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Twittering the AERA conference

April 27, 2009

Providing substantial reactions to conference sessions, sharing information, and promoting one’s blog posts and presentations were the three kinds of information Tweeted most often at the AERA Annual Meeting in San Diego. Some 13,500 people attended during the week of April 13.

Other significant categories of messages included references to Twitter itself, feedback on the overall conference experience, the time and date of a proposed Twitter meetup, and concerns about technology in general (and wireless internet access in particular).

A few weeks before the conference I set up a PBWiki and a Twitter stream to encourage people to record their activities and observations via text message. I set a Twitter search for the keyword AERA. I invited those mentioning AERA in Twitter to follow the AERAtweeup twitter stream and to consider adding their information to the Wiki in advance of the meeting.

As a member of the AERA communication & Outreach Committee I viewed this exercise as an opportunity to

capture attendees’ reactions to the content of the sessions
capture their reactions to the logistics of the meeting (which spread over several hotels)
let each other know what sessions looked particularly promising, and
arrange a time for an informal meeting / meetup / Tweetup to talk tech.

During the week of the conference Twitter participants (N ~ 150) sent text messages about their activities and tagged messages with the keyword AERA or #AERA.

After the conference I captured the Twitter stream of more than 1,000 text messages so tagged. After discarding some messages because of noise or irrelevance I settled on a final number of 973 messages.

From the message stream I created a CSV file and pulled it into MS Excel for tagging and sorting. I made two complete runs through the data, fine-tuning my (admittedly informal) tagging system as I went along.

I will share feedback on individual sessions and on the conference as a whole with AERA staff as planning begins for next year’s conference.

Here are a few examples of the messages from some of the categories.

Conference feedback (57 messages)
ksquire @adamaig true but I take it as data of how non digital educational researchers are. #AERA is the last place to go for innovation.

mdwaggoner For a huge conference like AERA I believe San Diego has the best facilities I’ve experienced. I still prefer New York though.

jayneway As a first timer the formality of this event is striking. I’m not much into formal stuff. #aera

Session reactions (151 messages)

elliottjlb RT @jayneway Some very well-known quantitative researchers talking about the importance of qualitative research.Very good to see this. #aera

EveProper #aera interesting work being done in European higher ed at CHEPS

LDinSTL_Chimera @scd Agree – James Gee + Idit Harel definitely best session I have been to! #AERA #arvelsig

Information sharing (120 messages)
pabaker55 Amy Stuart Wells: “I think of ed journalism and ed research as two overlapping circles. Interaction is helpful to both of us.” #AERA

R_Colvin “ability to predict college performance at pt. of admissions remains remarkably poor” #AERA

ShawnEdmondson AERA journal presents research on use of observational methods to improve instruction. http //tinyurl.com/dhpz3t

Self-promotional
crutherford #AERA countdown has begun. Just finished the slides for my presentation on Facebook & teacher knowledge development that will happen 4/14

dhearrin Reading AERA papers in preparation for being a discussant next Tuesday & Thursday. It’s killing me softly …

Tech/wireless
Michaelcjohnson is still at AERA without internet connectivity.

pabaker55 info about wireless at #AERA on the wiki. pls. add more if you discover it http://bit.ly/aHIue

pabaker55 RT @mod_gurl #AERA how about the conf nixes the printed phone book programs and put the $$ towards wifi access?? …

Bud_T #AERA I’m getting really tired of not having wireless in these conference rooms

Tweetup
rmosvold Heading for the tweetup! #AERA

Savvides @Dre1479 Hey there may be a Tweet-up at #AERA. Check this out http://aeratweetup.pbwiki.com/FrontPage

Scd @aeratweetup #AERA Is there another tweetup planned? AERAtweetup #AERA

informal gathering tonight 7:30 at the Yard House brew pub 1023 4th Ave at Broadway, San Diego. good pub food.

Twitter
Bud_T twitter done with the #AERA hashtag for awhile but we need to continue the convo about getting people to use twitter at this conference

DrGarcia twitter #followfriday @LDinSTL_Chimera a shining star early adopter of twitter at #aera !Que Viva la Revoluccion! I’m on her team.

dsnotataera2009 twitter Here’s what I’m doing so far. I’m searching on #aera. The results so far are people talking about using Twitter. [Annoyed with ch limit]

dthickey twitter getting started with twitter in anticipation of AERA

elliottjlb twitter Who’s a@aera from UVA who’s also on Twitter? Looking for some peeps!

