1. Wade Fagen-Ulmschneider waf@illinois.edu
Keywords: social media, external impact, assignments, HCI, data analytics
Transforming Ordinary and Extraordinary Activities into “Education Worth Sharing”
Culturally, students already use social media to share their thoughts, meals, crushes, dislikes, birthdays, everything -- except education. This work explores both transforming ordinary assignments and creating extraordinary assignments with sharing in mind in a theme of "education worth sharing", To date, student-created as part of coursework have accumulated over 2,000,000 interactions.
Wade Fagen-Ulmschneider

2. Why? Culturally, students already use social media to share
their thoughts, meals, crushes, dislikes, birthdays, everything
– except education.
In what we do everyday, we are already creating amazing experiences that inspire creativity, motivate them to learn, and set them on a path to do great things.
Why are students not snapping, tweeting, texting, sharing these experiences? How can we facilitate them doing so?
Material Design Social Icons by IO9 <

3. Identical Assignment Identical Learning Objectives
What?
Transform ordinary assignments into sharable experiences:
Identical Assignment Identical Learning Objectives
Number Guessing Game1 Console-Based, Not Sharable (CS 105: Fall 2014, MP1)
Number Guessing Game2 Web Interface, Sharable Link to Everyone (CS 105: Spring 2015, MP1)
Create extraordinary assignments with sharing in mind:
Data Driven Discovery3: Data visualizations from a data science course designed to be shared. Above: “GPA Visualization”, 2,000,000 interactions as of 9/16.
CS 105’s Hunger Games4: Students program agents to compete in a live game against every other student in the class. Collaboration, collusion, and sharing is encouraged. 1: 2: 3: 4:

4. Google Analytics: 1.4m interactions in 48 hours
How?
Sharing must be easy. If it is anything more difficult than pressing share or pasting a link, most people won’t share.
Provide the infrastructure to serve it
Make sure it “just works” on social media
Encourage them to share it
Track and understand how it’s shared!
…3k+ likes/shares…
Google Analytics: 1.4m interactions in 48 hours
Viewed by someone in all 50 states and nearly every country on the planet!

5. Where? “Education Worth Sharing”
2015–Present: Transforming old assignments and creating new assignments with sharing in mind; specifically in classrooms with flipped lectures.
Present: Creating resources and best practices for “education worth sharing”; collecting awesome things worth sharing.
…links to all our resources so far!

6. Prognosis? Documenting Impact
Lots of data, lots of analytics, unsure how to present it academically. How is this different than BuzzFeed?
Anecdotally, students seem to care a lot more about content that will be shared. Open questions:
Does this impact grades?
Does this impact understanding or learning?
Looking to Learn from the Community
Colleagues fear content on social media, shy away from taking the final step of sharing assignments. Why?
What is your view on social media? Worthwhile at all?
Is there resources to make sharing easier for you?