Social Media Use in Online Learning

I think social media can benefit a course by having the conversation continue outside of the classroom which can foster a sense of community, which is especially important for online courses (Meyer, 2015). It is much more difficult to foster a sense of community when people are not present in the same location and have informal conversations. Informal conversations tend to happen naturally as students come into a physical classroom. They have conversations with each other and with me. But, unlike conversations that take place physically, when those conversations occur on the internet in social media outlets, they are permanently recorded and are difficult if not impossible to erase. So, in attempting to recreate the physical environment; it is important to remember that many people do not like putting personal information out on the internet. In addition, since many use social media in their personal lives they may not like using these tools in the class. Using alternative, less popular social media outlets and software may be the answer, in addition to allowing students to use pseudonyms (Meyer, 2015; Trowbridge, Waterbury & Sudbury, 2017).

While reading this week, I got an idea for collaboration across groups for my graduate class. The students use data analytics and participate in a simulation where they run a political campaign for a fictional candidate. They collaborate within groups but it would be great if they could also collaborate across groups. There are four groups per island each with their own candidate. These four groups are competing so collaboration between these groups would not be desired. But, I typically have at least eight groups and multiple islands which would allow for cross group collaboration across islands. They could collaborate on strategies and uses of the data since they are not competing. I think this could be facilitated best by using a social media platform as there are multiple turns per week and the students could communicate text, video, and audio. I prefer to use tools that are easily integrated into the learning management system (LMS) so that the students can find everything in one place and it makes grading easier. Many of the software tools mentioned in the reading would require set up outside of the LMS. If the benefits of this type of collaboration on learning is positive then the inconvenience of not integrating into the LMS would be worth it. I am looking forward to reading more research on the benefits of using social media technology for learning.

I am very excited about a new social media tool called voicethread (www.voicethread.com). I have created an account and I can see that it would be very useful for students to share comments on videos and other types of internet media. I created an account and did a test using a video from Kahn Academy (khanacademy.org), I added comments both in text and in audio. There is a bit of a learning curve but I can see this as being very useful. The best thing is that it can be embedded into a webpage which could be posted on the LMS for easy access by students.

Meyer, L. (2015, January 07). 6 Alternative Social Media Tools for Teaching and Learning. Retrieved July 23, 2017, from https://campustechnology.com/Articles/2015/01/07/6-Alternative-Social-Media-Tools-for-Teaching-and-Learning.aspx?Page=4

Trowbridge, S., Waterbury, C., & Sudbury, L. (2017, April 10). Learning in Bursts: Microlearning with Social Media. Retrieved July 23, 2017, from http://er.educause.edu/articles/2017/4/learning-in-bursts-microlearning-with-social-media