General ‘verbing’ (planning, arriving, leaving, etc.).
elliottjlb I’m headed to the conference to register –look out AERA. #AERA

EveProper Listening to linda darling-hammond #aera #fb

glojacobs off to san diego. might be using twitter for blogging the conference. #aera anyone?

grabe AERA begins today. After listening to colleague stories last night glad I am not looking for job as a new prof.

Resources:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/03/twittering-live.html

http://blogs.asaecenter.org/Acronym/2009/03/a_twitter_experiment.html

http://www.greatideasconference.org/twitterideas.cfm

http://www.searchengineguide.com/jennifer-laycock/dont-miss-the-post-conference-twitter-ne.php

http://www.theinnovationdiaries.com/2009/03/24/the-hierarchy-of-tweets-analysing-the-psychology-of-twitter/

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Posted by paul

Learning the Ropes: Public communication for researchers

April 17, 2009

The 2009 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association has drawn to a close, but for another day and a half 25 early career education researchers are still at work. They’re participating in an intensive workshop devoted to communicating research with the media.

Today the group heard from editors, reporters, and an influential researcher and public intellectual.

Before you continue reading my summary, please see the thoughtful post by participant Sara Goldrick-Rab, who goes out of her way to communicate effectively with the public and, in my opinion, serves as a model for how researchers can provide a valuable community service.

And see this post by my fellow panelist Reidar Mosvold on why he, as a mathematics researcher and educator, takes time out of his day to post to his blog.

Speakers included Larry Gordon, the Los Angeles Times, who covers topics including college admissions, tuition, freshman performance, graduation rates, tuition, and measuring performance of charters.

Stephanie Banchero, Chicago Tribune, said that her paper does not write about research, qua research, i.e., don’t expect a press release to result in a big story. But the paper does use research findings to buttress or refute their stories, which tend to focus on the Chicago public school system.

Emily Alpert, Voice of San Diego, encouraged the early career researchers to consider what reaction do you want to provoke when submitting an Op-Ed piece.
It’s important also to make clear how one’s research relates to current events, or to a soccer mom. “Develop a ‘Cliff’s Notes’ summary of your specialty.”

Think tanks package their work very expertly, she said. They virtually write the story for you. Their press releases include directions: “Here is the nut paragraph,” and “here is contact information for 4 willing interview subjects. But we don’t see that in material released from universities.”

She notices a ‘schizophrenic’ attitude among universities when it comes to making faculty accessible to reporters. Some simply choose not to, while others distribute faculty guidebooks and even provide their home phone numbers. It varies from school to school.

Liz McMillen, Chronicle of Higher Ed, said there are many ways to organize an Op-Ed piece.
- The “everything you know is wrong!” approach,
- here is how to think differently about a problem.
In every case, though, make sure you show why the reader should care about your piece. Identify a problem, then offer your solution.
She discouraged Op-Ed writers from submitting the same piece to multiple publications at the same time.

Amy Stuart Wells, Teachers College, Columbia University, encouraged participants to find a news peg on which to hang the Op-Ed piece.
Demonstrate how you are an authority on the subject.
Show how your research interacts with a larger body of work.

Don’t write in academic jargon, she cautioned. “A couple days before writing your piece, don’t read any academic journals. Instead, read good popular journalism like you find in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, the NY Times, or Esquire. Analyze the cadence of the language, the voice, the sentence structure.”

Wells advised taking advantage of the news staff or PR staff in your college or university. Ask them to vet your piece, ask them to help you shop it around.
It’s good to develop a relationship with an editor. If someone accepts one of your pieces, keep working with that person.

Richard Colvin, Hechinger Institute, Columbia University, advised thinking broadly about the current news climate. Tie your research into the issues and themes people are broadly thinking about. Today’s issues for example would include the economy, income tax day, Somali pirates, and the anniversary of Columbine. For that matter, the anniversary of any important event can serve as a good news peg.

Linda Darling Hammond, Stanford University, was asked to speak about the role of the public intellectual. She said that a good public intellectual is someone who can translate their micro-level research into a broader set of systemic questions. Speaking out about your area of expertise is not an ego trip, she said; it’s about the public good.

She thinks of everything in terms of teaching, even when talking to politicians and policy makers. What does my audience already know? How can I connect with that? Who have they already spoken to? What can I build on?

