Spencer Greenhalgh
University of Kentucky

My name is Spencer Greenhalgh, and I am an educational technology researcher in the University of Kentucky’s School of Information Science. I have a BA in French Teaching from Brigham Young University and a PhD in Educational Psychology and Educational Technology from Michigan State University.

I focus my research on how digital technologies allow for communities that challenge traditional conceptions of how learning is organized. For example, at the 2016 AECT convention, I presented on how teachers in France used a Twitter hashtag in the wake of a terrorist attack to create a short-lived community for finding and sharing resources about supporting students. I described how the fleeting nature of the community was not a sign of failure but a response to teachers’ needs in the moment. After being nominated by the Research and Theory Division, this study received the AECT Cross-Cultural Research Award that year.

Because these communities exist in digital spaces, they provide new methodological options for researchers—another component of my work. For example, in much of my work (like the study described above), I employ automated methods to collect data from Twitter and then identify the best methods for analyzing activity within hashtag communities. One of my recent studies examined the use of geolocation data in educational Twitter research and was included in a special issue of TechTrends organized by RTD.

I am grateful that my research has been welcomed and supported in RTD, and I am eager to contribute more to the division and to AECT as a whole. I have served in leadership capacities in other organizations, including as Communications Deputy in AERA’s Division C and as a Special Interest Group chair in the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education, and I look forward to bringing this experience to RTD.