 Hello everyone, this is Ross at teacher talk at the most influential blog on education in the UK today I am super excited to be joined by Dr. Waseem Ard Time of recording Waseem has just relocated from Newcastle to Stirling in Scotland And my particular fascination with him and his work is particularly on Social media network analysis, so we're going to talk about this a little bit and how it correlates with the world of education And the life of teachers But before we get into all that let's just say hello to Waseem Waseem. Good afternoon. How are you? Hi Ross. All good. All good here. It's been enjoying the sunshine in the last few days Scotland Yeah, surprisingly the last two days have been I've been quite nice Here so it was very rare for the member but been enjoying it so far You're moving you started in Sheffield You're in there now in the world was in Newcastle now you stop Stirling. I guess you'll be an Inverness next Yeah, we have so all my friends in Sheffield keep joking. I'm going further north away from there So Waseem can I get you to just give us a snapshot of who you are How you've ended up where you are today, you know Particularly your education pathway Yeah, sure. So I did a PhD at the University of Sheffield in health in informatics and Before that I did a masters in information Systems and actually started off by studying a pure philosophy at the University of Sheffield's philosophy department For for three years as an undergraduate. So that was my kind of interest and really fascinated by it Then I moved over to information Technology and then into kind of health in informatics after I finished my PhD during it I was interested quite a lot in sports and Analyzing social media activity around sports brands and I did an internship at Manchester United That gave me kind of a lot of business Insights and I was also kind of publishing in that area So then I ended up moving from the health Informatics side of things and and where I worked as a research associate to the business school Well, and I joined the Northumbria business school as a lecturer in digital business And I was there for around a year a year and a bit and then I moved to Newcastle University in the same role And then now I'm senior lecturer in digital business at Sterling University's management school Mm-hmm Now just have a quick sneak on your Twitter profile before we started and I'll see this nice little clip of you on Sky Sports talking about our BBC sport talking about Man United and Christian Ronaldo's transfer and how the news Immersed or emerge itself on social media, which is interest, but we'll talk about that in a moment And what we like at school. Let's rewind a little bit further. We were the person that got your homework in on time So when I was younger when I did my GCSEs And I just scraped through I got I got I think seven C's and they're all on on the borderline So I didn't really kind of pay much much attention during the GCSE days And then I felt a really anxious Waiting for my GCSE results because all my friends were doing sixth form and I thought or maybe I'm actually not gonna be able to go to sixth form I might not meet the criteria and that the night before the exam results was terrifying Got the results. I got a lucky escape managing to get into the sixth form and then I thought I'm not gonna let that happen again. And as I was predicted. I think two D's and an E and I was at the towards the bottom of the class. I actually finished with two A's and a B and The teachers were amazed. They said they've never actually saw that happen Before when the students normally predicted grades and normally around that month So when I was getting the A's and the B's and the teachers were really happy And I managed to get into the University of Sheffield as well So first my family to get into that kind of a Russell group University and then I just found it all with kind of research and academic side of things So there you go and look at you now So so no, I guess you're teaching in some shape or form, but no calling to become a teacher I suppose Not teaching as such I always wanted to kind of get into the research side of things and with the university teaching you've also got the academic research side of things that kind of So just for listeners context, you know, I Foolishly or excitingly also, I guess I'm feeling both emotions start in my doctoral research And I'm exploring social media network analysis We're seeing you're the expert here. Could you tell my listeners? Yep, so So social network analysis is a method that we've been using to kind of analyze Online discussions networks. So it's originally a theory stretches back people using in sociology to study social groups and influential people in social groups Management consultants were going into organizations Analyzing who is speaking to who to find out employees that are influential So they've got a lot of connections to other employees and the world Approaching in the online world. We can use social network analysis to visualize and map out virtual communities and actually pinpoint people who are Influences and spreading in information and those social network visualizations can be really Enlightening we can actually see shapes and crowds. So I think I think you've seen some of those as well Well, we've got one user in the middle and you've got a crowd of users around them So it's really helpful in visualizing in how online information is spreading And it's been