EME6414 Summer 2025 Blog

This week, I took a different approach to participating in our class. Rather than reading all the assigned articles, I focused on exploring the tools highlighted for the week and familiarizing myself with how they work. In doing so, I ended up reading a similar article to the one by Dennen and He (2024) that was assigned last week. This article, by Dennen et al. (2023), focuses on college students’ digital competencies and how their everyday social media habits translate (or don't translate) to academic and professional settings. This context helped frame my experiences trying out Discord and Parlay , two tools that offer very different ways of encouraging participation. Discord, which I’ve used for years in gaming contexts, revealed a lot when used in more educational or community-centered ways. As part of my observation assignment, I joined the Discord servers for two esports teams: Fnatic and G2. In Fnatic, I was active; in G2, I mostly observed. The difference was stark. Fna...

This week, I decided to try out another featured tool, Parlay. It's an AI-based discussion platform designed to enhance classroom participation and peer-to-peer engagement. I’ve been a part of countless discussion boards for classes, and Parlay felt like a breath of fresh air. Dr. Dennen provided it with the article, and the platform automatically generated learning goals, discussion questions, and peer feedback instructions based on the reading. That alone was impressive. It was able to remove some of the overhead work for instructors while still maintaining structure for students. Once I read through the article, I answered the five discussion questions. As of now, I’m the only person who has responded, so I wasn’t able to experience the full back-and-forth conversation flow. Still, the platform had a few features that stood out to me. One of the most fun and unique aspects was that Parlay gave me a secret identity for the discussion—mine was Grace Hopper , which added a light, ...

 I found it coincidental that one of the tools for this week is Discord. I've been using Discord since around 2016, almost exclusively for video games. Back then, it was mostly just a way to talk with friends as we played games, but even now, despite all the new features (video chat, screen sharing, streaming, and bots, etc.), at its core, Discord remains a messaging platform. That’s part of what makes it so unique. This became especially clear to me during our community observation assignment, where I spent time in two esports Discord servers: Fnatic and G2. Both are European professional esports organizations with dedicated servers and tens of thousands of members. While both servers offered similar technical features, my experience in each was drastically different. When I was actively participating in the Fnatic server, it really did feel like a community. There were ongoing conversations, inside jokes, and a genuine sense of belonging. In contrast, my time in the G2 serve...

I chose to read "University Students, Social Media, and Purposeful Use" by Dennen and He (2024). I wanted to reflect on how this study ties back into my own social media habits, both past and present. Thinking back to my undergraduate career (2017 to 2021) where I started to use social media more, I would say I was exclusively a consumer, much like the participants described in the study. I used platforms like Instagram and Twitter to stay connected with friends or for entertainment, but I rarely thought of them as tools for learning or career development. What really stood out to me in the study was how consistently students saw themselves as passive users. They scrolled, watched, liked, but rarely posted or contributed to larger conversations. That was definitely me at the time. What I found especially insightful, though, was the discussion around digital literacy. Social media has always been present for today’s students. It’s been an exploratory space where they grow up s...

I read the draft chapter for "Social Media for Active Learning" and wanted to use this blog post to reflect on it. As I was reading through the chapter, I was reflecting on how strongly I am partaking in each of the knowledge activities (NKA) this summer. Specifically, in terms of the classes I am taking (EME6414 and EME5250). Collect: Right now, I wouldn’t say I’m actively collecting resources for my classes. In previous semesters, I was more intentional about saving articles or bookmarking helpful tools. This term has felt different, maybe more focused on participation than resource-gathering. I suppose our first assignment in EME6414 involved collecting observations from online communities, but it didn’t feel like collecting in the same way the NKA framework describes. Curate: This is just beginning to pick up. In EME6414, I’ve started curating resources for our upcoming project, and in EME5250, my group and I are curating articles for our collaborative assignment. I’ve ...

I took a look at the readings for this week and my curiosity piqued at the last article listed. "It's not just the tool but the educational rationale that counts" by Gavriel Salomon (2016) had me glued to my screen. I think it was written earlier than 2016, though I could be wrong. Unfortunately, Salomon passed in 2016 so I was not able to find any direct follow up to the article. I really wish I could pick his brain about technology and education now! Salomon’s words still ring true years later. Technology is constantly being pushed on university campuses, but is it for the right reasons? AI is the boom right now, but what outcomes are we using to measure it with? Are we still chasing traditional benchmarks, or are we thinking about how learning itself is changing? Do we want college graduates to be able to access information or possess knowledge? Higher education has largely followed the rest of society in adopting technology, fast and sometimes not thinking it through...

