Tag: Social Media

TESOL 2026 International Convention: Reflections

Last month, I had the privilege to attend and keynote at the TESOL 2026 International Convention and Expo! It was such an amazing experience!

I have already blogged about getting an invite to do the keynote at the conference in this post: Looking forward to #TESOL26 and also shared the slides: TESOL 2026 Keynote (Shorter) and references that I used for the keynote: TESOL 2026 Keynote: Enilda Romero-Hall, Ph.D. But I have not have an opportunity to reflect on the experience in my blog, which I often like to do after attending a conference.

I would like to start by saying that from the moment I agreed to be a keynote for the conference, I worked with Sarah Sahr (who was the Head of Education and Events at TESOL). Sarah is based out of Tunisia, which immediately made us bond as I have a lot of love for Tunisia due to my visit back in 2019: Photo Blog: IFDS in Tunisia. NOTE TO SELF: Go back to Tunisia!

Sarah is one of the most organized professionals I have met in my life. There a handful of people who I have met in my professional life that “get things done.” Sarah is one of them. There were very specific deadlines for the keynote speakers that she outlined once the contract was signed and she was on top of it at all times. Even the day of the keynote, when decided to make one final change 2-hours before the session. She make sure to have a meeting to go over the content of the keynote, give feedback, request a video for promotion of the session, see the final draft of the slides, and secure all the logistics.

You should definitely connect with her! Sarah Sahr

I also worked closely with Micheal Ennis who is in Switzerland and is a TESOL member. Both Sarah and Mike were wonderful to work with!

Since it was my first time at TESOL I was encouraged, by my former student Adriana Vianna, to attend the first-timers session. It was a lot of fun! I met people from different walks of life that engage in English language teaching and/or support English language learners: teachers, social workers, administrators, researchers, entrepreneurs, faculty, graduate students, etc. Their passion for their field was palpable. As an English Language Learner, myself, I felt grateful that there are people who care about immigrants, refugees, and people around the world that have a passion for learning a different language. If you have never work on learning a different language, I am here to tell you that it is hard and it requires a lot of dedication from the learner but also a ton of support!

The other amazing part about the conference was that I was able to connect several colleagues who are part of the TESOL community that are also connected to the learning design and technology field.

One aspect of the conference that I was not expecting and I mentioned this in the LinkedIn post: “Last week while I was delivering a keynote at TESOL 2026 I was thinking about how I represented my work and how I represented my institution but the reality was that I was also representing people who have similar identities to me! I did not know it while I was presenting but in the audience there was a group of members from TESOL Panama who had come to present and participate in the conference. They cheered loudly as I mentioned to the audience that I was born and raised in Panama and that Panama is much more than a Canal. After the keynote, they came to the front of the room to congratulate me and in their words they felt so proud to see me as keynote speaker.” 

I did not mentioned in the post, there there were many attendees that came to the front of the room after the keynote who were not Panamanian but identified at Latinx or Black and who identified with the message of the keynote. It was such an overwhelming positive experience!

Since the keynote was at the 8am session (TESOLers really know how to show up early!), I had an opportunity to change outfits and return to the conference venue to explore the expo. I could not count the number of times I was stopped by someone who had attended the keynote and they shared their gratitude. It honestly felt good to know that the amount of time, energy, and work that I had put into this keynote was so deeply appreciated. I left Salt Lake City feeling like: (a) Wow! I need to return to Utah because it has such a beautiful landscape and (b) glad that I accepted the invitation and that the message was so well received.

Here are some photos capture by the photographer of the conference and shared by the former student, Adriana Vianna (who is now a doctoral student at University of South Florida):

UTK STEM Education Seminar

This past week, I was invited to speak as part of the STEM education seminar sponsored by the Theory and Practice in Teacher Preparation (TPTE) Department STEM team. I am part of the STEM Education team in the department and this semester a group of colleagues are organizing this seminar with presentations for faculty and graduate students every two weeks. I have really enjoyed all of the presentations this semester. Our STEM Education team is doing really amazing work and I love learning about it.

For my presentation, I was a bit nervous because I was not sure how my work would relate to STEM education. I know educational technology is consider part of STEM education. However, I think of my work as more than just educational technology. I actually see Learning, Design, and Technology as the umbrella term under which educational technology, instructional design, instructional technology, learning engineering, and others similar terms come together. Perhaps one of my main concerns is that under the term STEM, learning design is primarily associated with the “technology” term which I really see as just one aspects of the far more complex ecosystems of the learning, design, and technology field.

The presentation focused on how it is okay to have many areas of research interest. We are often encouraged to stay very narrowly focused on a topic. But, what if you are curious about other topics and want to explore them? So, basically, I used myself as an example of an eclectic research agenda. My research has evolved so much and in part it due to my curiosity to explore other topics. This has also been true in my life, curiosity to try new things or study programs outside my focus has helped me evolve and grow. Here is the link to the slides, in case you are curious.

