From tweeting to meeting: Expansive professional learning and the academic conference backchannel

As new technologies shape and are shaped by human practices, educators and researchers must consider the impact that participating in social media-to access, reflect upon, question, evaluate and disseminate scholarship-is having on their professional development and practices. This paper investigates how members of the educational research community use social media to advance professional learning and scholarship dissemination in online-offline networks. Specifically, we examine whether and how participating in the microblogging service, Twitter, as a conference backchannel, facilitated professional learning and participation in the annual meetings of American educational researchers in 2012 and 2016, respectively, and the nature of that participation. Insights from this paper will benefit educators of varying disciplines and experience levels interested in the changing nature of social media in education, scholarship, and professional learning ecologies.