With one of our assigned readings being about open education this week, I knew I had to write a blog post about it. I’m currently taking EME5250 (Open Education and Open Educational Resources) at the same time as this class, so I have already come to learn a lot about OER in just five weeks. Caswell et al. (2008) offer a great overview of the OER movement, and surprisingly, much of what they wrote nearly two decades ago still holds true today. In fact, I wish I had read this article in week one of EME5250. It would’ve been the perfect primer! At its core, the OER movement is about expanding access to education by making learning resources free, open, and available to anyone, anywhere. In theory, it’s hard to argue against that. But in application, things get complicated quickly. Licensing, copyright clearance, funding, and sustainability all pose major challenges. As Caswell et al. (2008) note, institutions often start OER projects with private funding, but long-term support requires r...

 If you were to ask me about intellectual property (IP) concerns before this summer, I would have had nothing to say. I've never had to think or really consider IP concerns in online environments because I lurk a majority of the time. However, this class and EME5250 have shown me in five weeks how crucial these things are. As a creator, I’d say I have little to no concerns about IP right now. Like I said, I almost exclusively lurk online, so I’m not putting much out there. But as a user, my concerns are growing. In a rapidly expanding digital space with things like AI replicating and remixing content, intellectual property is more vulnerable than ever. It’s no longer just about using an image without credit or forgetting to cite a blog post. It’s about tracing what’s original, what’s fair use, and what’s been pulled from a model trained on someone else's work. The reality is, most people don’t naturally learn the do’s and don’ts of intellectual property. Heck, I didn’t know an...

 Social media is a double-edged sword when it comes to education. On one hand, it offers connection, engagement, and authentic spaces for learning. On the other, it brings many ethical concerns. Some of these ethical concerns aren't always obvious until you're too deep into using the platforms.  Today, I want to talk about some of the concerns that come with social media in education. You cannot talk about social media without mentioning privacy. Especially in K-12 settings, privacy is a non-negotiable. Teachers have a responsibility to protect minors, and platforms like TikTok and Instagram can jeopardize that if not handled carefully. A well-meaning teacher might post a class project to celebrate student work only to accidentally reveal students’ faces, names, or locations. You could argue that now more than ever, teachers know better. However, I am of the belief that if something can happen, then it will. Even if accounts are private or consent forms are signed, the ri...

I was skimming through some of the readings on badges and microcredentialing and decided to have it be the focus on my third and last blog post for the week.  As an FSU employee, I’ve completed more than a dozen trainings over the 1.5 years I've been in my position. Topics have ranged from the financial overview of FSU and travel policy to intermediate Excel skills. These trainings are all part of individual "certificates," and while some have been helpful, others have felt like I was checking a box. Experiences like this make me ponder whether organizations create microcredentials just to say they did. One article that stood out to me was "Who cares about open badges?" by Randall and West (2022). The authors explore how school principals view open badges for teacher candidates. The takeaway? Most found them potentially useful if the badges clearly represented skills, included strong evidence, and were endorsed by credible organizations. Unsurprisingly, “achieve...

 After lurking in this week's discussion board for a few days, I got curious to learn more about crowdsourcing. I went with my gut and chose to read "Evaluation on crowdsourcing research: Current status and future direction" by Zhao and Zhu (2014). The only related term I had ever heard about was "crowdfunding" and that was in the context of esports.  "Crowdsourcing" can be thought of as any organization calling upon its consumers to help with some sort of project or function. Consumers often do it for incentives (money, perks, recognition, status, etc.), but there are instances where it is done for no compensation. This relates closely to what we have already learned and read so far this summer; produsers of the Web 2.0 don't just consume content. They're actively shaping and creating it. One point in the article that I immediately related to today's world was that crowdsourcing can be competitive and collaborative. Companies can explicitl...

 I wanted to make my first blog post this week to talk about the community assignment that we all are doing. I decided to lurk and be an active member of two different esports teams' discord servers: G2 Esports and FNATIC. I chose League of Legends (LoL) esports teams because LoL esports is something that I keep up with weekly. The European league is more competitive and popular than the North American league, so it made sense to look at two of the top four teams. I debated whether to observe and participate in their respective subreddits or discords, and ultimately decided on discords because from my knowledge, esports teams' subreddits are not as active. The assignment has been fun so far! One feature of Discord that I did not realize is that they will put a little symbol by your name if you are new to a discord. After a week of daily comments in the "#lol-esports" channel in the FNATIC discord, I still have that little icon (see below). I haven't had a whole lo...