Share and embrace demographic and location diversity: Creating an Instagram‐based inclusive online learning community

Abstract

It is critical to create an inclusive online learning environment for students with diverse demographic information studying in different environments, especially during the COVID‐19 pandemic when they are disconnected from peers. Guided to create an inclusive online learning community by situated learning theory and community of practice, both of which advocate learning in context and community, we invited 115 undergraduate students to post photos related to environmental psychology concepts and their surrounding environments and discussed their postings on Instagram over eight weeks. To understand the inclusiveness of the community and students' perception, we collected their posts by searching designated hashtags and interviewed representatives of participants using a stratified sampling strategy. Through network analysis of 272 posts and qualitative analysis of 22 in‐depth interviews, we found that when participants shared and discussed their surroundings and environmental psychology concepts on Instagram, their learning community was inclusive regarding gender, ethnicity, and program. Student participants' centrality and influence were more relevant to whether and how they expressed their identities in the community through posts. We further discuss how our findings could inform to create inclusive and active communities in the future. What is already known about this topic? The definition of inclusive education extends to diversity and accessibility. Social media can support online learning communities. What this paper adds? It explores the inclusiveness of an Instagram‐based learning community using network analysis. It suggests expressing identities in a learning community helps promote inclusiveness. Implications of this study for practice and/or policy It provides information to education practitioners that will help them create inclusive and active communities through social media. It explores the possibility of analysing the inclusiveness of a learning community through social network analysis.

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