Practice what I preach:)....

So, realizing my last blog was essentially a "reach out" for feedback, I remembered Vanessa sharing on Twitter how excited she was to share this week's reading which is about to go to the publisher.

In the spirit of my last post, I'm going to practice what I preach:). Hopefully others will benefit from my blog post/ summary of this article:

Vanessa P. Dennen & Kerry J. Burner (2017): Identity, context collapse, and
Facebook use in higher education: putting presence and privacy at odds, Distance Education, DOI:
10.1080/01587919.2017.1322453


This article is on univ level students' attitudes on using a social network like Facebook in a school context. The article discusses social presence and online identity; what these terms actually mean, and how individuals manage them. I found the content presented on identity and group identity to be fascinating!

The physical world context collapse example given of "it would be equivalent to running into one's boss while on a date" is an excellent analogy, and discussion on context collusion versus context collision is helpful in understanding the differentiation between intentional or unexpected collapse.

Discussion on the single account, real name policy Fb employs really set the tone for the rest of the context collapse in education dialogue. Some students manage by using "code" language familiar only to close friends, or by self-limiting sharing.

Research questions were:

1. "What are university students’ preferences and habits related to SNS use, identity performance, and information seeking behaviors? (Survey 1)
2. What context collapse concerns do university students have about using Facebook in a higher education setting? (Survey 2)
3. What actions do university students take to address their identity and privacy concerns on Facebook? (Survey 2)
4. In what ways do Facebook non-users have a different identity and context collapse concerns from Facebook users? (Survey 2)" (Dennen & Burner, p.5)

Method, Data Collection, Data Analysis and survey results were all subsequently reviewed in the article. The research and its presentation really highlight the issues at hand; those social media tools that educators may want to use to engage with their students may not be accepted and/or appreciated by all students. For many students, they would prefer there to be a clearer line drawn between their classroom and personal engagement online. The authors strongly encourage educators to consider the implications and potential dissatisfaction of students wishing to avoid this context collapse. It might be adventageous for these instructors to think about their own potential context collapse in this context to acknowledge and identify potential student discomfort in this type of environment. Suggestions to consider ways that existing LMS platforms might function similarly to Fb (likes, comments, posting links to articles, etc). Might there be a way to engage your class while still preserving the distinction between classroom presence and personal presence? The authors address the limitations of the survey as being restricted to one College in one Higher Ed institution, and may not be representative of the entire nation. However, the results do suggest that this is something worth further consideration and provides possible future studies to further this research.