from my mind to yours
Welcome to my new home for up-to-date research information and postings. I hope to provide a constant stream of information about what’s going on in the world of social networks in relation to higher education. I’ve pulled a few posts from my other blog which are more suited over here.
I look forward in the upcoming months sharing some of my research on Facebook in residence hall populations — as well as diving into the new data that’s hitting the print today.
Yes, I know the title is a bit out there, but hear me out.
In the past few days, I’ve had what I’m declaring as an Intellectual Orgasm. Some of you in the academic world may be able to relate to the feeling, but I’ve hit the mother-load of resources for my research. Here’s how it all came about:
I was forwarded an email about the International and Interdisciplinary Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers 2008 conference and fell in love with the idea! I’ve since joined the Association of Internet Researchers mailing list and have received great wisdom on my research topic: social networks.
I’ve landed the mother-load from Danah Boyd and her amazing reference list of great researchers and information. I’m planning on sending her a nice email and see if we can work on creating our own researcher’s community site to help get a nice dialogue going and resource sharing.
Needless to say, I’m in a bit of shock about discovering all of this. I’m also looking into attending the UNC Social Software Symposium down at Chapel Hill Dec. 8-9. I’ll keep you posted if I’m attending in hopes of meeting some of you other social network researchers there! It’ll be a great opportunity to present my research again…and this time to the social network junkies in the room!
Wow – my brain is feeling great and I’ll be drafting up my research this week/next to get it out to the editors of a select journal - more info to come in the upcoming months. (For those who didn’t know, my research was on the revolution of Facebook in university residence halls. I have some great info on usage and demographical breakdown.)
many opportunities have been developing over the research on social networks and also conferences supporting discussions on the topic. I would encourage everyone to check out the UNC Social Software Symposium in mid-December with the post-conference information. This sounds like it’s going to be a great discussion around the topics I love learning more about. I’ll for sure be providing a follow-up post once the site has the workshop information up.
Additionally, I’ve been working on integrating my research into the student affairs world and student development theory. I’ve been working on re-writing my thesis for publication. I’ve discovered it’s a very time-consuming and lengthy process of taking over 130 pages and cutting to about 30. Granted about 60 were appendices, but cutting the methodology and discussion to half their size has been a challenge. I hope to submit it to a journal in the beginning of December.
So, in the mean-time I’m working on launching two new sites (well, relaunching them). myResearchBlog is being developed into a wiki for social network research. I’m hoping to develop it into a place where researchers can:
Along with the wiki, I’m working on developing a research blog (as I once had) to focus on my research on how Facebook is used by the university community and how it impacts them. Over the course of this academic year, I plan on beginning to research how Facebook is impacting other populations on a college campus. I’m working on applying for a grant from the ACPA Commission on Student Involvement. For the coming spring, I’m hoping to launch a survey investigating how fraternity and sorority members are using and are impacted by Facebook.
To say the least, I’ve had a lot on my academic mind. To top it all off, I’ve started looking into my next degree to work towards. I’m currently thinking about an MBA or a PhD in Psychology. Both programs are very competitive and are rated very high (Psych is #6 in the USA). I’m thinking about it all — will hopefully start classes in the fall for one of the programs. I’ll keep ya posted!