Preview of TC110: Social Media and Technology Tools for Research

 

Next week we’re excited to offer our first course in Social Media and Tech Tools for Academic Research (TC110). While many of our courses have focused on using technology for organizing, response, conflict prevention, and mobiles, but this course will fill a key gap by focusing on using technology to gain insights into relevant ongoing online conversations and the networks through which they travel.

So far we have over 20 people registered from 7 countries from organizations such as World Vision, InSTEDD, and Plan International. This is shaping up to be an excellent group.

Confirmed guest speakers include:

• Ryan Budish, Berkman Center at Harvard University
• John Kelly, Morningside Analytics
• Sami Ith, US State Department
• Clayton Fink, Johns Hopkins University.

These speakers will provide insight into the work identifying the value created by digital networks. Our experts are using online communication to understand how new ideas are disseminated and how to maximize audience engagement with an organization’s online content.

Our aim with the course provide academics practitioners and those involved in advocacy work with hands-on practice using tools and strategies for using tech to carry out research. We’ll also explore how to manage the big data sets generated by social media to be able to extract meaningful information. The course will also go over best practices for applying research to advocacy.

Some of the topics and tools we plan to feature:

• Social media tools for crowdsourcing and social science research (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Zotero)
• Mapping methods and tools for data collection, visualization, and analysis (Ushahidi, MapBox, ArcGIS)
• Mobile Survey and Data Collection Tools (FormHub, GeoPoll, EpiSurveyor, Open Data Kit)

We plan to keep this course small and intimate but there are still a few spots left. Register today.