Think how you can represent your work in terms of analogies and metaphors.

A public intellectual should have three main ideas to speak about. No more.

Timing is important. Watch the legislative calendar and agenda. Be prepared to give policymakers the information they need when they need it. The policy making timeline is very different from the academic timeline.

It’s OK to write an Op-Ed piece based on qualitative research. Qualitative research is credible if it is done impeccably. Qualitative research produces good stories, and lots of politics is driven by stories.

Policymaking follows two timelines simultaneously. There is the long arc of policy development and aggregating evidence (e.g., the global warming issue), but at the same time there’s the short-term, immediate process of getting bills passed.

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Posted by paul

Riding the backchannel

April 15, 2009

downtown san diego

For a running commentary from the point of view of an average (albeit technologically skilled) person attending the AERA convention this week, you can go to the Twitter search page and follow the keyword AERA.

As an alternative, check the Wiki where the sidebar streams (a limited number of) live text messages.

If you have a twitter account, you can follow @AERAtweetup, as 155 already do, or you can just follow the hashtag #AERA.

Sample recent comments cover session contents, the quality of facilities, recommended places to eat:

Best Jim Gee quote of day: “School has gotten rid of the game, but it kept the manual.”

AERA filled with iPhones, am jealous. Going back to Marriott (Salon/Hall 3) for poster, tho am sad to give up wireless!

Great (albeit short) last second talk by Marc Lamont Hill on youth culture, new media, and Discourses of resistance.

Just taking AP classes do not predict college performance-Dick Atkinson

Virtual learning environments presented over 1.5 hours using straight (mostly bad) PPT + verbal presentation. Shocking/disappointing

Need to check out “Stages of Adoption Inventory”

Beach City Market has reasonably priced breakfast

i’m at the #aera new directions in learning & instruction session (39.025)… looks like it’s gonna be crowded bc room is tinyyyy.

Getting ready to present at AERA on using Acrobat to aggregate dissertation media.

Finished my stuff for AERA today…. good sessions tomorrow– too bad they are all scheduled at the same time.

AERA New media talk – C. Steinkuehler awesome! – relates to r study of youth & social media & cognitive renaissance & learning ecology

At AERA meeting lots of talk about research and stimilus package.

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Posted by paul

2 reporters + 2 researchers = productive conversation

April 15, 2009

Education reporters and education researchers share overlapping interests and, although cooperation is good, there is much room for improvement.

That was the consensus of a panel Tuesday afternoon during the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) going on this week in San Diego.

In a session titled, ‘From Wedge Issues to Substantial Dialogue: Education Research in the Media’ each panelist offered tips on how to get most from a researcher-media relationship.

From left: Graue, Jaschik, Wells, Moran

“I am filing 3 stories today,” said San Deigo Union-Tribune education reporter Chris Moran, as he portrayed how newspaper industry buyouts and layoffs are exerting lots of pressure on editors and reporters. ” I need story ideas that will provide a lot of quick hits.”

It’s good for researchers to have an ‘elevator pitch’ or ‘sound bite,’ he said, and even after long conversations with a reporter, researchers should expect to see their work represented in a very focused, limited way.

“Anecdotes are powerful,” Moran said. “I can strike gold with them. I often lead a story with an anecdote.”

Other tips:
Reporters at local dailies like to use local experts. Know about school districts in your area.

If you are one of the first people to talk to me for a story you will have more of a voice in shaping it.

Make story pitches and research timely. Tie to current news stories.

Beth Graue is professor of education at the U of Wisconsin School of Education and interim director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. She said that as she translates her work for reporters, she does better work and develops a clearer clear idea of her work.

“I try to develop sound bites that are simple enough to tell a story, but complex enough to cover the topic, and so those two exist in tension,” she said.

“I know that most reporters write stories that include quotes from parents and teachers as well as from researchers,” she said. “So when I interview I’m speaking on 3 levels at onece; to the reporter, to the reporter’s readers, and AROUND the other people he or she will probably quote.”

Graue has conducted several ‘reverse interviews.” Often she has spent an hour or 2 with a reporter about her research, but still the story has been wrong. So she has made a practice of interviewing the reporters about their writing. She has found that often a reporter writing about early childhood or kindergarten is writing a piece while trying to make an important family decision, so emotion is involved.

Reporters often ask her “How does one decide for an individual child?” And they often ask her what choices she has made for my own children.

