Diana Daly
Note: Title was current at time of award and may have changed.
iVoices: Channeling Student Technology Narratives into New Media, Curricula, and Scholarship
When we teach about social and instructional technologies, we leave out student perspectives on technologies they are immersed in. Users make sense of technologies personally, ideologically, and culturally, ideally leading to individualized knowledge and literacy. However, inequitable curricula that ignore students’ distinct histories with technologies threaten not only retention but also students’ identities and self-efficacy. Scholarship on Hispanic learners finds that students form critical “funds of knowledge” from personal and cultural experiences, knowledge they can share through creating stories. iVoices channels knowledge shared through students’ stories into new media, curricula, and scholarship, by transforming the large General Education course Social Media and Ourselves into a student-centered think tank and digital media lab supported by a community of scholars. Data based on students’ development and media creations in iVoices will shed light on how experiences with technologies shape student learning, and illuminate novel technology practices and meaning for new media scholarship.
Project Outcomes
Begun in 2020, iVoices has been a project focused on producing media from student experiences with technologies, and using these media toward the creation of culturally responsive curricula. In its first two years, iVoices and our teams of student media lab workers and interns transformed the large General Education course Social Media and Ourselves (ESOC 150b1) into a student-centered think tank and digital media lab, and established public presences for our mission and products including a podcast series, Social Media & Ourselves, for which we were invited to represent the University of Arizona at the first SXSW Wonder House; an open textbook, Humans R Social Media, adopted by new media faculty across the Americas and used by thousands of students; and our website, ivoices.ischool.arizona.edu. In our second year, iVoices continued producing media for these outlets and began organizing our growing collection of what is now over 1,000 pieces of media content—graphic profile pictures, audio and video stories, and text content—that students chose to openly license for distribution. In our final year, iVoices has contributed research to scholarly discourse including eight papers and presentations, with new work in development. The iVoices project has been a challenging and innovative three-year project, demonstrating to University of Arizona students and the broader academic community how education is not something to be directed at them; instead it is a story that grows richer with their knowledge, and a living organism that blossoms with their participation.
Alexandria "Ally" Fripp Ally Fripp, MLIS, is an MA candidate in Counseling at the University of Arizona, and served as a teaching assistant in professor Diana Daly's project Social Media and Ourselves. In this position, Ally facilitated student projects and critical analyses of social media for the iVoices initiative. | |||
Anna Leach Anna Leach is a PhD candidate in the School of Information, and a member of the CUES iVoices research team at the University of Arizona. Her research interests include people's interactions in online learning environments, particularly different networks formed by these interactions. | |||
Gabriella (Gabby) Shriner Gabby Shriner, MLIS, is a second year PhD candidate in the School of Information at the University of Arizona, and has worked as Research Learning Manager with iVoices. Her research interests include online communities, social network analysis, and broader intersections between library and information science and communication studies. | |||
Sam Winn Sam Winn is a PhD candidate in the School of Information at the University of Arizona, and serves as a teaching assistant in professor Diana Daly's project Social Media and Ourselves. Sam's research interests include community-driven pedagogy and practice for memory work and the affective influences of climate change in social networks. |
Other UArizona student contributors to this project include Abhiman Gupta, undergraduate studying Engineering; Lizette Arias, Maria José Garcia, Shrusti Jagadish, and Gabe Stultz, undergraduates studying Fine Arts; Priscilla Castillo, Kailey Hurley, Ryan Lenhart, and Jacquie Kuru, undergraduates studying Information Science & Technology; Kathryn Millar, undergraduate studying Science.
Publications
Daly, D., Kuru, J., Fripp, A., & Schneider, N. (2024). Humans R Social Media - 2024 "Living Book" Edition. The iVoices Media Lab. The University of Arizona.
