Nowadays, social networks are very much in use by almost everybody. In our country, many teachers use Facebook as a communication tool between the students and teachers. Assignments are also upload in Facebook and answers are also sent there, like in the case of fundamentals of research or thesis writing.
Are there any similar experience in your country? I would love very much to hear from you. Thank you.
Would say Social Networks like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn are usable for building social advertising and finding of contacts.
To get good knowledge it's better to use Search Engines like GOOGLE or even specialised Knowledge Bases like Wikipedia.
Hi! I use Facebook with my students to discuss key concepts that they are exploring. I probe, observe, monitor and question their ideas. I use it to start a conversation, healthy debate and to inform them about current issues that are ongoing. I find it to be a useful way to observe responses from their peers and how they communicate and share ideas with each other too.
Using it in education, encourages a positive netiquette and confidence to share ideas with each other. As a 21st century learner, they are embracing technologies to enhance their collaborative skills and problem solving skills, whilst advancing their ICT skills.
As they are all familiar with Facebook and have an account, demo/teaching about how to use the sns is minimal, which saves time too. It is easy for them to find useful sources including youtube links or images to present their ideas and this can then influence the overall learning experience that they have.
In order to avoid repeating some parts of the above mentioned answers, I would just like to share some insight from my personal teaching experience on a undergraduate and graduate university level.
It is very clear that students are quite familiar with social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others and there were even some indicators showing that students prefer social networks (especially Facebook) as a communication channel. Having that in mind, I believe that social networks can be used (at least to some extent) to communicate with students and create a specific interaction platform. Obviously, it could very much depend on the class and/or student level.
For example, if we think about teaching e-marketing (or digital marketing) it is natural to at least showcase the capabilities of the said social networks. On the other hand, there were some examples where the usage of social networks were discouraged on the Faculty or University level for different reasons (usually security or privacy).
It always comes down to a specific situational analysis but I think there is clear evidence of using social networks as an applicable educational tool.
Find the similar Q&A topic below:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Do_you_think_interaction_with_lecturers_on_social_media_like_Facebook_improves_a_students_motivation_about_the_lessons_How_can_we_measure_that
It is not official but I know that social media can be used to enhance teaching and learning. I used the Google Apps for Education to extend and flip my Management Information System class of 500 students in semester. The class was divided into two groups-Business and Education. Students used Google Blooger and Google + to create a summary of lessons taught and Google Spreadsheet to share their blog sites for peer review. I randomly review some of the work and it was fantastic. They told me at the end of the semester that it was challenging and enlightening experince.
Your answers have all been very helpful and useful to me. Thank you! May you continue to answer other questions that I may ask in the future.
In one study I recently finished I found that social networking increase sense of community and when used in a collaborative learning environment it leads to better students' outcomes and performance. Additionally, with social networking some strategies related to an effective knowledge management are also encouraged.
Social networks can be used in education, but which ones?
As educators we also need to take into account who is behind the scene and what these social networks are doing. Because Facebook and other commercial social networks are collecting a lot of personal information and totally invade our privacy, I think that we need to avoid these tools without explaining to our students what happens to their privacy.
I even think that we should not use those, full point. We'd better select only one of the very few privacy concerned existing SN like identi.ca, diaspora or pump.io.
There is literature now being published, which examines the use of SoMe within Medical Education as a teaching tool. Perhaps start with one of the following papers.
http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/0142159X.2013.852167
Article Social media and medical education: Exploring the potential ...
Social networks are essential components of Personal Learning Environments (PLE). In some of our courses we have suggested to use, first of all, LinkedIn and ResearchGate. These social networks are more "academic" oriented, and searching for relevant learning resources is easier. Particularly we have used LinkedIn for students group creation. Other social networks, like Twitter, were used too, and, of course, the usual email communication.
I think social networks are, and will be in the near future, important components of MOOC, maybe contributing to solve a methodological challenge: student learning personalization.
Yes it is a good tool but depends on the user.and nature of the audience. It means that instructor should know how and where to know taking in mind the type of students he is handling. For example same rule can't be applied in North American students and African students at the same time.
It is first of all quite interesting to see how many people regard LinkedIn and Researchgate and Facebook as social networks. It is in fact tools, and not social networks. Social Networks consist of a group of people, and the relationships a researcher defines on them - for example kinship, friendship, support, information sharing, etc. These structures can be studied to understand human behavior.
Yes, social networking sites can develop into education tools, depending on the underpinning perspective on learning. I found Facebook not sufficient, therefore I have developed a social networking site to support the learning of my post graduate students at UNISA, an open and distance institute for higher education. Based on the intensive use of the site, I have provided my students with an opportunity to learn from one another - and to take the responsibility for their own learning, as well as that of their peers.
Of course increasingly social networking have influence into educational environments. Many tools designed for education facilities have incorporated own social networks. It is important to consider in any teaching strategy the culture of students in the use of devices in the network space, communication styles. Even in environments designed for distance learning, with all of the social networking facilities, students prefer to use their usual communication protocols. It is important that the teacher note this and take in its classroom.