useful in our work around misinformation and disinformation You kind of find out some of those users and mapping and spreading that information Now you've got a paper that you've conducted on in the world of teachings. So could we just Talk about that in a little bit detail. Could you just remind everyone what the title of the paper is? Yes, also when I was doing my PhD in around 2016 I presented at a conference in Croatia in in split around contemporary issues in economy and technology in our paper was titled a Twitter and teaching To treat or not to tweet and I remember at the conference It stimulated a quite an intense debate around Teachers and academics and whether they should be using think platforms like Twitter and social media in the paper we reviewed around a hundred academic articles to look at how people were using Twitter in the classroom and It we found some interesting findings. So there were positives on both sides So for the students and also the teachers as well So people are kind of engaging and asking questions that might necessarily do it in the class And it was a kind of back channel for sharing information and other things in the conference We found a lot of Concerns and issues around the people's anxieties and fears and kind of introducing Something like Twitter and microbugging tools as well and in the paper we talked about what what can happen and things like that as well Now I've also read and I guess this on the you know the flip side or the negative side of that kind of if I had in the Word surveillance, you know if I choose to tweet freely I know I've certainly become I've had my hand slap once or twice in my career as a teacher For the thing that you say or expression an opinion and this is very you know many years ago But I can still see I had teachers today who are fearful of what they say compared to Maybe some others who wouldn't give to who some are quite happy to express an opinion and Any thoughts on on on that kind of surveillance? Yes, it is a tricky area. So I know in the United States There's been a lot of cases of that as well. So parents have been reporting teachers They're going and looking at the Instagram or Facebook and they're seeing them opposing with alcohol and another And they're getting in a lot of trouble, so You have to really be careful and I think that might be Getting teachers to be more careful Media that might drive some of the apprehension as well kind of thinking twice before Posting and things like that from your position of expertise was seen. What do you see as the benefits for you know? Well, someone like myself just a teacher to share an opinions and you know, we add in that word influencer where What do you see those benefits from that online perspective? So with with Twitter you can really kind of have your voice heard If you get retweeted by a couple of influential users, they can really kind of cascade The information it could also be useful for for networking as well So there's a lot of other teachers headteachers from other schools, for example using social media and Twitter so far as a career Connections and progression and also useful for kind of networking and meeting people as well Yeah, I mean I you know Trying to think when I first started using Twitter 2007 or 8, you know I look at you know I've got I actually think I might have eight or nine accounts behind the scenes But I'm only using my personal and my teacher cook at one and I certainly know that the benefits that it's had You know the ups and downs as well I guess my question is What what are the benefits of social media network analysis once we've got the data and we can You know see all the nodes and the groups of discourse and who's who's the big cheese? I call it the influencer. What what what could we do with that information from a from your perspective as an academic? Yes, so it would depend on what the kind of research aim is if it's from a public health Perspective and we might be interested to see if those influences can be trusted and whether the information the sharing in terms of web links and other things whether they're from trusted sources are not peer-reviewed academic research If they're not we can kind of Have that information to hand see what conspiracies might be being shared by those groups of influential users And just to raise awareness for the public saying that you might be see see this content But it's not actually true from a marketing business school branding perspective It's it's good for kind of monitoring how your brand is being represented by Influences online for kind of brand management perspective and also potential collaborations as well So influence of marketing is growing now, and if you've got influences around technology around your brand You can actually collaborate with them. You can have sponsoring Opportunities with them as well. So it opens up a lot of doors. Yeah, no, it's a very interesting world. I mean I know the perceptual of myself on Twitter is is of an influencer And I guess I've got that social capital that those number of followers and to kind of back that up But there's a lot of things that I guess as an influencer. I don't necessarily Make people aware of I guess now there are a lot There's a lot more people aware of the world of influences and you know a tweet leads to X I'm out of cash, etc. And I've always been a bit coy about those kind of things because we were a bit shy in the education sphere about You know money and all