Daly, D., and Leach, A. (2023). Coding Funds of Knowledge in the iVoices Media Lab: Student Stories About Technologies. In "Information for a Better World: Normality, Virtuality, Physicality, Inclusivity." Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer Nature, 2023. DOI: doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28035-1_29
Daly, D. (2023). What Do We Do with the Fruits of Open Educational Practices? A Case for Open Educational Collections. In "Information for a Better World: Normality, Virtuality, Physicality, Inclusivity." Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer Nature, 2023. DOI: doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28032-0_14
Daly, D., Smith, M. R., & Bao, D. (2022). The Incessancy of #gobacktothekitchen and Responses to Normalized Online Misogyny. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 59(1), 659-661. DOI: doi.org/10.1002/pra2.682
Daly, D. (2021). Humans R Social Media (Open Textbook Edition). The iVoices Media Lab. The University of Arizona.
(Publication Note: New versions of Humans R Social Media are in development. See https://ivoices.ischool.arizona.edu/humans-r-social-media for more information.)
Products
MAY 2021 - JUL 2022: Social Media & Ourselves (Monthly Podcast). Produced by the iVoices Media Lab. The University of Arizona.
(Learn more about iVoices research including datasets and presentations at https://ivoices.ischool.arizona.edu/research.)
Presentations
NOV 2023: An Invitation to Shared Governance. 2023 Open Education Conference. Virtual, with Schneider, N., and Ahmad, H.
MAR 2023: Coding funds of knowledge in iVoices Media Lab student stories about technologies. Paper presented for iConference 2023, annual meeting of the iSchools consortium, Barcelona, Spain, March 27-29, 2023, and virtually March 13-17, 2023, with Anna Leach, Graduate Research Assistant, School of Information, University of Arizona. Finalist for the Lee Dirks Award for Best Full Research Paper.
MAR 2023: What do we do with the fruits of Open Educational Practices? A Case for Open Educational Collections. Paper presented for iConference 2023, annual meeting of the iSchools consortium, Barcelona, Spain, March 27-29, 2023, and virtually March 13-17, 2023.
OCT 2022: Digital Storytelling through Social Annotation: iVoices Media Lab (Poster Presentation), Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) 2022 Annual Conference, Pittsburgh, PA.
OCT 2022: The Incessancy of #gobacktothekitchen and Responses to Normalized Online Misogyny (Poster Presentation), 85th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIST), Pittsburgh, PA (Virtual).
MAR 2022: Be. Here. Now. Inside a Social Media & Ourselves Podcast, (Invited Presentation/Podcast Production), Social Media & Ourselves podcast team, Dr. Diana Daly and undergraduate producers Jacquie Kuru and Gabe Stultz, Wonder House at the annual South by Southwest festival (SXSW), Austin, TX.
FEB 2022: iVoices: Channeling Student Technology Experiences into New Media, Curricula, and Scholarship, CUES Inside UA-Funded Scholarship Series, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ (Virtual).
OCT 2021: Improving Learning Outcomes through Open Pedagogy, Workshop presented at The 2021 Open Education Conference. Virtual, with Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey, Open Education Librarian, University of Arizona.
OCT 2021: Open pedagogy: Independence and interdependence in teaching about new media, Paper presented at AoIR 2021: The 22nd Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers. Virtual, with Cheryl (Cuillier) Casey, Open Education Librarian, University of Arizona.
Broader Engagement
JUL 2020 - JUN 2022: CATalyst Studios and the University of Arizona Libraries (Project-based Partnership).
- iVoices has partnered with CATalyst Studios to host media production workshops for students, including weekly workshops every Friday for AY 2022.
AUG 2021 - MAY 2022: Developing Instructional Teams for Evidence-Based Instruction in Large Collaborative Learning Environments (Project-based Partnership - NSF #1626531).
- Professor Daly has worked with this project by installing a new three-student instructional team in classes with iVoices activities for AY 2022, and in research on project outcomes in AY2023 included coauthoring works-in-progress with project personnel Patricia Moreira.
AUG 2021 - MAY 2022: iVoices Media Lab and University of Arizona Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) Program (Project-based Partnership).
- Professor Daly leads the iVoices Standalone Team in undergraduate research experiences.
AUG 2020 - MAY 2022: iVoices Media Lab and Digital Learning at the University of Arizona (Project-based Partnership).