The next big social network for me

Some academics are leaving Twitter. I have no plans to leave Twitter as of right now. I am not on Instagram or Facebook. If you join Twitter one day and do not see me there, please know that I have switched to the next big social network: The great outdoors. I do not feel motivated to join a different social network platform. So, again, if I remove myself from Twitter that just means I dedicate more time to spend outside in nature (i.e., a park, a bike ride, a short hike, a farm, kayaking).

I was already considering a Twitter break later this year. I will see how things go with over the next month or so before making a decision. But honestly, if things go South with Twitter and I just shut my profile down radically please know you can always reach out to me via:

You can also subscribe to this blog. In the main page of this blog (https://enildaromero.com), you can type your email and click subscribe to read future posts. I write professional and personal blog posts. I am not a New York Times best seller but I put a few sentences together and sometimes share some decent content (in my humble opinion).

Recent Publications Related to Social Media in Education

It feels like I have not blogged in a while, so I decided to take a break from other social media and give some love to my blog. In this post, I want to share some research that I have co-authored and published this year on the use of social media in education:

“A Syllabi Analysis of Social Media for Teaching and Learning Courses“
You can access this journal article here.

Earlier this year, my former student (Linlin Li) and I published this journal article. It was a really neat experience doing the syllabi analysis. It helped me understand some of the topics that are often overlooked when we teach about social media. It also allowed me to see what books and sources are used in the curriculum. The reality is that we have so much literature related to social media and it understandable because the experiences, the environment and the individual using them are constantly changing. This was an open access publication.

“An Exploration of a Social Media Community: The Case of #AcademicTwitter“
You can access this conference proceeding paper here.

This was my first collaboration with colleague Lina Gomez-Vasquez, a fellow Latinx researcher. It was a high level analysis of the #AcademicTwitter hashtag and those who often post to this online community. Love that we can look at how faculty (and other academics use social media). As the abstract stated: “This paper examines participants and communication patterns in the #AcademicTwitter community. Using content analysis and social network analysis techniques, the researchers examined tweets including the #AcademicTwitter hashtag to discover the community’s network properties, roles of the participants, sentiment, and conversational themes.” We have other follow up projects related to the #AcademicTwitter hashtag, so stay tune.

“Most versus least used social media: undergraduate students’ preferences, participation, lurking, and motivational factors“: You can access this journal article here.

In this paper, we surveyed 769 undergraduate students and asked them about their social media preference and participation. Snapchat and Instagram were their preferred social media. We also asked questions related to lurking. As we mentioned in the paper: “It is equally important that as part of the research focused on the use and participation of undergraduate students in social media, we also address lurking behaviors. In comparison to the large number of research efforts focused on active users of social media, very little research has focused on lurkers in online environments or even consider lurking an important form of online behavior (Edelman, 2013). The 90-9-1 rule states that amongst members of an online community there are ninety percent lurkers who never contribute, nine percent who contribute very little, and one percent who actively create new content (Sun, Rau, & Ma, 2014). There are multiple reasons why people lurk.”

Photo by Adam Jang on Unsplash

A sabbatical during COVID-19

Where do I start?

I guess I can start by writing that a few months into my sabbatical the world turned upside down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, I was able to use my time to complete the tasks that I had outlined for my sabbatical period. April and May did require a significant adjustment since we had to manuoiver a new work schedule without child care. Maneuvering this new schedule required being realistic about what I could accomplish and saying “no” to some invitations for new collaborations.

The first two months of my sabbatical were as planned. I worked on writing two chapters for the book “Research Methods in Learning Design and Technology.” Book chapter authors submitted their completed and revised book chapters to me by the end of January and I worked on doing final reviews of each book chapter. I initially had planned to submit the book to the publisher by mid-March, but I switched the format of the last chapter, and this required giving extra time to my co-authors to complete their writing. This meant that I had to delay the submission of the book documents to the publisher until mid-April. Thankfully, by the time the world turned upside down in mid-March, all my co-authors and book chapter authors had turned in all required documents to me.

One of the elements of my sabbatical that was partially affected by the COVID-19 pandemic was work-related travel. I was scheduled to attend the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Convention in San Francisco in mid-April and the conference was canceled. I am glad it was canceled, I am also glad it was not held virtually. April was a month of re-adjustement, tension, and stress for many. I was also scheduled to travel to Florence, Italy to present at the DEPIT Annual Meeting at the University of Florence. This event was re-scheduled for an online format.

I had some personal travel plans changed because of travel restrictions. I was scheduled to spend all of March and a portion of April in Panama City, Panama, where I was going to work while spending time close to my family. So, I traveled to Panama at the end of February and was monitoring all the news related to COVID-19. Due to the way the virus was spreading, my family and I decided it was best for us to travel back to the United States, so we changed our flights to travel back on March 22 (which is the day Panama was scheduled to close their international airport). On the evening of March 20, I received an email from COPA airlines letting me know that our flights had been cancelled. I was shocked and extremely disappointed. However, we all stayed calm and determined that we would just ride the storm in Panama. That same evening, as a last attempt, we figured we would see if there were any flights on March 21 to Tampa with a different airline. Thankfully, we did manage to fly back to Tampa on March 21. My dad was in Panama with me and we were also able to find a flight for him to fly back to Toronto (within one hour difference of our flight), which gave peace of mind. I would not have left Panama without my dad.