that type of stuff But I can certainly vouch for all that aspect of influencer life myself I guess I guess I kind of another question for our switch topics will seem is what what what benefits You know, you talked about branding you talk about networking and we've talked about the individual but um, what? Your work in business particularly how can schools use this information to? Market their skills a little bit better how understanding the network around them in an online sense rather than physically outside their school gates Yeah, that's that's a really good Question I actually I went back to my old school On I think two occasions to actually speak to the students and I actually brought up a network graph and I showed them This is how we can analyze social media networks And this is the analysis that we can do and and some of the students were really Frightened with the analytics that were possible on public data And they all said at the end that they were going to be more careful in changing the settings of their accounts Because I laid bare the visuals and I talked to them about what brands and other people were doing and They had no idea that some of this stuff was was happening So as a kind of educational tool introducing this in in the curriculum showing the students This can happen having experts kind of speak to them Possibly some of the students went back in and changed their settings A general marketing perspective Schools could also keep an eye out on on how they're being mentioned Kind of on the internet around these kind of key words around the school I kind of monitor that and and also possibly introduce it into the curriculum as well as a kind of educational tool To protect the students from kind of sharing too much information online On the topic of online harms and the kind of bill going through Parliament at the moment What are your thoughts and recommendations? You know, I guess misinformation Disinformation, you know the moment particularly in education anti-vaccines mass closing schools that those types of at least when I've dabbled with Social network analysis on those topics through the pandemic And I'm picking all that but what what your thoughts on that? Yes, so the the social media research foundation and Dr. Mark Smith who's the chief social scientist And we've been arguing in the foundation to kind of allow people to become their own social media editors and we've written a blog post on a potential way to Kind of protect users of social media kind of crowd-based solution Against potential harms and things like that. So if you look up look up the foundation We have to find an article where we propose a potential solution Where your followers and people in the community can actually report content is being harmful And you can hide things and have editors so you can kind of filter away a potential kind of misinformation and things like that and we would lean towards those types of kind of solutions So I guess what you're saying it is as an organization Changes their terms and conditions and you just press the agree button Behind the scenes all your seconds are changed and updated To a point where you could be exposed with further algorithms misinformation is that is that correct what I'm interpreting you say it's so it's it's more about and Allowing I'd say a Community so if you've got a lot of followers that you'd trust and and if someone is abusing you are assigning misinformation Allow those users the power to flag content as being misinformation So you can actually vault things down and have them hidden from from your Speculated with the thumbs down button, haven't they Yep. Yeah, so a kind of adding features Like that could could help so there was a lot of cases around the the football as well the Premier League Yeah A lot of players were getting abused and they were seeing seeing that if there was an ability On Twitter to add editors That can actually screen these tweets and just get rid of them and I could help if kind of before it reaches a player Now I want to switch topics with Seema wanna I guess for my own selfish reasons talk about the process of going through a PhD or a doctorate and You know, I'm You know in the early days still if it's a struggle I guess because you know explain the process for people that are like me just starting out or people that are thinking about it And I know that's a big question But you know just your general tips and insights now you've kind of passed the finishing line Yeah, yeah, sure. So at one point in my PhD actually fell a little bit behind And I managed to catch up at the end and I finished I think in three years three three months as And what I did was it in the middle. I think I made a strategy and blocked out a lot of time To research and be a bit more systematic. So in my calendar I would actually flag that between three and four. I'm gonna be writing and I would move to kind of different locations different libraries and just go and just write write that content and Because I was doing it in in health, which is in kind of a bit of sociology in there as well The length of the thesis was quite significant and involve kind of writing all those chapters just getting down and editing it It's the planning and quite a bit blocking out time and being strategic as well Then it's just a long process and there's a lot of back and forth as well in revisions and topics can change But just being kind of the duty yours full time. Yep. Yep. So it's