Carnegie Mellon University
Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII)
<http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21670811.2015.1133249> Previous literature has considered the relevance of Twitter to journalism, for example as a tool for reporters to collect information and for organizations to disseminate... more
<http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21670811.2015.1133249> Previous literature has considered the relevance of Twitter to journalism, for example as a tool for reporters to collect information and for organizations to disseminate news to the public. We consider the reciprocal perspective, carrying out a survey of news media-related content within Twitter. Using a random sample of 1.8 billion tweets over four months in 2014, we look at the distribution of activity across news media and the relative dominance of certain news organizations in terms of relative share of content, the Twitter behavior of news media, the hashtags used in news content versus Twitter as a whole, and the proportion of Twitter activity that is news media-related. We find a small but consistent proportion of Twitter is news media-related (0.8 percent by volume); that news media-related tweets focus on a different set of hashtags than Twitter as a whole, with some hashtags such as those of countries of conflict (Arab Spring countries, Ukraine) reaching over 15 percent of tweets being news media-related; and we find that news organizations’ accounts, across all major organizations, largely use Twitter as a professionalized, one-way communication medium to promote their own reporting. Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling, we also examine how the proportion of news content varies across topics within 100,000 #Egypt tweets, finding that the relative proportion of news media-related tweets varies vastly across different subtopics. Over-time analysis reveals that news media were among the earliest adopters of certain #Egypt subtopics, providing a necessary (although not sufficient) condition for influence.
- by Momin M. Malik
- •
Even when external researchers have access to social media data, they are not privy to decisions that went into platform design—including the measurement and testing that goes into deploying new platform features, such as recommender... more
Even when external researchers have access to social media data, they are not privy to decisions that went into platform design—including the measurement and testing that goes into deploying new platform features, such as recommender systems, that seek to shape user behavior towards desirable ends. Finding ways to identify platform effects is thus important both for generalizing findings, as well as understanding the nature of platform usage. One approach is to find temporal data covering the introduction of a new feature; observing differences in behavior before and after allow us to estimate the effect of the change. We investigate platform effects using two such datasets, the Netflix Prize dataset and the Facebook New Orleans data, in which we observe seeming discontinuities in user behavior but that we know or suspect are the result of a change in platform design. For the Netflix Prize, we estimate user ratings changing by an average of about 3% after the change, and in Facebook New Orleans, we find that the introduction of the ‘People You May Know’ feature locally nearly doubled the average number of edges added daily, and increased by 63% the average proportion of triangles created by each new edge. Our work empirically verifies several previously expressed theoretical concerns, and gives insight into the magnitude and variety of platform effects.
- by Momin M. Malik
- •
<http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM15/paper/view/10662> Geotagged tweets are an exciting and increasingly popular data source, but like all social media data, they potentially have biases in who are represented. Motivated by... more
<http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM15/paper/view/10662> Geotagged tweets are an exciting and increasingly popular data source, but like all social media data, they potentially have biases in who are represented. Motivated by this, we investigate the question, ‘are users of geotagged tweets randomly distributed over the US population’? We link approximately 144 million geotagged tweets within the US, representing 2.6m unique users, to high-resolution Census population data and carry out a statistical test by which we answer this question strongly in the negative. We utilize spatial models and integrate further Census data to investigate the factors associated with this nonrandom distribution. We find that, controlling for other factors, population has no effect on the number of geotag users, and instead it is predicted by a number of factors including higher median income, being in an urban area, being further east or on a coast, having more young people, and having high Asian, Black or Hispanic/Latino populations.
- by Momin M. Malik
- •
<http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2808797.2808828> ‘Firestorms,’ sudden bursts of negative attention in cases of controversy and outrage, are seemingly widespread on Twitter and are an increasing source of fascination and anxiety in... more
<http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2808797.2808828> ‘Firestorms,’ sudden bursts of negative attention in cases of controversy and outrage, are seemingly widespread on Twitter and are an increasing source of fascination and anxiety in the corporate, governmental, and public spheres. Using media mentions, we collect 80 candidate events from January 2011 to September 2014 that we would term ‘firestorms.’ Using data from the Twitter decahose (or gardenhose), a 10% random sample of all tweets, we describe the size and longevity of these firestorms. We take two firestorm exemplars, #myNYPD and #CancelColbert, as case studies to describe more fully. Then, taking the 20 firestorms with the most tweets, we look at the change in mention networks of participants over the course of the firestorm as one method of testing for possible impacts of firestorms. We find that the mention networks before and after the firestorms are more similar to each other than to those of the firestorms, suggesting that firestorms neither emerge from existing networks, nor do they result in lasting changes to social structure. To verify this, we randomly sample users and generate mention networks for baseline comparison, and find that the firestorms are not associated with a greater than random amount of change in mention networks.
- by Momin M. Malik
- •
<http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM16/paper/view/13163> <http://mominmalik.com/malik_icwsm2016.pdf> Even when external researchers have access to social media data, they are not privy to decisions that went into platform... more
<http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM16/paper/view/13163> <http://mominmalik.com/malik_icwsm2016.pdf> Even when external researchers have access to social media data, they are not privy to decisions that went into platform design—including the measurement and testing that goes into deploying new platform features, such as recommender systems, that seek to shape user behavior towards desirable ends. Finding ways to identify platform effects is thus important both for generalizing findings, as well as understanding the nature of platform usage. One approach is to find temporal data covering the introduction of a new feature; observing differences in behavior before and after allow us to estimate the effect of the change. We investigate platform effects using two such datasets, the Netflix Prize dataset and the Facebook New Orleans data, in which we observe seeming discontinuities in user behavior but that we know or suspect are the result of a change in platform design. For the Netflix Prize, we estimate user ratings changing by an average of about 3% after the change, and in Facebook New Orleans, we find that the introduction of the ‘People You May Know’ feature locally nearly doubled the average number of edges added daily, and increased by 63% the average proportion of triangles created by each new edge. Our work empirically verifies several previously expressed theoretical concerns, and gives insight into the magnitude and variety of platform effects.
- by Momin M. Malik
- •
ABSTRACT This research brief is a contribution by the Youth and Media Team at the Berkman Center to the first &quot;Why News Matters&quot; grantees workshop sponsored by the McCormick Foundation and organized by the Educational... more
ABSTRACT This research brief is a contribution by the Youth and Media Team at the Berkman Center to the first &quot;Why News Matters&quot; grantees workshop sponsored by the McCormick Foundation and organized by the Educational Development Center, Inc., which took place on March 8 and March 11, 2013, in Chicago. Informed by our own research and practice, with a focus on &#39;news literacy&#39;, the brief seeks to stimulate a discussion among the grantees about different approaches to defining, framing, and understanding core concepts such as &#39;news&#39; and &#39;news literacy&#39;, and to provide a frame of reference for a debate about the question of &#39;why news matters&#39;.
- by Momin M. Malik and +1
- •
This study investigated the hypothesis that prompting students to self-assess their interest and understanding of science concepts and activities would increase their motivation in science classes. Students were randomly assigned to an... more
This study investigated the hypothesis that prompting students to self-assess their interest and understanding of science concepts and activities would increase their
motivation in science classes. Students were randomly assigned to an experimental condition that wrote self-assessments of their competence and interest in science
lessons or a control condition that wrote summaries of those same lessons. Writing activities were 10 min long and were given approximately once a week for eighteen weeks. Student motivation was assessed via self-report surveys for achievement goals and interest in science before and after the intervention. Students in the experimental condition showed higher endorsement of mastery goals and reported greater situational interest in science topics after the intervention compared to students who summarised the lessons. Increases in situational interest predicted higher individual interest in the domain. Results indicate an instructional practice requiring just 3 hours out of a semester of instruction was sufficient to achieve these effects on motivation in science classes.
motivation in science classes. Students were randomly assigned to an experimental condition that wrote self-assessments of their competence and interest in science
lessons or a control condition that wrote summaries of those same lessons. Writing activities were 10 min long and were given approximately once a week for eighteen weeks. Student motivation was assessed via self-report surveys for achievement goals and interest in science before and after the intervention. Students in the experimental condition showed higher endorsement of mastery goals and reported greater situational interest in science topics after the intervention compared to students who summarised the lessons. Increases in situational interest predicted higher individual interest in the domain. Results indicate an instructional practice requiring just 3 hours out of a semester of instruction was sufficient to achieve these effects on motivation in science classes.
A central goal of the learning sciences is to discover principles that determine the optimal amount of instructional assistance to support robust learning (Koedinger & Aleven, 2007). We examined learning outcomes from providing and... more
A central goal of the learning sciences is to discover principles that determine the optimal amount of instructional assistance to support robust learning (Koedinger & Aleven, 2007). We examined learning outcomes from providing and withholding stepwise instructional explanations as students studied worked examples and solved physics problems. We hypothesized that students would acquire more conceptual knowledge from withholding instructional explanations because they would be more likely to engage in constructive cognitive activities to understand the problem-solving steps, whereas providing instructional explanations might suppress such activities. Furthermore, we examined the roles of prior knowledge and student motivation in determining learning outcomes. Across three experiments, students in the withholding conditions showed greater conceptual learning than students in the providing conditions. Additionally, achievement goal orientations were more predictive of learning for the withholding conditions than the providing conditions. We discuss how the interactions between prior knowledge, motivation, and instruction can support learning and transfer.