Inside Higher Education’s Scott Jaschik (rhymes with classic) said “You guys should be up in arms that most people ignore what you do.”

He said education researchers should be getting more attention because their work is relevant and what they do matters.

But on the rare occasion when a newspaper runs a Page 1 story about research, it is usually about science research; very rarely about education research.

Jaschik recommended that when reporters ask the question “what are you working on?” researchers should be prepared to summarize their work with a single, simple declarative sentence.

“Know how to communicate WHAT MATTERS about your research,” he said. “I am amused when I go to conference presentations because researchers often spend most of their time talking about the study’s literature review and its methodology, but often run out of time before getting to their FINDINGS. Journalists want to know ‘why it matters.’”

As a good example of a publication that translates research findings into plain English he mentioned the magazine “Contexts” published by the American Sociological Association. It’s written for a lay audience. It’s topical, and isn’t laden with footnotes.

Panelist Amy Stuart Wells of Teachers College, Columbia University, said that journalists and researchers should remember that they are helping to shape the public discourse and dialog.

“I think of education journalism and education research as two overlapping circles,” she said, and that it’s important for each to respect and have empathy for what the other does.

Reporters should know the researcher’s expertise, and researchers should know the reporter’s expertise.

Many interviews are conducted via email. But an important synergy takes place during live interviews and phone conversations, she said, as there is more room for give and take. “And our perspectives change. My best experiences have occurred when we make the time to talk live.”

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Posted by paul

Twitter meetup in the works for AERA

March 10, 2009

Geekishly-inclined people planning to attend the April Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association are invited to join some of us for a Twitter meetup (time and date TBA). We will probably talk at some point about uses of social media in education research and in education communications. We have set up a Wiki and a Twitter stream. #AERA

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Posted by paul

Communicating about education research

October 22, 2008

Jeffrey Henig

Education has gotten short shrift during the debates in this election cycle.
Am I surprised? Nope.
But communicating about education research with media outlets, bloggers, educators, and policymakers will form an important topic at a series of meetings in D.C. this week sponsored by the American Educational Research Association (AERA).
With other members of the Communications & Outreach committee, I will meet with members of the AERA Technology Committee and the Professional Development committee to talk about long range communication plans.
And I’m really looking forward to hearing a presentation Friday by ‘Spin Cycle’ author Jeffrey Henig, whose scheduled talk is titled, “Must research used be research abused? Why cool research gets into hot waters.”

From Spin Cycle:
“I’ve argued that the demands and dictates of politics make it problematic whether good research will trump weaker studies…. Researchers have some responsibility in remedying this. Ironically, they need to do so by framing their claims about the importance of research more realistically, which means more modestly. At the same time we sound the call for improved research designs and investment in the infrastructure of data, we need to be educating the media, funders, policy makers, and public more about the limitations of research…. When funders or the media say they need a sharp and definitive and broadly stated lesson, we sometimes need to hold our ground and say that available evidence permits only tentative, contingent, and qualified conclusions.” pp. 243-244

1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: AERA, communication, education, henig, research, Research in education | Permalink
Posted by paul

Researchers and journalists can work together

March 27, 2008

Education researchers should not be afraid to discuss their tentative research findings, said journalists on this morning’s AERA panel discussion. Speaking to a group of about 30 educators and communicators who wanted to lean more about communicating with journalists working in electronic media were
Alexander Russo, who blogs at This Week in Education and District 299: The Chicago Schools Blog
Andrew Rotherham, who blogs at Eduwonk and serves on the Virginia Board of Education
Jennifer Medina, New York Times education reporter, and
Richard Colvin, director of the Hechinger Institute at Teachers College Columbia University and who blogs at EarlyStories.
The session was sponsored by the Communication and Outreach committee of the American Educational Research Association.
Education researchers and communicators need to know what education stories are hot topics and be ready to have information to add to discussions of hot topics, they said.

Among Colvin’s points: Researchers should consider writing executive summaries of their recent research go be prepared for talking with reporters.
Remember that, while reporters are trained to respect the authority inherent in peer-reviewed research, they work on tight deadlines and need information now. They can’t wait for years for your work to be peer reviewed and published. So don’t be afraid to talk about work in progress.

