How can social media be used as a positive force?

Social media is a powerful tool with unlimited potential, and with the advent of the smartphone, its use has become ubiquitous among students, particularly those who were born in and grew up in the digital age. For these young people, the use of social media is second nature. While early on social media was introduced as a tool enabling individuals to connect and engage with one another for social purposes, over the last two decades its use has expanded to include a host of other functions. Among these is the utilization of social media technology in the design of structured learning activities in the classroom, often referred to as social media learning activities (SMLA). The use of social media in education has become more pronounced at the college level where increasingly it is being integrated into course syllabi and assignments to complement in-person or online courses in a variety of academic disciplines such as language learning, science, business, music, visual arts, and other subjects. Through social media, students may connect with peers, comment on each other’s work, collaborate, and create projects using microblogging platforms, social networking sites, and media sharing tools.

Mason researchers examine how the use of social media as a supplement to academic coursework supports student learning.

A large body of existing research supports the use of social media as a supplement to coursework with evidence that it can support student learning and promote distinct levels of cognitive processes and several types of knowledge. While there is broad consensus on the benefits of using social media as a learning tool in college coursework, little research has been done on the formal process used by faculty in deciding how best to incorporate social media into their teaching practices and the strategy they adopt in selecting the platform most conducive to the learning objectives of the course. Faculty at George Mason University’s Learning Design and Technology program within the School of Education explored the issues surrounding the use of social media as a learning tool in a study they co-authored in 2020. Their research focused on how social media learning activities affect cognitive processes and types of knowledge that students acquire when they engage in these endeavors.

The study was conducted at a public university located in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States and included six faculty participants who had been using social media in their courses for at least two years. The data collected was comprised of a review of course syllabi and supporting materials and an analysis of some 343 course-related social media posts from 115 students enrolled in the classes. Researchers also interviewed faculty participants at both the start and the end of the study. Questions focused on faculty perceptions about the use of social media to support student learning, the criteria they used in choosing the social media platform for their classes, strategies guiding them in developing social media learning activities, their experiences with the social media learning activities they chose, whether they achieved desired learning outcomes, the types of knowledge that the students gained, and revisions faculty would make in integrating social media into their pedagogical practices moving forward.

The study results showed a total of 12 SMLAs (social media learning activities) across the courses taught by the faculty participants which included four microblogging activities, two blogging activities, three wiki activities, one podcasting activity, one infographic activity integrated into a blog, and one YouTube activity. Of these, two were used for informal class reminders and announcements, while ten were structured, graded activities described in the syllabi. These accounted for varying percentages of the final course grade. Nine of the twelve SMLAs were public and three were private.

Study results showed that social media learning activities can promote higher and lower levels of cognition and knowledge acquisition.

Based on their analysis of the student posts, researchers found that the social media tools used in the coursework could promote both higher and lower levels of cognitive processes, such as “Remembering,” “Understanding,” or “Creating.” The social media tools also were found to have promoted several types of knowledge depending on the design of the social media learning activity and how students used the platform technology. Researchers determined that wiki social media learning activities that promote collaborative content sharing, as well as blogging can promote all levels of cognitive processes, and can support “factual, conceptual, and metacognitive knowledge.” In other results, researchers found that microblogging can promote “Remembering,” “Understanding,” and “Analyzing,” and facilitate the acquisition of “factual, conceptual, and metacognitive knowledge.” Podcast social media learning activities can encourage “Creating,” “Applying,” and “Remembering,” and promote all types of knowledge. Finally, media editing and social media sharing applications have the capacity to support “Creating,” “Understanding,” and “Remembering,” and promote “factual, conceptual, and metacognitive knowledge.”

Researchers found that blogs and wikis were sometimes used in place of a university Learning Management System (LMS).

The study authors also discovered that in certain instances, most notably in courses where blogs and wikis were used, faculty relied upon those platforms instead of the university’s Learning Management System (LMS) to share content with students, post assignment descriptions, and allow students to share their work. Researchers suggest that the public nature of blogs in which the student’s work is made visible to an audience beyond the teacher and their peers, may lead to higher quality posts and this could give blogs an advantage over Learning Management Systems.

Finally, researchers found that faculty did not appear to have a formal strategy guiding them on which social media application to use in their courses. Faculty chose social media that they were most familiar with, and which seemed to have the most capabilities and versatility as related to the specific course content they taught. The authors of the study recommend that faculty be given formal pedagogical training to design more effective social media learning activities appropriate for the learning objectives of the courses they teach.

To learn more about social media learning activities, read this article by faculty at George Mason University’s School of Education. The Learning Design and Technology program at Mason prepares students for positions in industry, government, and nonprofit organizations that seek to strengthen workplace performance with learning interventions and experiences.