I think all the social media tool that encourage interaction may help learning. But what is more important is the access and ease of connectivity and how the learning design is designed in the respective tool. The learning must be designed to encourage, motivate, engage and to support learning among the social group.

Dear Yusup

Thanks for your contribution, what I have followed up is merely to find out the most provocative components in regard to motivation, as you mentioned, to engage more interaction to gain learning process.

Synchronous interaction in real time such as chatting using instant messenger, and asynchronous discussion using online forum. But please remember, teacher guided are require

I think the big idea is to produce a meaningful engagement. In one online course, I required a group project of creating a sustainable community based on some initial directions about the site, people in the community, geography, etc. If you think about the SIM games, it is the same idea but instead of drawing things out on the screen for the individual user, or even allowing a group to build a city as in some newer offerings, my goal was to establish interpersonal conversation on the subject of sustainability. This required that there be tangible problems to solve and a very real end goal (time deadline as well as clearly defined outcome for the projects).

There was quite a bit of resistance as the "normal" activity for online learning was to read something, post a response, and go back to "life" or other activities. There is limited challenge to solving a problem independently. However, when you add the group component, then individual ideas must be supported so you include reflection, and there needs to be negotiation at many levels for the group to move forward. Most students really dislike group projects though as there are many who are there for a "free ride" or "easy grade". Implementing projects helps address this by adding the meaning for engagement … the social interaction is a byproduct.

I don't see many things that start with an intention of social interaction that succeed for this same reason. Many who engage in online learning are there because it is simpler or easier. Yes, there are the honest ones wanting the best education and unable to attend a physical school, but these still tend to be the exception.

Social media tools can impact on awareness and procedural learning process (learning by experience) and collective intelligence-based learning process.

The FOAF social library system enabling personalised collections and for sharing with peers. Social network analysis has been a useful aid.

Dear Roslina and Frederic and Ed Garrett and

Amard Emines

Thank you for your helpful comments

Based our experiences, students appreciate to be part of learning materials creators - blogs and wikis with their own contribution (of course, teacher supervision is necessary) making learning process more attractive for them

Hi everyone

within the BMid program at Griffith University we use social media in a number of meaningful ways

As part of our orientation and activities to promote connection with peers we have introduced student moderated Facebook pages - students have given very positive feedback confirming it helps them connect with their peers which is very important in this blended learning course - students attend campus for 2 weeks intensive learning and are then out in much smaller groups on clinical practice so this really helps top keep them connected as a group

we also introduce Facebook pages rather than discussion boards onto each course site as an information sharing and discussion tool again feedback from students is really positive

within courses we engage with social media in our assessment strategy for example in one course students are required to design and develop a website to promote normal birth

in another they use the Google site platform to develop a personal professional portfolio and we deliver lectures using collaborate and students are required to do group work which entails using a Wiki to develop a presentation then delivering their presentation to their peers using the collaborate platform

hope this has been useful and stimulated some good ideas

Mary Sdebotham

Griffith University Queensland

Dear Mary Sdebotham,

Many thanks for your helpful comments in regard your previous research, it was amazing to see such tremendous amount of effort to bring some clarity to what lies behind the emerging tools exploit e-learning and pedagogical points. Actually, students who obligate to do their online mundane and usual activities in favor of learning is really surprising and make me some good ideas.

My opinion is that use of social networks is most effective way of knowledge sharing. That way students can easily find benchmarks as to check their progress, for they're not restricted to the circle of their offline friends.

At Faculty of Information Technologies in Mostar we use our forum (fit.cs) to distribute information and encourage knowledge sharing. The forum has limited access, and is structured into years and courses. Students ask questions about learning content from our LMS and have answers either from other students or from educators. It has proven to be very effective assuming there are motivated students and that is the case for every generation.

It, like any other shared learning environment, faciliates colaborative learning

Hi Bakhtiar,

In terms of social networks and their impact on education and learning, you might also be interested in this quite recent article: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/socf.12073/abstract.

It is about the effects of social closure on pupils success in school. The authors investigate this property with respect to socio-demographic backgrounds and closure of their parental social networks.

Best,

René

Dear Bakhtiar, there are many interesting materials available in a MOOC, Social Media for Active Learning at http://meme.coe.fsu.edu/smooc/#.U17orRDCb-o

We published our experience of using social networks to increase students' participation. The study is published here: http://sic.ici.ro/sic2014_2/index.html

Carlos GUERRERO, Antoni JAUME-I-CAPÓ, Use of Social Networks to Motivate Computer-Engineering Students to Participate in Self-assessment Activities, Studies in Informatics and Control, ISSN 1220-1766, vol. 23 (2), pp. 197-206, 2014.

The study presents a quantitative research study comparing the participation of the students when social tools are used with times with other types of motivations.

Social Media can enhance student engagement and make learning more motivating. Here's a conference paper that attempted to use Facebook to address student learning regarding "English" writing and speaking:

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 -...