Just presented at the SITE2015 conference:
Abstract: Despite the widespread use of sentiment analysis by many disciplines, it has been a largely underused tool in educational contexts. The purpose of this paper is to explore some potential uses for sentiment analysis in educational settings and to present a sample study using the approach. Using sentiment analysis, we compare the “friendliness” of two educational technology conferences and use these data to answer the question: Is SITE the friendliest conference? We then expand the discussion to consider how education researchers and practitioners may fruitfully use sentiment analysis.