The weeks after returning from Panama, were weeks of adjustments as mentioned at the beginning of this post. In addition to all the tasks for the book, I was also scheduled to write a manuscript (with a deadline) that I had not even started. It took discipline to stay focus. I admit that there were many emotions related to what was happening in the world with the pandemic, leaving Panama, and experiencing the “new normal.” I felt like I had to work hard on my “emotional intelligence” to get the paper written and deliver all the book materials to the publisher.

I am thankful for the sabbatical term. In addition to the tasks mentioned in this post, I also used the time to work in revisions to several manuscripts and continue mentoring my undergraduate student (we presented at a conference in February and are currently working on a few writing tasks). Of course, I spend time with my family (even more than planned due to the lack of childcare).

Since my sabbatical ended, I am back to serving as the Graduate Coordinator of the Instructional Design and Technology program and I taught a six-week summer intensive course on Learner Motivation in June. I definitely missed my students and the joy of our convos.

 

#COVID19 briefs via Instagram

I arrived in Panama at the end of February, a week before the first COVID-19 case in the country was announced by government officials. Of course, COVID-19 had been an issue in many other countries so there was plenty of news coverage in the Panamanian news outlets and different media outlets on the Internet. However, after the first case of COVID-19 was announced in Panama the Ministry of Health became the main source of information and updates regarding the government’s response.

The social media accounts, and in particular, the Instagram account (@minsapma) for the Ministry of Health provided all the necessary information related to new cases, new policies, and public health campaign. The updates would include press conferences, twice a day, that were shared via Instagram live.

Probably one of my favorite elements of the use of Instagram to keep a country inform were the public health educational campaign. I am an instructional design faculty and teach multimedia design so I was impressed with the infographics and visual representation of the content shared (example of Instagram post below). Of course, I was also impressed with the rapid response that was taken to try to contain the spread of the virus. New measures were taken quickly. In a three-week period Panama went from business as usual to a country under a major lockdown (that is still in place today). 

I want to acknowledge that I appreciate the efforts made by the Panamanian Ministry of Health to use these medium to keep the citizens inform and educated. I know that other traditional outlets are been used to disseminate the message to Panamanian citizens such as the radio and television; however, this is great because I know that there are folks who spend more time on social media than watching TV or listening to the radio.

Instructional Design Practitioners, Students, and Faculty: Social Media Groups

I am putting together a list of social media groups, specifically Facebook and LinkedIn groups, to share with the students in the UT IDT program. I thought it would be a nice resource that would allow them to be expose to diverse groups of instructional designers in different settings, levels of experience, and locations. I remember when I first started my IDT master program it seemed like there was hardly anyone else who knew what was instructional design. In any case, I know it can feel like just you and your classmates are learning about instructional design. In reality, we have large communities of instructional design practitioners, students, and faculty. This is a work in progress list, I will add more groups as I come across them.

Podcast Episode (@VisionOfEd): #SocialMedia in #HigherEducation

This past week, I was invited as a guest speaker in the Visions of Education podcast series. I am sharing it here for anyone who is in the education field and wants to subscribe to the podcast. Also, I want to share the link to the podcast episode. I discussed SocialMedia in HigherEducation:

You can click on this link to access a full list of resources (articles, books, and videos) mentioned in podcast episode: https://visionsofed.com/2019/03/10/episode-108-social-media-in-higher-education-with-enilda-romero-hall/

This is a one of five podcast episodes that focus on #SocialMediaEd discussions leading up to the SITE conference next week in Las Vegas, NV.

The EduTech research group at #FURC2019 (@UTinquiry)

This past weekend The University of North Florida hosted the Florida Undergraduate Research Conference (FURC). Many undergraduate students from The University of Tampa presented topics in which they engage on research. One of these students was Renata Sindicic, who has been working with me and collaborating in research since last August 2018. I feel extremely proud of Renata, #FURC2019 was her very first time presenting in a conference! She worked hard on the design of the poster and practice her presentation prior to the event. I am thankful to have her as part of the research team!

Renata presented preliminary results of our research related to the use of social media by undergraduate students.

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Renata_Sindicic

Making #SocialMedia Work to Your Educational Advantage | Enilda Romero-Hall | #TEDxUTampa [video]

Almost exactly two-months ago I gave this talk at the TEDxUTampa event hosted and organized by undergraduate University of Tampa students. The video is now uploaded to the TEDx Talks YouTube channel. I am excited to share this in my blog and I welcome constructive feedback (keyword: “constructive”). Also, please feel free to share it with others if you believe in my message:

“Instead of solely focusing on the ‘bad’ or ‘thinking of social media as a waste of time’  it is imperative that we find innovative ways to use and repurpose this online social environments in a manner that is safe, ethical, and beneficial to us.”

If you have 13 minutes to spare, here is the video: