Thomas Hillman

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Gothenburg

Large-scale online platforms powered by user-generated content are extensively researched as venues of learning and knowledge production. In this ethnographically oriented study, we examine knowledge practices on a community question answering platform for computer programmers in relation to the platform mechanics of voting. Grounded in the practic...

Online environments have the potential to disrupt traditional orderings of expertise and allow a wider audience to engage as experts in the process of knowledge creation. Many online environments use crowdsourced metric-based systems, such as upvotes and reputation scores, to help identify experts. While these online systems provide opportunities t...

With schools and universities closing across Europe, the Covid-19 lockdown left actors in the field of education battling with the unprecedented challenge of finding a meaningful way to keep the wheels of education turning online. The sudden need for digital solutions across the field of education resulted in the emergence of a variety of digital n...

The purpose of this study is to examine if, and to what extent, online Community Question Answering platforms expand the opportunities for professional development in programming. Longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses of Stack Overflow Developer Surveys were used to examine users' geographical distribution, gender, experience, professional stat...

This exploratory paper examines a tension between interacting and documenting as knowledge sharing tasks on Stack Overflow, a platform that supports informal learning at scale in the domain of programming. The study works with platform data in the form of the text of posts and accompanying metadata along with 16 interviews with users. Drawing on tr...

The role that moderation plays in the effective functioning of online communities is relatively well studied in relation to both general free-time social media groups and discussion groups that are part of formal educational and professional learning initiatives. However, at the intersection of these domains, there are a growing number of large-sca...

Digital teknologi associeras ofta med olika samhällstrender, som förändringar i arbets- och anställningsformer. Även i vissa traditionella högstatusyrken (som revisor-, advokat-och läkaryrket) tränger sig såväl digitalisering som automatisering in i det vardagliga arbetet. Nya former av digitalt arbete har uppstått som för tio år sedan skulle ha va...

Aim/Purpose The aim of this study is to investigate posts that deviate from the norm by receiving many more comments than likes in a teacher thematic Facebook (FB) group. Background Social media sites are currently becoming standard tools for professional practices. Swedish teachers use thematic FB groups as a platform for professional learning.

In this article, we argue that students’ unfolding discourse on socio-scientific issues (SSI) can be fruitfully analyzed by using dialogical theories of language and communication (Bakhtin 1986; Linell 2009). While research in science education often reports on how individual reasoning changes when bringing SSI into the classroom, we argue for the...

This study examines how a problematic work-related issue is raised in a large self-organized thematic professional Facebook group and how the topic is continued in the discussion that follows. Based on big data from a large corpus assembled through the Facebook Application Programming Interface, a unique case thread is selected for in-depth analysi...

Sweden has one of the most marketised and decentralised school systems in the world while also ranking amongst countries with the highest levels of access to technology in classrooms. Considering the increasingly central role that digital platforms play in the practices of schooling, this article speculates on what might happen during the 2020s in...

In the Swedish classrooms of this study, teachers valued student participation and student engagement in mathematical activities. Students were consistently given opportunities to communicate and to voice their ideas. Students shared their work in the context of the whole class, which they seemed happy to do, and they were praised by the teachers f...

Professional learning on social media is generally framed as unproblematic, but the transition to these platforms marks a change as professionals' work is conditioned by their logic and economy. In this paper, our focus is how problematic inequalities of teachers' professional learning around access, participation and resources are produced as thei...

Previous research on selfies has primarily focused on selfies as media products rather than as an activity. In this paper, we examine selfies as a situated practice, connecting the social media phenomenon to the local spaces where it is performed. Based on ethnographic studies of selfie photography, we present and discuss three aspects of selfies i...

This structured review examined (academic) publications on flipped or inverted classrooms based on all Scopus database (n = 530) references available until mid-June 2016. The flipped or inverted classroom approach has gained widespread attention during the latest decade and is based on the idea of improving student learning by prepared self-studies...

Giving students opportunities to work collaboratively with complex online information is important for the development of democratic citizenship, but providing and structuring these opportunities poses pedagogical challenges. In this study, we investigate how digital mapping tools developed within Science and Technology Studies (STS) are used by up...

Background: Emerging research suggests that social media has the potential in clinical settings to enhance interaction with and between pediatric patients with various conditions. However, appearance norms and weight stigmatization can make adolescents with obesity uncomfortable about using these visual-based media. It is therefore important to exp...

Experiences of online self-presentation among adolescents in treatment for obesity. Implications for using social media in the clinic are also presented.

In the past decade, some areas of science have begun turning to masses of online volunteers through open calls for generating and classifying very large sets of data. The purpose of this study is to investigate the epistemic culture of a large-scale online citizen science project, the Galaxy Zoo, that turns to volunteers for the classification of i...

