My name is Caroline Pitt and I'll be discussing our work on "Connected Learning, Collapsed
Contexts: Examining teen's socio-technical ecosystems through the lens of digital badges."
Today's youth are more involved in the digital world than ever, but that involvement takes
very specific and somewhat circumscribed forms depending on the intended audience,
creating a sharp divide between their social and academic worlds online. In our increasingly
connected and surveilled worlds youth have few places to call their own causing them to jump from
platform to platform and use creative measures like creating multiple accounts, for instance
the "Finsta" phenomenon where youth often have fake instagram accounts.
Meanwhile researchers and practitioners constantly attempt to
find ways to connect with youth, adding social media elements to academic technologies.
We draw on research by dana boyd, Mimi Ito, Davis and Jurgenson and others to
examine the complex tension that exists between connected learning and context collapse
In this paper we address three main research questions:
One, how do youth collapse and separate their online contexts,
particularly around professional/academic versus personal/social boundaries
Two: what tensions do youth navigate in their sociotechnical daily rounds,
particularly surrounding identity and context collapse
and three how might connected learning technologies such as badges
be incorporated into teen socio-technical ecosystems in a way
that supports their learning and identities while respecting their boundaries.
This work takes place within a larger study on the design and implementation
of digital badges at a science center in the pacific northwest
Using participatory design methods, we've worked to create a digital badging
system drawing on connected learning that allows youth to share their accomplishments .
This timeline provides some context for the case studies discussed in this work.
Throughout the study we've explored how youth science identities are complexly
built and intertwined as they navigate the rich sociotechnical ecosystems of modern life.
We want to understand how technologies like badges can be used to support identity development.
So for the past five years we've worked with youth directly to design a badge system, and now
we're interested in why they use these badges and why they don't. After examining in detail how to
implement a badge system (See Pitt et al. 2019), we're now looking towards longer term impacts
and sustainability. Thus, to better understand how digital badges featured in youth sociotechnical
ecosystems and how they might be better incorporated and implemented,
we conducted case studies with several youth from the project.
After an initial interview, we observed the youth at the science center and in their neighborhoods.
Then, we conducted ecological momentary assessments over a period of a couple of months.
Lastly, we conducted a wrap-up interview with each participant.
With this data, we were able to create rich profiles of the six youth featured in the paper,
learning how technology factored into their day-to-day lives.
Using the research team's analytical memos and qualitative coding of the data set,
we were able to draw out some themes and insights that we believe are valuable
to a variety of designers, researchers, and practitioners focusing on
how to frame and implement social media for youth academic and professional development.
Here are a few key findings from the study: While youth not wanting authority figures to
be in their spaces is fairly well known, we discovered that youth siloed their social
media profiles to a fairly extreme degree, often having multiple instagram accounts
and only using each of their social media accounts for a very specific friend group.
Several participants were easily able to recount who they spoke to on which apps.
There was also little use of professional social media,
with academic achievements rarely being shared online.
Though the participants were mostly college bound they didn't have professional facing social media
Relatedly participants recounted a lot of "don'ts" and not a lot of "dos" from authority figures
in regards to social media. Thus, no positive examples of usage for professional purposes.
In addition to the rich qualitative findings,
we also came up with a few design recommendations:
First, when involving youth bring in their the whole experience. Don't make assumptions
about their lives and be aware that youth exist in complex ecologies, a more ecological perspective.
Two: design for context collusion not collision.
Let youth decide where their contexts connect, creating what's referred to as context collusions.
Don't cause unwanted context collapse between the personal and professional.
And third, scaffold development of professional identity while allowing for personal customization.
Make it easy to build professional identity online by presenting straightforward choices and
lots of options for sharing where they want things to be shared.
So that's all I have for right now, thank you so much for listening.
And I hope you'll check out the paper for a great deal more detail
I'd like to thank my co-authors, the NSF for funding this work, and our participants.