popular infographic platforms:
Piktochart (a presentation tool with templates that allow you to turn any kind of data into engaging infographics. You can modify color schemes and fonts, and upload basic shapes and images.)
Easel.ly (web-based tool with dozens of customisable templates. They have a library with basic shapes, and you can change fonts, colours, text styles and sizes. You can also upload graphics and place them within the infographic.)
Visual.ly (this is a community platform for data visualization and infographics that allows you to create infographics and to share them on social media.)
InFoto (this site builds infographics from photos available on your Android phone.)
Venngage (a tool that allows you to create and publish infographics. Templates, themes, charts and icons are available, and you can upload your own images as well.)
Dipity (here, you can create, share, or embed content with interactive timelines. It lets you add video, audio, images, text, and links to social media for instance)
Step 3. Consider design principles
Once you have chosen a format and are ready to start your infographic, remember that colors that are too bright or too dark are not attractive to the eye. Avoid white backgrounds when possible (because most websites have a white background, it will make your work blend in too much).
Adopt the rule of three: pick three primary colors, with the lightest being the background. Stay within that color palette.
Try keeping the text minimal, in “bite size” chunks. What are the keywords that you want your students to remember? A well-styled infographic will be balanced and consistent, and uses size, colors, and images to make important information stand out.
Step 4. Get feedback
Remember that infographics should speak for themselves. Show it to a colleague, a family member, or even your students to see if that’s the case. If you have to explain to them what’s in the infographics, it probably means that it needs a little more work. Don’t get discouraged. Great work requires many iterations before being shared.
Step 5. Share it
Most infographic platforms allow you to share your work through different media sites or to embed in your own website. You also have the option to save it as an image or PDF. Keep in mind that some websites might require you to upgrade your subscription to access some of these features.
Finally, think about adding a Creative Commons license (a public copyright license) to retain copyrights to your infographics while allowing others to use them.
Need more help? Check out Piktochart’s blog for additional tips on how to create infographics. Share your experience or suggestions with others in the comments below!
Melanie
Know your hashtags and target audiences
Melaine
What looks good? What needs improvement?
Melanie
Tweeting is relational
Bitmojis
Laurel Iverson Hitchcock, PhD, MPH, LICSW, PIP
Assistant Professor
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)
lihitch@uab.edu
@laurelhitchcock
Nathalie P. Jones, PhD, MSW
Assistant Professor
Tarleton State University
njones@Tarleton.edu
@DrNJonesTSU