full full time and then Obviously, there's you know, there's all sorts of things funding and choosing a supervisor You know started out in your first year learning all this language. That's you know over your head How will how was all that process for you? You know finding a supervisor seeking funding Learning a new type of way of language Yes, so I was lucky so My when I was doing my masters and I carried on with the same a master supervisor and kind of transitioned in into the the PhD But writing a research proposal was very tricky very difficult process of a kind of a 10 15 page research proposal and Because it's so competitive to get any funding Those proposals have to be really good and kind of speak that that language as you mentioned that kind of academic Lingo has to be realistic achievable and kind of review review literature and and so If you're applying for funding typically, you don't have that much time as well to cook quickly, right? That's it was really intense. Yeah process and you have to learn a lot of stress one on the go So can I can you give me an insight into some of the vocabulary? You could now use that you couldn't use before So there's a lot of a kind of research philosophy epistemology Yeah inductive deductive Approach and so kind of nailing all of those things down and some of the technical things as well kind of machine learning between their centrality Network metrics kind of mentioning methodologies all those different things Centrality is a new word for me actually so for people listening that and Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming that's a more academic term for an influence of the person that kind of unlocks the discourse to their network and It's that connection between both Yeah, that sounds that sounds alright. Well, I'm winning. I'm winning. Okay. Um, right. We'll switch topics once more and Tell us about the life. I know you're new to sterling University But tell me kind of the you're you're working with the things that you're working on the kind of people that you're like Trin the stuff that you're researching. What's going on there? Yeah, so my my teaching is is around the text analytics business intelligence things like power bi and Tableau and data visualization My teaching interests are related to that as as well so in my research interest. So I've been researching Um, recently misinformation around COVID-19, right? And also looking at kind of sports and Online content online homes and sport Kind of negative comments sports athletes have been receiving and and so forth. Yeah, I've also been looking into the Netflix TV show Squid Game. I'm not sure if you've seen I haven't know So we've been analyzing that because it went viral so quickly We've been looking at how Electronic word of mouth kind of spread Right you can show and how people are watching it So I've written if you know I've written a few thoughts, you know people for people listening Tableau and power bi are bits of software That way you can manipulate data online Have you got a particular favorite we're seeing or you just different tools for different purposes? Possibly, yeah, but I've been using not Excel Quite quite a bit which is Microsoft Excel plug-in to pull in data from Twitter YouTube Wikipedia I need to use those fascinating Utilizations and and I really like using that particular tool No, I do it's my favorite so far and I would still say I'm a beginner So I probably need to come back to you and have a few tutorials and it's a go back to the text analysis and sport I'm assuming that that includes, you know racism and other other kind of issues as well Yeah, we have so looking at and kind of case studies where there's been a flare-up of Racism in response to a particular event and also trying to categorize the type of abuse Social media athletes might be receiving so athletes on on Twitter What what is it that people are abusing them about what might be some of the motivations for them? And back to the kind of lecture inside. So what kind of things are you, you know Groups of MA students be ads, you know, who are you working with in it from a lecturer perspective? So it's a mix of everything so a couple of undergraduate classes and students and masters Levelers as well and I get invited quite a lot to deliver external talks as well to PhD departments Kind of skills upgrading and training and international events as well So I did a talk for University in Mexico and Also, Indonesia as well last last month kind of talking about social networks and analysis So in a pre-pandemic world, you would have had a physical invitation from the month's little holiday Yeah, we have so in there before COVID I had been to places like China and United States and across Europe as well. I was also in South Africa for a week And it's all exclusively on network analysis Yes, well kind of social media network analysis Visualizations and things like that. And how you settling into life in Scotland. It's it's been going good Been in trying it here It's been really nice really scenic. I know the Sun's out. We're getting a bit chilly It's not too cooler compared to Newcastle. You'll be used to that in Sheffield in Newcastle, I'm sure So I want to throw it all back to the world of teaching and we'll see what would be your recommendations for kind of curriculum teaching, you know, I know the online harms bills being proposed as there's a computer science Curriculum there's PSHE lessons or our RSE I should say where