Lisa Lundgren

This study explores social palaeontology—an inclusive and collaborative form of science occurring across digital habitats. The purpose was to a) examine conceptualizations of amateurs via expressed mental models and b) use the unified media-user typology (MUT) to explore any relationship between these models and social media persona. Data collection involved a survey, modelling task, and interview. Findings reveal that persona was demonstrated in subtle ways, offering limited evidence for a relationship between persona and mental model. Sequential models were most common, but more so for advanced personas. Expertise development was expressed through the number of conventions used during modelling. However, the degree of inaccuracy suggests a lack of metacognitive awareness, implying that any increase in expertise with persona was not conveyed as such. The results bolster the capacity to design community-centered social spaces and inform understanding of science learning and the utility of MUT as a predictive tool.

Paleontology captivates people in the physical spaces of museum exhibits and fossil hunting field trips yet also extends to audiences in online spaces such as Twitter and Facebook via a social media practice known as social paleontology. The FOSSIL Project, a National Science Foundation-funded initiative in the United States (NSF-DRL #1322725), uses social paleontology to bring together paleontologists from across the spectrum of expertise, from novice to expert, as a more formal community. The project includes a public-private partnership between researchers at the University of Florida and a private software development firm, Atmosphere Apps. This case, which illustrates how these two entities worked together to identify, develop, and implement an innovative social media campaign is presented as the result of a three-year (November 2013-December 2016) study which included three iterative cycles of design-based research. The study's scope includes the development of an evidence-based, educative social media messaging campaign and through follower engagement delimits the people and institutions that constitute the community as it exists social ecosystem niches. Aside from a basic understanding that followers engage with photo posts and posts with intriguing headlines, limited research exists involving the use of formal learning as a framework for examining the effectiveness of messaging. Using marketing materials produced by Atmosphere Apps that were based on an assessment of the interests and needs of community members, including color schemes and branded fonts, researchers created separate social messaging campaigns for Twitter and Facebook. Best practices from various fields were merged to create quality messages including: graphic design principles, use of marketing-centric messaging strategies, and use of educative strategies for sustaining engagement in science learning. The results of this study, including the public-private partnership between Atmosphere Apps and the FOSSIL Project serves as an example for others who seek to create educative social media engagement.

Considerable interest exists among lifelong learners in the USA about fossils and the science of paleontology. Unlike some other science-related groups, e.g., astronomy and ornithology, interest in fossils among amateur paleontologists is primarily focused within local clubs and societies with little national coordination. This paper
presents the results of formative evaluation of the FOSSIL project, conducted after the project “Kickoff” meeting held at the NAPC (North American Paleontological Convention) in 2014. FOSSIL is developing a national networked community of practice that
includes amateur and professional paleontologists. Our research indicates that more than 60 amateur fossil clubs and societies exist in the USA, of which almost 40 have elected to be part of the FOSSIL network. Overarching goals of this program include
enhanced collaborations between amateurs and professionals, knowledge-building about paleontology, access to resources for lifelong learning, and development a viable learning community of practice focused on topics of common and societal interest, such as collections (including digitization), evolution, climate change, and K-12 outreach. In addition to more traditional means such as list-serves and newsletters, FOSSIL is developing an online community (myFOSSIL) and using social media (Facebook and Twitter) to foster communication and interactions among stakeholders, and thus promoting the concept of “social paleontology”.

The FOSSIL Project, a web-based initiative, is using social media as a research tool to investigate the engagement levels of professional and amateur paleontologists online. The FOSSIL Project includes face-to-face and online interactions which bring amateur and professional paleontologists together in a community of practice. The community of practice entails an online space through which amateurs and professionals commune in an inclusive form of computer-supported scientific inquiry that we call “social paleontology.” A key component to establishing our community of practice is social media. By examining the ways in which our community engages with the social media platforms of Twitter and Facebook, we can offer unique insights into best practices for using social media to support science-based communities of practice. This longitudinal study examined the ways in which our social media audience(s) engaged with content on various platforms. An encompassing question for this study was: “Which social media components are most engaging, for whom, and under what conditions?” We focused on describing which types of posts generated the most conversations about scientific topics. Using descriptive statistics to quantify post engagement, we saw changes in levels of engagement based on social media post type. Content analysis of the community’s comments reveal that basic conversations about science (those without much scientific merit) occur on social media. Our results indicate that engagement level is dependent upon: (1) social media post type, such as research-focused stories, informative stories, stories featuring opportunities for community members, and paleontological news stories; (2) the different forms of audience segmentation occurring within social media platforms, such as the plethora of professional paleontologists on Twitter, yet low professional numbers on Facebook; and (3) best practices for creating a community through social media. This study suggests that social media is a useful but underutilized tool in building scientific communities of practice.