Robust knowledge serves as a common instructional target in academic settings. Past research identifying characteristics of experts’ knowledge across many domains can help clarify the features of robust knowledge as well as ways of... more
Robust knowledge serves as a common instructional target in academic settings. Past research identifying characteristics of experts’ knowledge across many domains can help clarify the features of robust knowledge as well as ways of assessing it. We review the expertise literature and identify three key features of robust knowledge (deep, connected, and coherent) and four means of assessing these features (perception, memory, problem
solving, and transfer). Focusing on the domains of math and science learning, we examine how four instructional techniques—practice, worked examples, analogical comparison, and self-explanation—can promote key features of robust knowledge and how those features can
be assessed. We conclude by discussing the implications of this framework for theory and practice.
solving, and transfer). Focusing on the domains of math and science learning, we examine how four instructional techniques—practice, worked examples, analogical comparison, and self-explanation—can promote key features of robust knowledge and how those features can
be assessed. We conclude by discussing the implications of this framework for theory and practice.
Analogical reasoning has been hypothesized to critically depend upon working memory through correlational data [1], but less work has tested this relationship through experimental manipulation [2]. An opportunity for examining the... more
Analogical reasoning has been hypothesized to critically depend upon working memory through correlational data [1], but less work has tested this relationship through experimental manipulation [2]. An opportunity for examining the connection between working memory and analogical reasoning has emerged from the growing, although somewhat controversial, body of literature suggests complex working memory training can sometimes lead to working memory improvements that transfer to novel working memory tasks. This study investigated whether working memory improvements, if replicated, would increase analogical reasoning ability. We assessed participants’ performance on verbal and visual analogy tasks after a complex working memory training program incorporating verbal and spatial tasks [3,4]. Participants’ improvements on the working memory training tasks transferred to other short-term and working memory tasks, supporting the possibility of broad effects of working memory training. However, we found no effects on analogical reasoning. We propose several possible explanations for the lack of an impact of working memory improvements on analogical reasoning.
Achievement goals have been examined extensively in relationship to self-reported learning behaviors and achievement, yet very little work has observed the behaviors through which achievement goals might influence learning and... more
Achievement goals have been examined extensively in
relationship to self-reported learning behaviors and
achievement, yet very little work has observed the behaviors
through which achievement goals might influence learning
and performance. We collected fine-grained behavioral data
to assess students’ activities throughout the semester in a
college psychology course, and then used one learning
behavior, access to course outlines, to explain the relationship between self-reported achievement goals and grades. Results suggest that downloading course outlines partially mediates the relationship between goals and grades. Identifying how goals influence achievement through observable behaviors contributes to the theoretical understanding of achievement goals while also suggesting practical implications for instructors.
relationship to self-reported learning behaviors and
achievement, yet very little work has observed the behaviors
through which achievement goals might influence learning
and performance. We collected fine-grained behavioral data
to assess students’ activities throughout the semester in a
college psychology course, and then used one learning
behavior, access to course outlines, to explain the relationship between self-reported achievement goals and grades. Results suggest that downloading course outlines partially mediates the relationship between goals and grades. Identifying how goals influence achievement through observable behaviors contributes to the theoretical understanding of achievement goals while also suggesting practical implications for instructors.
Achievement goals are a powerful construct for understanding students’ classroom experiences and performance, yet most work examining achievement goals relies on self-report measures gathered through questionnaires. The current work aims... more
Achievement goals are a powerful construct for understanding students’ classroom experiences and performance, yet most work examining achievement goals relies on self-report measures gathered through questionnaires. The current work aims to assess achievement goals using a task choice embedded within a typical classroom activity. Results show the behavioral measure of achievement goals predicts performance on the task, while self-reported achievement goals do not. Self-reported achievement goals predict quarterly grades, while the behavioral measure of achievement goals does not. This work supports the viability of a behavioral measure and suggests the achievement goals that students adopt at a task level may be different from their general class achievement goals. Using complementary achievement goal measures may improve understanding of
how achievement goals relate to student behaviors and
academic achievement.
how achievement goals relate to student behaviors and
academic achievement.
