Capturing the Impact and the Chatter Around Computing Education Research Beyond Academia in Social Media, Patents, and Blogs

Abstract

Research impact goes beyond academia and exists in the multiplicity of digital platforms that we use to read, share, and discuss knowledge. Computing education research (CER) is no exception: it is created in academia and typical research institutions but is talked about widely on social media, blogs, and news websites. The aim of this study is to have a comprehensive analysis of how research in CER has been received, talked about in social media, discussed on blogs, and spread to the news and media. In addition to common analysis of trends of growth, we analyze trends of usage of social media and quantitative analysis of platforms, articles, and venues. The analysis also includes which articles and in which subfields had a wide impact, and for whom (i.e., which platforms had more impact). The results show that Altmetrics adoption is weak, yet increasingly growing fast. Gender and diversity issues made it to popular news sites, e.g., Scientific American, Los Angeles Times, and Christian Science Monitor, while articles about ethics, programming education, introductory courses as well as computational thinking and inclusion have captured the attention of social media users. There was weak - or no - correlation between article, author or topic impact and the traditional impact measures, e.g., citation count. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023. All rights reserved.