Royce Kimmons
Brigham Young University, Instructional Psychology & Technology, Faculty Member
Technology integration models are theoretical constructs that guide researchers, educators, and other stakeholders in conceptualizing the messy, complex, and unstructured phenomenon of technology integration. Building on critiques and... more
Technology integration models are theoretical constructs that guide researchers, educators, and other stakeholders in conceptualizing the messy, complex, and unstructured phenomenon of technology integration. Building on critiques and theoretical work in this area, the authors report on their analysis of the needs, benefits, and limitations of technology integration models in teacher preparation and propose a new model: PICRAT. PIC (passive, interactive, creative) refers to the student’s relationship to a technology in a particular educational scenario. RAT (replacement, amplification, transformation) describes the impact of the technology on a teacher’s previous practice. PICRAT can be a useful model for teaching technology integration, because it (a) is clear, compatible, and fruitful, (b) emphasizes technology as a means to an end, (c) balances parsimony and comprehensiveness, and (d) focuses on students.
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This study sought to collect URLs (web addresses) of all K-12 schools in the United States (N = 98,477) and analyze website home page system and service data for all available U.S. institutional websites (n = 65,899). Building upon... more
This study sought to collect URLs (web addresses) of all K-12 schools in the United States (N = 98,477) and analyze website home page system and service data for all available U.S. institutional websites (n = 65,899). Building upon previous research related to Web 2.0 educational potentials, this first-of-its-kind study sought (a) to provide descriptive results of system and service adoption and website data for all schools in the United States and (b) to detect theorized differences based upon school demographics and service/system type (e.g., open source vs. proprietary). Results indicated that proprietary and purchased systems were much more common than free and open systems, that adoption patterns were generally not meaningfully influenced by demographic data (except for charter school status), and that K-12 institutional adoption of Web 2.0 seems to be more focused on educational uses of these tools that might not strictly be considered pedagogical (e.g., community outreach).
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Scholars, educators, and students are increasingly encouraged to participate in online spaces. While the current literature highlights the potential positive outcomes of such participation, little research exists on the sentiment that... more
Scholars, educators, and students are increasingly encouraged to participate in online spaces. While the current literature highlights the potential positive outcomes of such participation, little research exists on the sentiment that these individuals may face online and on the factors that may lead some people to face different types of sentiment than others. To investigate these issues, we examined the strength of positive and negative sentiment expressed in response to TEDx and TED-Ed talks posted on YouTube (n = 655), the effect of several variables on comment and reply sentiment (n = 774,939), and the projected effects that sentiment-based moderation would have had on posted content. We found that most comments and replies were neutral in nature and some topics were more likely than others to elicit positive or negative sentiment. Videos of male presenters showed greater neutrality, while videos of female presenters saw significantly greater positive and negative polarity in r...
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Researchers, educators, policymakers, and other education stakeholders hope and anticipate that openness and open scholarship will generate positive outcomes for education and scholarship. Given the emerging nature of open practices,... more
Researchers, educators, policymakers, and other education stakeholders hope and anticipate that openness and open scholarship will generate positive outcomes for education and scholarship. Given the emerging nature of open practices, educators and scholars are finding themselves in a position in which they can shape and/or be shaped by openness. The intention of this paper is (a) to identify the assumptions of the open scholarship movement and (b) to highlight challenges associated with the movement’s aspirations of broadening access to education and knowledge. Through a critique of technology use in education, an understanding of educational technology narratives and their unfulfilled potential, and an appreciation of the negotiated implementation of technology use, we hope that this paper helps spark a conversation for a more critical, equitable, and effective future for education and open scholarship.
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This study examined the learning experiences of 478 middle school science students using a problem-based ludic simulation over a 3-week period to learn space science. Findings from both quantitative and qualitative data revealed that use... more
This study examined the learning experiences of 478 middle school science students using a problem-based ludic simulation over a 3-week period to learn space science. Findings from both quantitative and qualitative data revealed that use of the simulation supported student learning and that knowledge gains helped reduce gender-based achievement gaps between boys and girls in the subject matter. Student attitude was additionally linked to learning success while using the simulation. These findings suggest that student engagement and self-recognition of progress and learning are important design factors when developing problem-based learning experiences.
