ABSTRACT
Undergraduate students majoring in communication today must develop proficiency in analytics, because analytics skills are in demand and applied at all levels of contemporary communication careers. This article presents a sequence of innovative active learning experiences developed and piloted with the goal of immersing research students in the experimental method, social media analytics, and data analysis. Two applied research and analytics classes engaged in a pre-test/post-test experiment pertaining to Instagram and social media bots. Afterward, students participated in a debriefing, an Instagram analytics class activity, and a field trip to a campus Social Media Listening Center, followed by an interactive data analysis lesson employing their experimental research results during the next class. Each active learning experience is outlined, results of the experiment are presented, and the need for increasing student social-media literacy and awareness of social-bots’ impact on analytics accuracy are discussed.