we teach kids, you know social media We have people coming into assemblies and stuff, but Any specific things that you think would be a valuable addition to the the school curriculum? So I think that that case study I mentioned before where I was showing them a tool which can actually search all social public social media profiles and you can actually Map out where someone has been in a given point of time if they have got their geolocation on so you can actually map this person was here doing this this person was here doing that and When it's framed like that to the students and it kind of it frightens them and they seem a bit more concerned about and kind of privacy and Is that platform? So I don't remember the name of that, but there's a couple of them Yeah, I think it's called location-based social media, right? There's a couple of tools out there and you can actually map out Where people are and and it analyzes people's locations wherever they're going and things like that so you can actually Show students some of these techniques and tools and then they realize why It's critical for young people, but you know what about the people like you and I who are you know The certain age and we have a choice of the information that we share. What are your thoughts on privacy? Location data all that type of stuff Yep, so With I think you can go into your settings and I think there's options to disable kind of location-based tracking as well and and just being careful about what's what's being tweeted and Kind of aware of who might be kind of reading it and posting it as well Yeah, it's a minute. I use Google Maps So, you know, you speaking out loud makes me think cautiously about the information of share You know, don't say that don't tell you I'm off on the holiday tomorrow So it's been really interesting now part of my Podcasts were seen as once we've had a conversation. I've been busily writing notes I'm gonna throw loads of questions at you and try to catch you off guard and So I'll start easy. What project do you work? What's on your desk today? What you working on? Today I was working on the the squid game analysis I Will be a piece of advice for a teacher who wants to start up in the HD So think carefully about your research area and also Your supervisor is as well and make sure there's a kind of good fit and match before I kind of starting it Thank you. And what book are you reading for fun? And I'm trying to think I've actually I've not had time to read Have you tried haggis yet? Not not yet. Not yet. Okay. That's good to know. I'm not yet Let me see and if you weren't I'm assuming this is your dream job But if it isn't what would be that wacky career that you've never had? And so I've always been interested in in sport So a family league football over the nice paycheck would be nice. Very nice And what's your biggest achievement today career-wise? It would probably be my A-level so getting those grades and getting into the university Okay, great. If we were in Sheffield for 24 hours, what would we do where we go? so we would probably Have some Turkish food on London Road and some really nice places that I've not had Turkish food as nice as as you can get in in Sheffield. Yeah, and then you can't be it's it's I find it a bit of a struggle up where I am now find the right cuisine There's a place in Sheffield called zoom up and there's a picture of Ronnie or Sullivan Championship he dines there. So that's the caliber And so in that we're going back to your research paper to tweet or not to tweet should I tweet? Yes, you should be tweeting Good to know and who do you recommend I interview next and why? So it could be worth having a chat with Dr. Mark Smith from the social media research foundation. Yeah, I've had a chat but not for a podcast, but I'll certainly Chase him up and just for listener context. Why Mark? He's been doing a lot of kind of fascinating stuff in the area of social media and social networks for for a number of years and it's always enlightening speaking to him about kind of online crowds virtual networks and He was publishing about social media and online networks. I think in the 90s when Internet was just becoming a thing So he's got a real experience over the last say 10 10 20 years He's good fun to talk to as well And he's certainly when I get on these nerves about how to log in in his mode or why does my power be on your license? Not work. He's very patient to be fair We're seeing working listeners find out more about you connect online your blogs tweets, etc Yep, so I've got a blog Wasim Ahmed Org and it's got a list of my publications and few videos and things on there as well And I'm on Twitter as well at W a s 3 2 1 0 And my final question was seen is what would you hope to be your legacy? That's a tricky one is as well So possibly Kind of around having an impact in policy around some of the research We're doing around kind of online misinformation online homes having some type of Kind of real-world policy-based impacts of offer that research Great. So there you go folks. So I'm mean dabbling in the world of social media As a teacher and looking at network. We'll see him here is the the expert. We'll see him. Thank you for your time No worries and I wish you all the best instead I hope to come up and visit you some time and share some ideas or at least attend some of your lectures So I can master my research a little bit more, but thank you Great. No worries. Great to be here. Thank you