STEM conversations in social media: Implications on STEM education

This paper investigated conversations in social media on STEM over the course of a year to find who are the most important people that may influence STEM education discussions as well as the trends in the topics of conversations. The findings reveal that the most influential users represent organizations (businesses and non-profits relating to STEM fields and STEM education), although facilitation of such conversations are influenced by individuals. Further, the trends in conversations largely center on topics, such as K-12 and graduate studies, engaging K-12 STEM practices, specific STEM disciplines, and STEM careers.

[1]  Stanley W. Borg.  Social Networks and Health: Models, Methods, and Applications , 2012 .

[2]  R. Bybee,et al.  The Case for STEM Education: Challenges and Opportunities , 2013 .

[3]  Katerina Ananiadou,et al.  21st Century Skills and Competences for New Millennium Learners in OECD Countries , 2009 .

[4]  Ted McKelgan.  The Disciplined Mind. Howard Gardner. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster Inc., 1999. , 1999 .

[5]  Timothy T. Yuen,et al.  Investigation of Social Networks and Discussions in STEM Education Communities on Twitter , 2015, 2015 International Conference on Learning and Teaching in Computing and Engineering.

[6]  Joseph G. Davis,et al.  Exploring Sociocentric and Egocentric Approaches for Social Network Analysis , 2005 .

[7]  Martin Ebner,et al.  Social networking in scientific conferences - Twitter as tool for strengthen a scientific community , 2009 .

[8]  Hosung Park,et al.  What is Twitter, a social network or a news media? , 2010, WWW '10.

[9]  Ed H. Chi,et al.  Want to be Retweeted? Large Scale Analytics on Factors Impacting Retweet in Twitter Network , 2010, 2010 IEEE Second International Conference on Social Computing.

[10]  Robert N. Charette,et al.  The STEM crisis is a myth , 2013, IEEE Spectrum.

[11]  Thomas W. Valente,et al.  Social Networks and Health , 2010 .

[12]  M. Newman.  Mathematics of networks , 2018, Oxford Scholarship Online.

[13]  Tom A. B. Snijders,et al.  Social Network Analysis , 2011, International Encyclopedia of Statistical Science.

[14]  Vinesh Chandra,et al.  STEM futures and Practice, Can we teach STEM in a more Meaningful and Integrated way? , 2012 .

[15]  Stefan Burr,et al.  The Mathematics of networks , 1982 .

[16]  Richard J. Murnane,et al.  The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market , 2004 .

[17]  Sergey Brin,et al.  Reprint of: The anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual web search engine , 2012, Comput. Networks.

[18]  Carla C. Johnson,et al.  What Is STEM? A Discussion About Conceptions of STEM in Education and Partnerships , 2012 .

[19]  Ronald Rousseau,et al.  Social network analysis: a powerful strategy, also for the information sciences , 2002, J. Inf. Sci..

[20]  Thomas W. Valente.  Network models of the diffusion of innovations , 1996, Comput. Math. Organ. Theory.

[21]  Alvar Saenz Otero,et al.  STEM Education , 2014, Teaching Elementary STEM Education.

[22]  Hsia-Ching Chang,et al.  A new perspective on Twitter hashtag use: Diffusion of innovation theory , 2010, ASIST.

[23]  Ulrik Brandes,et al.  Visualization of Bibliographic Networks with a Reshaped Landscape Metaphor , 2002, VisSym.