Regardless of professional or hobbyist (amateur) status, paleontologists always seek more information about current research, new discoveries, and fossil collection, identification, preparation, and storage techniques. Particularly for those new to the field, it can be difficult to access resources. To address problems associated with accessibility and help foster collaboration within the paleontological community, the FOSSIL Project developed two webinar series. FOSSIL (Fostering Opportunities for Synergistic STEM with Informal Learners) is a project funded by the National Science Foundation and headquartered at the University of Florida / Florida Museum of Natural History. The project encourages “social paleontology,” which is defined as the shared practice of understanding the natural world through collection, preparation, curation, and study of fossils. One form of social paleontology includes online webinars where participants remotely view a knowledgeable speaker. The first webinar series, entitled ‘Fundamentals of Fossils,’ ran throughout Fall 2016 and the second, ‘Women in Paleontology,’ ran during Spring 2017. Prior to each webinar, the FOSSIL Project’s social media accounts created and released promotional posts to spread the word and entice viewers. These posts directly corresponded to an increase in new members to the myFOSSIL website community. Webinars were sponsored by the Paleontological Society and facilitated through iDigBio’s Adobe Connect platform with speakers presenting for 30 minutes, allowing 15 minutes for questions. Live webinars were recorded and are viewable through myFOSSIL’s website, as well as the FOSSIL Project’s YouTube channel. Viewers anonymously completed surveys following each live webinar.  Survey responses revealed that knowledge of content areas increased as a result of each and highlighted a desire for more in-depth fossil preparation related webinars. Both series successfully provided information to and engaged a broad audience of mostly amateur paleontologists. The FOSSIL Project’s Fall 2017 webinar series will be modeled after PBS's "Antiques Roadshow," featuring fossils rather than antiques.

Throughout the U.S., fossil clubs host meetings, attend field trips, conduct outreach, and use the Internet to learn about paleontology. In their Internet use, these fossil clubs communicate on social media to facilitate discussion within their groups and among other groups, discussing the fossils found on field trips as well as provide their thoughts on social media posts about paleontology. The FOSSIL Project has actively been uniting fossil clubs throughout the United States to create a Community of Practice (CoP).  This networked CoP will “collaborate in blended learning, the practice of science, and outreach” (Crippen et al. 2014). Building on previous research presented at NARST 2014 (Crippen et al. 2014), this study defines a specific component of the FOSSIL Project’s Community of Practice: social media. While the fossil clubs engage in communication on their unique social media pages, the FOSSIL Project seeks to understand cross-group communication occuring on social media through the FOSSIL Project’s social media pages, more specifically, the FOSSIL Project’s Facebook page. This study uses the discourse of the FOSSIL Project’s Facebook followers as well as decriptive statistics to understand the ways in which amateur and professional paleontologists engage on social media.

Informal science education connects people, organizations, and places by encouraging knowledge building through explorations of the real world. Bell et al. (2009) postulate that educative experiences occur at all stages of life in informal environments, including aquariums, 4-H events, museums, parks, zoos, and more. Informal learning settings provide Americans with the majority of their science learning experiences, as only five percent of science is learned in formal schooling environments (Falk & Dierking, 2010). This roundtable paper, one in a series describing methods used to design engaging experiences with science education audiences, concentrates on informal science learning settings. Using examples from recent work with the FOSSIL Project, we describe how design-based research (DBR), a framework by which practical and effective solutions are implemented to solve existing problems in the real world, can be used to design experiences for engaging informal science education audiences (Reeves, 2006; Edelson, 2002). We illustrate DBR’s flexibility by describing the multiple theoretical perspectives and various data collection and analysis techniques that can be applied with DBR. With this roundtable submission, we seek to facilitate cross-disciplinary communication by describing the methods by which educators can design engaging experiences when working with informal science education audiences. To further this aim, we will explore similarities and differences with those methods and practices used by science educators who engage with higher education audiences and with pre-service teachers.

The FOSSIL Project (NSF-1322725) seeks to unite paleontologists, regardless of experience and/or expertise, in the shared practice of social paleontology. Social paleontology entails face-to-face and computer-supported collaborative inquiry of the natural world through the collection, preparation, and curation of fossils (Crippen, Dunckel, MacFadden, Ellis & Lundgren, 2015). From an ecological learning perspective, social paleontology is enacted across various habitats that exist within a larger ecosystem. These online and offline social spaces include the digital habitats of social networking sites, such as the FOSSIL Project Facebook and Twitter pages and the myFOSSIL.org community site, as well as the physical habitats of college campuses, museums, and conferences.
In this study, we investigate the nature of the participants and forms of shared practice that are expressed across the digital habitats of the Project’s Facebook and Twitter pages, as well as the myFOSSIL community site. User interaction data from October 2015 to December 2016 from all three habitats was compiled, linked and analyzed using the methods and tools of social network analysis. Our results establish the numbers and types of paleontologists participating, the ways in which they engage with social paleontology and the relationships among these habits as elements of the larger ecosystem. The use of digital habitats to communicate about and learn paleontology is widely considered yet poorly theoretically constructed; this research serves to further define the learning ecology within social paleontology. The ecological learning perspective allows for empirical measurement of the reach, diversity, and engagement levels within the FOSSIL Project’s digital habitats, providing evidence about the ways paleontologists learn from one another within a Community of Practice.

The FOSSIL Project, an NSF-funded initiative, seeks to unite amateur and professional paleontologists in the practice of social paleontology —an inclusive form of computer-supported collaborative inquiry of the natural world through the collection, preparation, curation, and study of fossils (Authors, 2016). Social paleontology is enacted across a digital habitat of technologies (Wenger, White, & Smith, 2009) that includes Facebook, Twitter, as well as an online social space of our design. Wenger's (1998, 2000) construct of community of practice serves as the theoretical framework for our design. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between potential community members' social media personas and their mental model of social paleontology. We examine the responses of citizens, amateurs, and professional paleontologists who completed a survey, a mental model task concerning the meaning of social paleontology and a follow-up interview. In addition to building our capacity to successfully design a community-centered social space, the results inform our understanding of contemporary science learning, that which is inherently social, technology-mediated, occurs outside of formal schooling, involves people from across the lifespan , and recognizes the value of situated practice.