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In this paper, the authors describe a ludic simulation designed for middle school space science and examine its use to support students’ learning and motivation. The participants were 383 sixth graders and 447 seventh graders. The... more
In this paper, the authors describe a ludic simulation designed for middle school space science and examine its use to support students’ learning and motivation. The participants were 383 sixth graders and 447 seventh graders. The findings of this study showed that sixth- and seventh-graders perceived the simulation as having substantial ludic characteristics and educational value. The results indicated that having a playful experience is important for this age group and that participating in a ludic simulation can help motivate students to learn school subjects. Results also indicated that incorporating ludus into the learning experience can improve students’ attitudes toward the subject matter. Implications of policy, research, and practice with regard to using ludic simulations to support classroom-based learning were discussed.
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Sociology, Education, Instructional Design, Educational Technology, Social Networks, and 14 moreHigher Education, Instructional Technology, Faculty Development, Social Media, Online Learning, Technology Enhanced Learning, Social Networking Sites (SNS), Learning Management Systems, Distance Learning, Elgg, Appropriation, Hybrid Learning, E Learning, and Educational Technology Development
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This study examined the feasibility of employing A/B tests for continuous improvement by focusing on user perceptions of quality of six chapters of a popular open textbook over the course of a year. Results indicated nonsignificant... more
This study examined the feasibility of employing A/B tests for continuous improvement by focusing on user perceptions of quality of six chapters of a popular open textbook over the course of a year. Results indicated nonsignificant differences in all cases but also suggest that future work in this area should (a) employ A/B testing at a broader, less-granular (e.g., platform-level) scale to increase sample sizes, (b) explore autonomous approaches to experimentation and improvement, such as bandit algorithms, and (c) rely upon more universally collected dependent variables to reduce sample size limitations emerging from self-reports.
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The cost of textbooks has continued to increase with significant financial effects on students in higher education. Although many faculty express a desire and willingness to adopt and create open textbooks (and OER generally), few... more
The cost of textbooks has continued to increase with significant financial effects on students in higher education. Although many faculty express a desire and willingness to adopt and create open textbooks (and OER generally), few actually do. To better understand this gap between attitudes and practices, this phenomenological study builds upon the findings of a survey of faculty members at a large, nationally-ranked, high-research-activity university in the U.S. and uses in-depth interviews to understand faculty members’ lived experiences with OER adoption and creation. Results indicated that though faculty might be motivated to use and create OER to reduce cost and improve pedagogy, they are regularly stymied by quality considerations, copyright fears, technical difficulties, and sustainability concerns. We explore each of these issues in some depth and provide discussion and suggestions on how similar institutions (e.g., high-research-activity) should respond to help support OER ...
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Even though the extant literature investigates how and why academics use social media, much less is known about academics’ temporal patterns of social media use. This mixed methods study provides a first-of-its-kind investigation into... more
Even though the extant literature investigates how and why academics use social media, much less is known about academics’ temporal patterns of social media use. This mixed methods study provides a first-of-its-kind investigation into temporal social media use. In particular, we study how academics’ use of Twitter varies over time and examine the reasons why academics temporarily disengage and return to the social media platform. We employ data mining methods to identify a sample of academics on Twitter (n = 3,996) and retrieve the tweets they posted (n = 9,025,127). We analyze quantitative data using descriptive and inferential statistics, and qualitative data using the constant comparative approach. Results show that Twitter use is predominantly connected to traditional work hours and is well-integrated into academics’ professional endeavors, suggesting that professional use of Twitter has become “ordinary.” Though scholars rarely announce their departure from or return to Twitter...
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The aim of this investigation was to gain an understanding of the use of institutional social media accounts by graduate departments. This study focused particularly on the social media accounts of instructional design (ID) graduate... more
The aim of this investigation was to gain an understanding of the use of institutional social media accounts by graduate departments. This study focused particularly on the social media accounts of instructional design (ID) graduate programs. Content and statistical analyses were conducted to examine 24,948 tweets posted by ID programs (n = 22) on Twitter. Results revealed that ID graduate programs primarily used Twitter to broadcast resources and materials related to the field. Additionally, results showed that ID programs most frequently used Twitter to boost the profile of their program. Yet, tweets highlighting student and faculty accomplishments had the highest percentage of community interactions (likes and retweets). These findings suggest that ID programs are functioning as filters of information relevant to the field rather than conversational hubs.