Social media are now an important aspect of the professional lives of school teachers. This paper explores the growing use of mass ‘teacher groups’ and ‘teacher communities’ on social media platforms such as Facebook. While these online communities are often welcomed as a means of professional learning and support, the paper considers the extent to...

The use of games in citizen science is growing, but can create tension as gaming and science can be seen as incompatible areas of activity. For example, the motivations for winning a game and scientific pursuit of knowledge may be seen as contrary. Over a one-year period, we conducted a virtual ethnographic study of the public forums of two online...

This study explores participation in a teacher self-organised profession-based Facebook group discussing the Flipped Classroom (FC) approach. Methodologically our findings are based on computational content analysis of group activity and accompanying in-depth analysis of the communication in selected discussion threads. The findings show that shari...

The use of games in citizen science is growing, but can create tension as gaming and science can be seen as incompatible areas of activity. For example, the motivations for winning a game and scientific pursuit of knowledge may be seen as contrary. Over a one-year period, we conducted a virtual ethnographic study of the public forums of two online...

The background of this study is teachers’ increasing use of social media for professional learning. Swedish teachers often use thematic Facebook groups to discuss the subjects they teach, their approaches, methods and assessment. Although previous research has shown that teachers’ participation in social media has a positive impact on teachers’ pro...

While mobile phones can be empowering, constant access to a world of people and information can also bring distraction from the present moment and from the people and things that are physically present in ways that are sometimes unwanted. Excessive use of mobile phones can also have negative consequences on our sleep and concentration. In many resp...

Rationale: Adolescents today use social media applications extensively and research demonstrates that peers in social media settings can influence adolescents regarding their food intake. These newly emerged channels also offer unique possibilities to observe adolescents’ dietary communication. Objective: This study aimed to explore how adolescents...

In recent decades, digitization, digital technology and the expansion of the Internet have resulted in significant changes in media ecology. Important consequences of these developments concern the socialization of new generations, where the values, skills and identities of young people are shaped through their participation in a range of online ac...

In this paper, we explore museum visitor learning through the examination of the engagement in narrative-making practices of school children while visiting a natural history museum. Two groups of children are given worksheets and encouraged to use their own mobile technologies to document their visits in relation to the subject of evolutionary mech...

This study examines IT use by year-9 students performing in pop ensembles, drawing on eight weeks of video observations. The data are analysed with a sociocultural perspective on what tools are used, what meanings they mediate and how they are socially constructed. The results show that, while notations were exclusively down- loaded from the Intern...

In this paper we present findings from an on-going study of mobile social photography with a focus on how Instagram users describe the practice of hashtagging as a way to gain likes and followers. There is a recognised connection between using hashtags and gaining likes and followers both among those who use hashtags and those who do not. Based on...

In autumn 2011, Sweden introduced a new curriculum that, among other changes, introduces the concept of proportionality earlier than before. Under the new curriculum, proportionality is introduced during year six, the same year that early algebra and in particular the concept of variable is first included. In this presentation, we will examine the...

The everyday use of smartphones with high quality built-in cameras has lead to an increase in museum visitors’ use of these devices to document and share their museum experiences. In this paper, we investigate how one particular pho-to sharing application, Instagram, is used to communicate visitors’ experiences while visiting a museum of natural hi...

This article examines the role students’ play in shaping the nature of the technologies they use in their classrooms and the role teachers play in supporting students’ innovative practices. Drawing on research on the sociology of technological development from the field of Science and Technology Studies, the process by which one student’s particula...

This article examines mathematical activity with digital technology by tracing it from its development through its use in classrooms. Drawing on material-semiotic approaches from the field of Science and Technology Studies, it examines the visions of mathematical activity that developers had for an advanced graphing calculator. It then follows the...

Questions related to time are central when using and studying mobile social media use. In this workshop paper, we discuss some of the issues related to temporality that we are currently dealing with as part of our attempts to understand social media use practices. We discuss the challenge of defining a temporal unit of analysis, different ways that...

In this paper, we present a preliminary analysis of ongoing work that examines ways smartphones have created new forms of sociality and participation in museums. We draw upon initial findings from a study at the Gothenburg Natural History Museum as well as a number of studies conducted at the Universeum, a science center in Gothenburg. Drawing upon...

This article examines the role of materials in education by investigating the inclusion of a handheld digital technology in mathematics classrooms. By drawing on activity theory to conceptualize learning with technology and Actor-Network theory to understand the relationships between materials and humans, the use of educational technology in two se...

Seeking to contribute to our understanding of the role of educational technology in mathematical learning, this paper takes a socio-genetic approach to tracing the ways technology becomes part of classroom mathematical activity. It illuminates the reflexive processes of inscription, translation and re-inscription as technologies evolve by examining...