As a research fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, based at Deakin University, my role on the Pandemic Parenting project is to provide new insights into the use of digital and designerly technologies for data-driven creative research outputs. The video showcase provides an overview of the metaverse research exhibit that I collaboratively built in Mozilla Hubs.
The Pandemic Parenting research project, formally known as ‘Children, Media, and Parenting in the COVID-19 Pandemic’ is a transglobal study led by Professor Rebekah Willet from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and supported by the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child. The project investigated families’ experiences of screen media use during the COVID-19 pandemic. It involved 140 participants who each engaged in an online interview and a collaborative search for an image that resonated with their experiences of the pandemic.
The carefully curated data featured in the exhibit draws out onto-epistemological issues connected with interview methods including what gets lost in transcriptions, interstitial moments, and the affective intensity of online interviews. At the same time, the creation of the Mozilla Hub becomes a method to document and generate new insights into a transnational dataset and create a virtual site for engaging diverse publics. Crucially, it makes it possible for researchers to provide an account of the research to participants who may not be interested in reading academic publications. We argue this is significant because it provides a way to democratise research and elicit critical feedback that crosses geographical and temporal boundaries.
The showcase was first presented at the Connected Learning Summit on 27-29 July, 2022. It has since been presented as part of featured symposia at: the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) Conference: Transforming the Future of Education: The Role of Research, 27November- 1 December 2022, University of South Australia, City West Campus; (Forthcoming) the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting, 13 April 2023 – 16 April 2023, Chicago, Illinois.
Jessica Laraine Williams 