Effects of Emoji Skin Tone in a Peer-to-Peer Online Learning Scenario (Poster 3)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Fifteen
  In Poster Session: Equity, Community, and Citizenship

Abstract

Students often use emojis to represent themselves in digital peer-to-peer learning. Using the Cognitive Reconstruction of Knowledge Model, we experimentally explored how peer characteristics (peer emoji skin-tone), in interaction with learner characteristics (participants’ own skin-tone), affect learning. Participants encountered a fictitious peer tutor (represented with an emoji of light or dark skin-tone), who presented a refutation text on genetically modified foods in an online learning scenario. Participants were 153 students; 75 encountered a light-skin peer emoji, and 78 a dark-skin peer emoji, in a between-subjects design. Results revealed that significant conceptual change occurred, but the peer tutor’s emoji skin-tone did not predict learning outcomes. However, learners’ perceptions of their peer tutor correlated with their perceptions of that peer tutor’s lecture.

Authors

• Kanvarbir Gill, University of Oklahoma
  Presenting Author

• Marie Lippmann, California State University - Chico
  Non-Presenting Author

• Patrick Johnson, California State University - Chico
  Non-Presenting Author

• Benjamin C. Heddy, University of Oklahoma
  Non-Presenting Author