hashtags | 10-Rep Learning ~ Teague's Tech Treks

Sep
20

Crowdsourcing a course hashtag

Category: PBS, Post Feed Tags: #PBSReaders4Life, @PBSTeachers, Canvas LMS, hashtags, Helen Teague, PBS TeacherLine, SurveyAnyplace, Teaching Lifelong Reading Habits K-12 Leave a Comment

For our @PBSTeachers course “Teaching Lifelong Reading Habits K-12″ an activity application for qualitative information gathering was implemented using an online survey tool to crowdsource a course hashtag.

The online survey tool, SurveyAnyplace was chosen to build, distribute, and collect the results of the survey because of its ease of use, mobile tech option, survey creation templates, QR-Code distribution feature, and results display capacity. Learners were invited to participate through email and course announcements in CanvasLMS.

Here is a screenshot in the early minutes of Survey data collection:

SurveyAnyplace Survey Screen. Survey created by Helen Teague

The survey contained one question with 3 fixed answer choices (“A,” “B,” “C”) and 1 open-ended answer choice (“D”). The open ended answer choice “D” invited course participants to suggest their own hashtag for inclusion.

Five days were given for the first round of choice. Data provided by SurveyAnyplace detailed the response rate and tallied the responses. The survey had an 89% response rate.

In the first round, after the course learners completed the survey, the choice with the most responses and the suggested response were distilled to a final survey. Data collection on these two choices continued for three days. The resulting choice earned the designation of the Course Hashtag.

The Hashtag data collection activity served to crowdsource a common hashtag, build community among all course participants (learners and course facilitator), and model procedure for an upcoming data collection culminating activity.

Course participants were assured that all future posts with the hashtag #PBSReaders4Life would always conform to the Terms of Use of each and every social media site in which it appeared. Further, course facilitators’ posts were assured to be of a general or thematic nature. Specific learners’ names would not be used, accept in the case of a retweet where a learner self-identified through the use of the hashtag #PBSReaders4Life.

Sep
17

By Dr. Helen Teague

Fun Facts About Hashtags

Category: Hashtag of the Day, PBS, PBS Course Emails, Post Feed Tags: @PBSTeachers, Courtney Seiter, hashtags, Helen Teague, Isabella Andersen, Kevan Lee Leave a Comment

As a pre-course activity for my PBS TeacherLine class, “Teaching Lifelong Reading Habits” I constructed a hashtag survey. The intent of the survey was for the class to create, vote, and decide on a common hashtag for us to use during our class.

Here are a few fun hashtag facts that I learned in the process:

Engagement Benefits from Hashtags…Sometimes: Posts with 1-2 hashtags have 21% more interest and by extension, more engagement than those without hashtags (Andersen, 2018; Lee, 2018).

The carbon dating for the first hashtag is circa 2007:

Source: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/everything-you-need-to-know-about-hashtags/517028/

Hashtag Tips from Social Media experts:

Learn from the best- look at the posts of folks you admire or influencers and scroll to see the hashtags they use
Consider related hashtags
Identify hashtags that resonate with you
Proofread your hashtag to make sure it is not being used in a different (or gasp-worthy) context
Only use 1-2 hashtags for maximum engagement from your readers (Anderson, 2018)

Best quote related to hashtagging and social media: The currency of social media is the share. ~Courtney Seiter

There’s even a podcast dedicated to the humble hashtag called– The Science of Social Media

Because their purpose is to expand the conversation, Hashtags hug constructivist learning theory.