First teaching experience for students  [27.10.23]

How credible do people find news on TikTok? Master's student Kerria Drüppel conducted a small research project together with students at the Humboldt reloaded SummerCamp. She took on the role of a "teaching researcher" and explained to the students how empirical social research works. She reports on her experiences in our project of the month.

This project will be offered again next semester. It is particularly suitable for students of business education or biology. All other students are also welcome!

Would you like to participate or do you have any questions? Send us an email: humboldt-reloaded@uni-hohenheim.de. All projects and information can be found at https://humboldt-reloaded.uni-hohenheim.de

I AM...

Kerria Drüppel, 4th FS. Communication Management and Analysis

IN MY PROJECT...

"SummerCamp2023 - Research in the lab, in nature and on the computer", I looked at what empirical social research is, how to conduct empirical research and carried out a study together with students from the eighth to eleventh grade. In the study, we investigated how credible people perceive different news content on TikTok.

IN PRACTICE THIS MEANS...

For one week, we dealt with the criteria that good empirical social science has to fulfil and together we developed an experimental survey.

Within the framework of the survey, our test persons were divided into three groups. We showed the first group a video from @nicetoknow, a service of the public broadcaster. The second group saw a video from an influencer. Both videos were about the sunken Titanic submarine.

The last group, our control group, saw a BookTok video. The latter had nothing to do with the submarine or news. Unfortunately, we couldn't produce our own videos in the short time available, so we made sure to keep as many variables constant as possible.

Afterwards, we asked the test persons about the credibility of the content. In the last step, we analysed and evaluated our data together and presented it to the other participants of the Summer School. Within five days, we went through the entire research process and got to know it.

MY AHA-MOMENT

I really enjoyed the whole week with the students. It was super exciting to see that some things worked well, while my plan didn't work in other places.

For example, it took us much longer to select the videos than I had originally planned. But the students were more interested in the evaluation and we were able to go much deeper into the topic than originally planned.

In any case, a lot of flexibility was needed. Another challenge was the statistical evaluation of the survey under time pressure until the next morning. This made me realise once again how important it is to deal with the question of what the theoretical preliminary considerations mean for the evaluation right from the start.

MY TIP...

The Summer School is a great way to gain experience in teaching. The project has shown me that I also really enjoy this aspect of academic work. In addition, the project offers a great opportunity to deal with topics and issues for which there is otherwise not much time during studies.

AND NOW...

At the Humboldt reloaded annual conference on 26 October in Hohenheim Castle, our results will be presented together with the other Summer School projects. The students will also have the opportunity to show their work to others. I will also be able to use some aspects of my research in the run-up and the results of our study for my upcoming Master's thesis.