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We describe the benefits and challenges of engaging in public data mining methods and situate our discussion in the context of studies that we have conducted. Practical, methodological, and scholarly benefits include the ability to access... more
We describe the benefits and challenges of engaging in public data mining methods and situate our discussion in the context of studies that we have conducted. Practical, methodological, and scholarly benefits include the ability to access large amounts of data, randomize data, conduct both quantitative and qualitative analyses, connect educational issues with broader issues of concern, identify subgroups/subpopulations of interest, and to avoid many biases. Technical, methodological, professional, and ethical issues that arise by engaging in public data mining methods include the need for multifaceted expertise and rigor, focused research questions and determining meaning, and performative and contextual considerations of public data. As the scientific complexity facing research in instructional design, educational technology, and online learning is expanding, it is necessary to prepare students and scholars in our field to engage with emerging research methodologies.
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Web site accessibility is a serious civil rights concern that has historically been difficult to measure and to establish success criteria for. By conducting automated accessibility analyses via the WAVE tool, we calculated accessibility... more
Web site accessibility is a serious civil rights concern that has historically been difficult to measure and to establish success criteria for. By conducting automated accessibility analyses via the WAVE tool, we calculated accessibility norms of a statistically appropriate, random sample of K–12 school Web sites across the U.S. (n = 6,226) and merged results with national datasets to determine how school demographics influence accessibility. Results indicated that schools across all demographic groups generally struggle to make their Web sites fully accessible to their universe of diverse users and revealed that the concrete, highest-impact steps that schools nationwide need to take to improve accessibility include improving poor contrast between text and backgrounds, providing alternative text to images and other visual elements, and labeling form controls.
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This study employed data mining and quantitative methods to collect and analyze the available histories of primary Twitter accounts of institutions of higher education in the U.S. (n = 2411). The study comprises a sample of 5.7 million... more
This study employed data mining and quantitative methods to collect and analyze the available histories of primary Twitter accounts of institutions of higher education in the U.S. (n = 2411). The study comprises a sample of 5.7 million tweets, representing 62 % of all tweets created by these accounts and the entire population of U.S. colleges and universities. With this large, generalizable dataset, researchers were able to determine that the preponderance of institutional tweets are 1) monologic, 2) disseminate information (vs. eliciting action), 3) link to a relatively limited and insular ecosystem of web resources, and 4) express neutral or positive sentiment. While prior research suggests that social media can serve as a vehicle for institutions to extend their reach and further demonstrate their value to society, this article provides empirical and generalizable evidence to suggest that such innovation, in the context of institutional social media use, is limited.
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ABSTRACT TPACK (Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge) has quickly become popular amongst researchers and practitioners as a framework for understanding necessary teacher knowledge for supporting effective technology... more
ABSTRACT TPACK (Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge) has quickly become popular amongst researchers and practitioners as a framework for understanding necessary teacher knowledge for supporting effective technology integration. Utilization of TPACK, however, has generally been approached in a manner that is non-critical and that does not inform on-going development of the framework. This theoretical paper utilizes five characteristics of “good” scientific theory (accuracy, consistency, scope, simplicity, and fruitfulness) taken from the work of Thomas Kuhn as points of departure for exploring affordances and limitations of TPACK for researchers and teachers. Based upon this examination, four suggestions are provided to support future research into technology integration that seek to help address limitations in the TPACK framework and to inform its appropriate and thoughtful use in research and practice.
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Abstract Those interested in education and educational research have continually been drawn to the potential value of digital games for improving aspects of teaching and learning. However, the development path that the digital game genre... more
Abstract Those interested in education and educational research have continually been drawn to the potential value of digital games for improving aspects of teaching and learning. However, the development path that the digital game genre has followed in culture and society may heavily rely upon certain assumptions about human behavior which are not conducive to current understandings of good teaching and effective learning. As such, this paper will argue that rather than merely repurposing the game genre to educational ends, ...
