Congratulations to Mr Jason Lee Wen Yau, our PhD student with the Learning Sciences and Technologies Academic Group and part-time researcher with the Learning Sciences Laboratory, on winning Best Paper award at the Global Learn Asia Pacific 2011 Conference in Melbourne, Australia.
His paper, “Creating the intercultural learning narrative using social network sites status updates: An innovative approach in using social media” explores the use of social network sites of participants on an intercultural exchange programme for social support. He explored how Facebook status updates can give a powerful insight into the participants’ emotional, social and intercultural learning experience.
Paper Abstract:
The growing use of the social media phenomenon is synonymous with words such as Facebook, Twitter, Web 2.0 and blogging. Teenagers today embraced social media through their active use of multiple social network sites and what makes social media social and attractive to users is that users are encouraged to share as much information as possible with their peers on the site. This growing trend in the use of social media opens up a possibility for researchers to harness information from this media. This paper describes how status updates from an exchange student during his time abroad was used to create a narrative of his experience aboard.