- by Matthew Bernacki and +1
- •
- Achievement goals
Prior studies have not tested whether an instructional intervention aimed at improving metacognitive skills results in changes to student metacognition, motivation, learning, and future learning in the classroom. We examined whether a... more
Prior studies have not tested whether an instructional intervention aimed at improving metacognitive skills results in changes to student metacognition, motivation, learning, and future learning in the classroom. We examined whether a 6-hr intervention designed to teach the declarative and procedural
components of planning, monitoring, and evaluation could increase students’ metacognition, motivation, learning, and preparation for future learning for middle school science. Forty-six eighth-grade students were randomly assigned to either a control group, which received extensive problem-solving practice, or an experimental group, which received more limited problem-solving practice along with metacognitive
instruction and training. Results revealed that those who received the metacognitive instruction and training were less biased when making metacognitive judgments, p = .03, d = 0.65, endorsed higher levels of motivation after instruction (e.g., there was a large effect on task value, p = .006, d = 0.87),
performed better on a conceptual physics test, p = .03, d = 0.64, and performed better on a novel self-guided learning activity, p = .007, d = 0.87. This study demonstrates that metacognitive instruction can lead to better self-regulated learning outcomes during adolescence, a period in which students’ academic achievement and motivation often decline.
components of planning, monitoring, and evaluation could increase students’ metacognition, motivation, learning, and preparation for future learning for middle school science. Forty-six eighth-grade students were randomly assigned to either a control group, which received extensive problem-solving practice, or an experimental group, which received more limited problem-solving practice along with metacognitive
instruction and training. Results revealed that those who received the metacognitive instruction and training were less biased when making metacognitive judgments, p = .03, d = 0.65, endorsed higher levels of motivation after instruction (e.g., there was a large effect on task value, p = .006, d = 0.87),
performed better on a conceptual physics test, p = .03, d = 0.64, and performed better on a novel self-guided learning activity, p = .007, d = 0.87. This study demonstrates that metacognitive instruction can lead to better self-regulated learning outcomes during adolescence, a period in which students’ academic achievement and motivation often decline.
ABSTRACT Although collaboration is often considered a beneficial learning strategy, research examining the claim suggests a much more complex picture. Critically, the question is not whether collaboration is beneficial to learning, but... more
ABSTRACT Although collaboration is often considered a beneficial learning strategy, research examining the claim suggests a much more complex picture. Critically, the question is not whether collaboration is beneficial to learning, but instead how and when collaboration improves outcomes. In this paper, we first discuss the mechanisms hypothesized to support and hinder group learning. We then review insights and illustrative findings from research in cognitive, social, and educational psychology. We conclude by proposing areas for future research to expand theories of collaboration while identifying important features for educators to consider when deciding when and how to include collaboration in instructional activities.
Metacognition, or knowledge and cognition about cognitive phenomena such as monitoring and regulation, has been positively associated with academic performance and motivation (Flavell, 1979; Hacker et. al, 2000; Swanson, 1992; Wolters,... more
Metacognition, or knowledge and cognition about cognitive phenomena such as monitoring and regulation, has been positively associated with academic performance and motivation (Flavell, 1979; Hacker et. al, 2000; Swanson, 1992; Wolters, 1998). It develops naturally into adulthood but there are large individual differences in its use and development, especially during adolescence. Although the development of metacognition is critical to problem solving and learning, it is rarely explicitly taught as a set of skills in school. We tested whether an instructional intervention designed to teach middle school students the declarative and procedural skills of metacognition increases student motivation, scientific reasoning, and conceptual understanding of physics. Prior to the intervention, we administered a series of pre-test assessments to analyze the students' metacognitive habits, motivation, and physics misconceptions. During the two-month intervention, students in two physics clas...
Instructors in every domain face a fundamental challenge in determining when to provide students with explanations and when to allow them to generate their own. Past research examining the effects of providing or withholding explanatory... more
Instructors in every domain face a fundamental challenge in determining when to provide students with explanations and when to allow them to generate their own. Past research examining the effects of providing or withholding explanatory material has provided ...
Abstract Recent advances in telecommunication and wireless networking technology have exploded the possibilities for remote communication between people. We present a product called the Hug as a challenge to familiar telecommunication... more
Abstract Recent advances in telecommunication and wireless networking technology have exploded the possibilities for remote communication between people. We present a product called the Hug as a challenge to familiar telecommunication products. A visionary design born out of research with elders, the Hug addresses a very human need for physical closeness in remote communications. It uses the same network infrastructure as many appliances today, but places a new face on human product interaction.
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