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The scholarly community faces a lack of large-scale research examining how students and professors use social media in authentic contexts and how such use changes over time. This study uses data mining methods to better understand... more
The scholarly community faces a lack of large-scale research examining how students and professors use social media in authentic contexts and how such use changes over time. This study uses data mining methods to better understand academic Twitter use during, around, and between the 2014 and 2015 American Educational Research Association annual conferences both as a conference backchannel and as a general means of participating online. Descriptive and inferential analysis is used to explore Twitter use for 1421 academics and the more than 360 000 tweets they posted. Results demonstrate the complicated participation patterns of how Twitter is used " on the ground. " In particular, we show that tweets during conferences differed significantly from tweets outside conferences. Further, students and professors used the conference backchannel somewhat equally, but students used some hashtags more frequently, while professors used other hashtags more frequently. Academics comprised the minority of participants in these backchannels, but participated at a much higher rate than their non-academic counterparts. While the number of participants in the backchannel increased between 2014 and 2015, only a small number of authors were present during both years, and the number of tweets declined from year to year. Various hashtags were used throughout the time period during which this study occurred, and some were ongoing (ie, those which tended to be stable across weeks) while others were event-based (ie, those which spiked in a particular week). Professors used event-based hashtags more often than students and students used ongoing hashtags more often than professors. Ongoing hashtags tended to exhibit positive sentiment, while event-based hashtags tended to exhibit more ambiguous or conflicting sentiments. These findings suggest that professors and students exhibit similarities and differences in how they use Twitter and backchannels and indicate the need for further research to better understand the ways that social technologies and online networks are integrated in scholars' lives.
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ABSTRACT This study seeks to understand the relationship between K-12 online system adoption (e.g., Blackboard, Edmodo, WordPress) and school-level academic achievement ratings. Utilizing a novel approach to data collection via website... more
ABSTRACT This study seeks to understand the relationship between K-12 online system adoption (e.g., Blackboard, Edmodo, WordPress) and school-level academic achievement ratings. Utilizing a novel approach to data collection via website data extraction and indexing of all school websites in a target state in the United States (n = 732) and merging these data with publicly available data on school academic achievement ratings, this study provides generalizable results of online system adoption on academic achievement ratings for the 2011–2012 and 2012–2013 school years. Univariate general linear modelling is used to determine significant relationships between categories of systems (e.g., any, education-specific, generic, cost, no-cost, proprietary, open-source) or specific systems and school academic ratings for each year. The results indicate some general positive effects, but effect sizes remain small and account for 2% or less of variance in ratings. Implications of this study suggest that online system adoption does not impact student academic achievement at a sufficient level to justify adoption that is not meaningfully coupled with other essential factors of school development (e.g., professional development, curricular development), and we propose that decision-makers should be wary of large-scale, technocentric attempts to improve schools that are not grounded in generalizable research findings.
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ABSTRACT This study seeks to understand how to use formal learning activities to effectively support the development of open education literacies among K-12 teachers. Considering pre- and post-surveys from K-12 teachers (n = 80) who... more
ABSTRACT This study seeks to understand how to use formal learning activities to effectively support the development of open education literacies among K-12 teachers. Considering pre- and post-surveys from K-12 teachers (n = 80) who participated in a three-day institute, this study considers whether participants entered institutes with false confidence or misconceptions related to open education, whether participant knowledge grew as a result of participation, whether takeaways matched expectations, whether time teaching (i.e., teacher veterancy) impacted participant data, and what specific evaluation items influenced participants’ overall evaluations of the institutes. Results indicated that 1) participants entered the institutes with misconceptions or false confidence in several areas (e.g., copyright, fair use), 2) the institute was effective for helping to improve participant knowledge in open education areas, 3) takeaways did not match expectations, 4) time teaching did not influence participant evaluations, expectations, or knowledge, and 5) three specific evaluation items significantly influenced overall evaluations of the institute: learning activities, instructor, and website / online resources. Researchers conclude that this type of approach is valuable for improving K-12 teacher open education literacies, that various misconceptions must be overcome to support large-scale development of open education literacies in K-12, and that open education advocates should recognize that all teachers, irrespective of time teaching, want to innovate, utilize open resources, and share in an open manner.
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ABSTRACT TPACK (Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge) has quickly become popular amongst researchers and practitioners as a framework for understanding necessary teacher knowledge for supporting effective technology... more
ABSTRACT TPACK (Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge) has quickly become popular amongst researchers and practitioners as a framework for understanding necessary teacher knowledge for supporting effective technology integration. Utilization of TPACK, however, has generally been approached in a manner that is non-critical and that does not inform on-going development of the framework. This theoretical paper utilizes five characteristics of “good” scientific theory (accuracy, consistency, scope, simplicity, and fruitfulness) taken from the work of Thomas Kuhn as points of departure for exploring affordances and limitations of TPACK for researchers and teachers. Based upon this examination, four suggestions are provided to support future research into technology integration that seek to help address limitations in the TPACK framework and to inform its appropriate and thoughtful use in research and practice.