As a teacher educator who teaches online, I find social networking tools to be an indispensable addition to my courses. I use Google+ for the course communication platform as it provides a way for students to create asynchronous video posts and communicate synchronously via videoconferencing. Students report this allows them to "get to know" their fellow online classmates at a deeper level.
I also introduce my students to Twitter as a mentorship tool. They learn that Twitter can be used to connect with experienced educators who share their teaching experiences, answer questions, provide resources, and actively participate in weekly discussions on educational topics within the framework of microblogging. It is important that our future teachers (and current teachers) understand how social networking tools can be used for learning in order to help their own students leverage the power of these tools for their own independent learning.
Social networks are a reality of our students. They are permanently present in these spaces and dialogue, publish, share ideas, thoughts and other things of their daily lives. An informal learning teachers can take advantage of this reality with the creation of discussion groups and sharing in order to complement the formal learning that is given in the academic context. Networks used in schools of basic education are: Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. The higher academic level than these are: Linkedin, ResearchGate, Iamresearch, Scoop.it among others.
Aurea, I think the first question is what do you mean by social network and the second is where is this placed within the educational domain and therefore understand the concept and requirements of the tool.
For example, if we take Facebook, in simple terms, it is a big public blog with a like function. So how is social networking any different to the blog within the garden wall of the VLE (I acknowledge that there are many differences).
How do we turn this social networking tool into an educational tool or how can we quantitatively show that engagement within the social networking actually increased the learning attainment of the student(s). However, it may be enough that a qualitative assessment which is based on user/ student feedback justifies the social networking tool as an educational tool.
I did some surface research into this question, which I have linked below as it may help you in your quest. You may need to look at more recent research such as http://www.editlib.org/p/148099/.
Research Technical Blog: Social Networking, A Missed Opportunity?
Yes, social networking is a good education tool. Current research and responses from others here confirm this point within higher education. Within a corporate environment, there are benefits for learning as well. Using only internal applications (Yammer for example), social applications can provide adult learners more control over their own learning beyond the confines of a course. Learners gain access to additional resources and support from others when needed on the job. In this way, learners can experience positive benefits within different contexts.
Dear Aurea,
Before do that please go through this and analyze the impact of social media usage among university students.
https://globaljournals.org/GJCST_Volume14/5-Influence-of-Facebook-in-Academic.pdf
social media applications is the best education tools, because there are a usable and ubiquity with in different levels of ages, also, the time was used in this application is greater than other applications.
"Social networking" is an ambiguous term. While the use of social networks -- that is, human constructs comprised of people working in a collaborative fashion -- are very effective and good, there is another sense of "social networking" that might be understood. Christa Van Staden's comment earlier in this thread is particularly insightful.
If, by "social networking" we are referring to software-based tools commonly referred to as 'social media', then a certain level of nuance becomes operative, and we must begin to think more carefully about what we're doing.
While I use social media tools very heavily in my classes, these tools are all closed, in the sense that my organization operates the tools. We own our "social media", and we're not scraping it in order to sell our students to the highest advertising bidder. The contributions of participants are kept within that specific organizational context, and those contributions are eventually deleted from the records.
By contrast, 'public' social media such as Twitter, Google+, and Facebook exist for the sole purpose of collecting data about their users and selling that data to advertisers. This is particularly true of Facebook, which uses multiple questionable methods to track its users across the internet -- even sites which it does not own or control.
It would be irresponsible of me to require my students to enter into this situation. Even if they already had accounts on these services, my use of those services would further expose them to additional invasions of privacy, and I would be complicit in their continued monetization of my students' lives.
http://www.law.kuleuven.be/icri/en/news/item/icri-cir-advises-belgian-privacy-commission-in-facebook-investigation
In the United States, FERPA privacy law also tends to limit use of social media in any way that people outside the class can see the class-related posts of the students.
Yes, as it's second nature to digital natives, so we can use it in education to keep them engaged in their preferred medium. Here's a conference paper I presented showing how this can be done in education:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263767122_Social_Media_in_Education_Bringing_Your_Classroom_to_Life_-_UWI_Research_Expo_2013
Best regards,
Debra
Conference Paper Social Media in Education: Bringing Your Classroom to Life -...
General, social media can: 1) engage and motivate users to do something in real life, e.g. collecting garbage in forests, searching for and photographing plant species, bumblebees; 2) Can be used for citizen science; 3) mutual learning; 4) enable contact with specialists, 5) meet the expectations of residents / Internet users.
The speed of communication is both the advantage and the disadvantage. It can quickly spread and duplicate untrue information.
It may be worth getting inspired by research on the possibilities of social media in the aspects of health protection, nature protection and education.
An example of forestry research: https://www.researchgate.net/project/Possibilities-of-using-social-media-in-public-communication-and-education-in-forestry
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