The New York Times’s Jenny Medina said she reads about a dozen blogs, once or twice a week. Blogs act as a filter for her; showing her what education issues are “rising to the surface.”
A good reporter, she said, knows that the researcher who offers qualified answers is probably more reliable than someone with strong black-and-white views.
Teachers and researchers should not hide from reporters. Most reporters want to talk to them. Open your doors and open your classrooms.
She also said she honestly would never write a story just about some report. Reports are valuable to inform stories and to inform discussion, but don’t expect your latest research report to take up an entire story.

The Education Sector’s Andrew Rotherham pointed to the cultural differences between academics and journalists: education research, and social science in general, reward caution and skepticism. But a journalist’s job is to tell readers what is going on right now. Researchers should keep in mind the reporter’s time pressures. They can help reporters do their jobs by being ready to refer them to other experts when necessary, and by not overstating the findings of their research. Remember that a lengthy interview may lead to only one quote in a story, but you are helping reporters do their jobs, and they appreciate that.

Alexander Russo pointed out that it’s important for researchers to talk to reporters because, if they don’t, the vacuum will be filled by someone else, perhaps with a very different agenda. Even when researchers don’t yet have conclusive findings, they can still play an important role in educating the reporter and the readers. Think tanks are pumping out Op-Eds and reports constantly, so researchers should make their work part of the discussion.

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Posted by paul

Duelling research reports

March 20, 2008

“At least once a day I get an email or piece of actual mail touting some new study,” writes Laura Diamond of The Atlanta Journal- Constitution. “The pr person typically writes that this new study provides all the proof for why the nation or Georgia or Gwinnett County should try the latest education fad.”

Diamond also blogs at Get Schooled. Her recent post, “Anything you can research, I can research bettter,” has drawn 30 comments in two days. Here she voices a concern common to many reporters I’ve heard at conferences sponsored by EWA and AERA:

” … With all the contradicting reports and studies out there, what are we to believe? If we can’t trust these studies, how do we make informed decisions about what will work in our schools?”

Comments on the post range from knowledgeable to hysterical, and raise issues of a reporter’s need to understand statistics to a need to consider the source of funding for any given study.

Which study to trust? There are no easy answers, and I have no doubt this subject will be discussed at AERA’s annual meeting next week.

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Posted by paul

More communications sessions at AERA

February 13, 2008

Educators with particular interests in communication, outreach, and dissemination will have plenty of opportunities to participate in discussions at AERA next month. I’ve mentioned one related session I’ll be involved in March 26. On March 27 I’ll moderate a panel on behalf of the Outreach and Communications committee: ‘Disseminating Education Research through Electronic Media: Advice from E-Journalists.’ Panelists will include Alexander Russo, This Week In Education; Andrew Rotherham, EduWonk; Jennifer Medina, New York Times; and Richard Colvin, Hechinger Institute, Columbia University.

Here are ~~two~~ three more that look promising:
A Presidential Session titled ‘Making a Difference in Policy & Practice: Communication, Education Research, and Civic Responsibility,’ set for Tuesday, March 25, at 4:05 p.m. Speakers include Susan Fuhrman, Teachers College, Columbia University; Alex Molnar, Arizona State University; and Diane Ravitch, New York University. The session aims to generate dialog about the obstacles and pathways in the communication process between researchers, policymakers, practitioners and relevant publics.

Another session, ‘The Media and Higher Education: Toward Better Communication,’ will feature Scott Jaschik, InsideHigherEd; Steve Drummond, National Public Radio; MaryBeth Marklein, USA Today; and Jeff Selingo, Chronicle of Higher Education. Tuesday, March 25, 2:15 p.m.

And another:
Communicating Educational Research: Issues and Examples
Wed, Mar 26 – 8:15am – 10:15am
Chair: Robert V. Labaree. Papers include:
“Connecting Educational Research With an Audience” by Gary Natriello;
“Evaluating the Effectiveness of Data Displays in Education Journals,” by Luke Duesbery and Jan McCoy;
“Examining Levers for Change: Southeastern State Initiatives to Improve High Schools,” by Julie Edmunds; and
“Web Video As a Public Sphere for Educational Researchers,” by Brian Hughes.

Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: AERA, public relations, Research in education | Permalink
Posted by paul

EducationPR

Twittering the AERA conference

Learning the Ropes: Public communication for researchers

Riding the backchannel

2 reporters + 2 researchers = productive conversation

Twitter meetup in the works for AERA

Communicating about education research

Researchers and journalists can work together

Duelling research reports

More communications sessions at AERA

Twitter

My social media

Research in education

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