redrover » Research

Red Rover is a blend of a number of untested new theories based on new technologies and older, established research. The hope of the project is to serve as a research platform and significantly contribute to the fields of Student Affairs and Digital Media and Learning among others.

With that in mind, our goal is to open up questions and data to any researcher that is interested.

Some background reading:

A list of early assumptions

MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Grant Submission

Assumption of increased user action online with some supportive research

NYTimes Article on Facebook Research

Questions we hope to address:

Can institutions use social networking to increase community social capital?
Does the social safety of social networking increase opt-in rates to institutional opportunities? At what rate do online opt-ins convert to action? What online steps can improve this conversion?
Will students embrace institutions within their online social context?
Will students effectively use a folksonomy to navigate their connection options?
Does a social network embedded orientation increase the effectiveness of in person orientation?
How do these new forms of engagement translate into student satisfaction and retention?

Research FAQ:

Q: How can we just use the student data? What about FERPA and ethics?

A: All information in Red Rover, with the exception of contact info, is public data. Students are told this as they sign up. Most ethical guidelines allow the observation of public behavior. The idea is that a digital portfolio is a positive thing that they would want to share. We believe this makes the data free for research. This "everything is open" approach has significant drawbacks. On balance, however, it seemed a better choice as it was the only solution that scaled and allowed schools to proactively use engagement data to support students in need. Providing schools with actionable data is a primary goal of the project.

Q: Who is doing the research?

A: Anyone who is qualified. Our goal is to share the appropriate information to as many people as possible. This is an exciting, rapidly developing field - just send us an email with questions. As more people dive into the research, we will make a section available off of this wiki for researchers to announce their intentions and share results as they come in. While we cannot play full traffic controller and guarantee no one is working in your direction, we would love to help you do something original by at least making you aware of the other folks we know about.

Preliminary References:

"In an earlier study, Bean (1983) surveyed 1,711 first-year students and found a relationship between students’ perceptions of involvement and
satisfaction. He found that students were more satisfied with their college experience if they felt they could get involved in the academic and social life of the institution."

From http://www.indiana.edu/~nsse/pdf/DEEP_Expenditures_Schuh.pdf

Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The benefits of Facebook "friends:" Social capital and college students' use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4), article 1.