Two emerging and rapidly growing areas of technology design are social media and social computing. An important social media category is the online learning environment. Although universities have embraced the use of online environments to provide distance and blended science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses, educators tend to focus their efforts on content delivery, rather than building social networks. Currently, there is little research on how STEM students establish social networks when they interact in online learning environments. Forming social networks, building relationships, and creating social capital are the new focal points of social media and the development of social software. To date, undergraduate STEM students are not being trained in this important topic of technology design.
To help solve this problem, and to better understand how STEM students build social networks, an interdisciplinary team of Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) professors are creating an undergraduate STEM course on the theoretical and practical use of social computing. As part of the course, a case study that examines the building of social networks, collaborative work, and social capital in online learning environments is being developed. This project has two primary objectives. The first objective is to improve technology education by introducing the new discipline of social media and social computing into the STEM curriculum. The second objective is the preparation of undergraduate STEM students for positions in the social media sector of the technology industries. Both are objectives that can be measured through pre- and post survey testing.
RIT is combining the interdisciplinary theories of computing and social science in both the research and educational components of the project. It builds upon research being conducted in RIT's Lab for Social Computing and research previously done by the PIs in the areas of collaborative online learning tools, human-computer interaction, online social behavior, and the distribution of messages through computer networks. The PIs are combining information technology theories (human-computer interaction and collaboration) with social theories (dynamic social impact theory and human communication theory) to both teach and study the technological use of social media to build a foundation for a social media program at RIT. Through the analysis and comparison of three online learning environments, the PIs are gaining valuable information about how students build social networks and perform tasks in different online educational software programs. These findings are being used to improve the delivery of STEM distance and blended education across different STEM subject areas.
