scholarly journals Social media, learning and connections for international students: The disconnect between what students use and the tools learning management systems offer

Author(s):  
Jade Sleeman ◽  
Catherine Lang ◽  
Eva Dakich

With the increased focus on the use of digital platforms to facilitate teaching and learning comes the challenge of creating connections between international students and their new classmates. The use of social media in higher education may be one avenue that can enable not only learning but also social connections between students to improve the international study experience and sense of community. This article reports on the findings of a small survey study at an Australian university, which demonstrate that the majority of international students surveyed had greater prior experience with social network sites for personal and educational use rather than wikis, blogs, and discussion forums, which are often used in institutional settings. Furthermore, the results suggest that the educational use of social network sites led many participants to add new classmates as profile friends. These findings have implications for the choice of digital platforms for pedagogical use of social media and how that may impact on the teaching of international students in higher education for making connections.

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-126
Author(s):  
Pengiran Hajah Siti Norainna Bt Pengiran Haji Besar

ABSTRACT: The social media comprises of diverse applications with different main functions configurations and characteristics. This paper is to gain insight into the potential use of social media in the context of higher education and particularly into the teacher use of Facebook in their teaching. The literature review presented in this paper begins by synthesizing the definition and types of social media and exploring its characteristic as well as critically interrogating related studies as to how social media, particularly Facebook, is being used in order to connect learners and support teachers teaching. It can be concluded that social media comprises of diverse applications with different main functions configurations and characteristics. The most prevalent and high profile social media is SNSs (Social Network Sites), for example Facebook, that has proved its ability to assist education through numbers of studies which show its benefits in education, but then, again at the same time, has its own drawback if it is not used effectively in an educational context. Accordingly, more studies are needed pertaining the Facebook and its implication in order to examine students-teacher interaction and students’ engagement.KEY WORD: Social Media; Facebook; Implementation; Teachers Teaching; Higher Education. ABSTRAKSI: “Media Sosial dan Perlaksanannya di Pengajian Tinggi”. Media sosial terdiri daripada pelbagai aplikasi dengan ciri-ciri utama fungsi dan konfigurasi yang berlainan. Kertas ini adalah untuk mendapatkan maklumat tentang potensi penggunaan media sosial dalam konteks pendidikan tinggi dan terutamanya penggunaan Facebook dalam pengajaran guru. Kajian literatur dalam kertas ini bermula dengan mensintesis definisi dan jenis media sosial dan meneroka ciri-cirinya secara kritikal yang berkaitan tentang bagaimana media sosial, terutamanya Facebook, digunakan dalam menyokong pengajaran guru dan pembelajaran pelajar. Dapat disimpulkan bahawa media sosial terdiri daripada pelbagai aplikasi dengan fungsi dan ciri-ciri yang berbeza. Penggunaan media sosial yang tertinggi adalah SNSs (Social Network Sites), sebagai contoh Facebook, yang telah membuktikan keupayaan untuk membantu pendidikan melalui beberapa kajian terdahulu yang mana ia menyenaraikan faedah-faedahnya dalam pengajaran dan pembelajaran, tetapi pada masa yang sama, sosial media mempunyai kelemahan sendiri jika ia tidak digunakan dengan berkesan dalam konteks pendidikan. Oleh itu, lebih banyak kajian diperlukan berkenaan dengan Facebook dan perlaksanaannya untuk mengkaji interaksi pelajar-guru dan penglibatan pelajar.KATA KUNCI: Media Sosial; Facebook; Perlaksanaan; Pengajaran Guru; Pendidikan Tinggi.About the Author: Pengiran Dr. Hajah Siti Norainna bt Pengiran Haji Besar is a Lecturer at the APB UBD (Academy of Brunei Studies, University of Brunei Darussalam), Jalan Tungku Link, BE 1410, Negara Brunei Darussalam. For academic interests, the author is able to be contacted via her e-mail address at: [email protected] to cite this article? Haji Besar, Pengiran Hajah Siti Norainna bt Pengiran. (2017). “Social Media and its Implementation in Higher Education” in MIMBAR PENDIDIKAN: Jurnal Indonesia untuk Kajian Pendidikan, Vol.2(2), September, pp.115-126. Bandung, Indonesia: UPI [Indonesia University of Education] Press, ISSN 2527-3868 (print) and 2503-457X (online). Chronicle of the article: Accepted (January 30, 2017); Revised (May 20, 2017); and Published (September 30, 2017).


Author(s):  
Chaka Chaka

This chapter reports on a study—conducted in 2011—that employed two social media networks, Facebook and MXit, as educational tools at one university in South Africa. MXit is a South African-based social networking application. The study involved a cohort of second year Bachelor of Education in English undergraduate students at this university as its participants. The latter were required to utilize Facebook and MXit to engage in both asynchronous formal writing and synchronous paragraph writing, respectively. All this took place outside participants’ tutorial class schedule. In this study, participants were able to produce asynchronous formal writing samples in varying degrees using Facebook. Similarly, they were also able to produce synchronous written paragraphs using MXit even though some paragraphs displayed a high degree of linguistic textisms. Other affordances that these two social media technologies offered the participants in this study are: anytime, any day, and anywhere asynchronous and synchronous learning; asynchronous and synchronous feedback; virtual incidental learning; socially situated online learning; and Presence Awareness Learning (PAL). In conclusion, the study suggests that there are further affordances that these two social media technologies can offer higher education. These are: supplemental teaching and learning; cloud storage for teaching and learning materials (in the case of Facebook); virtual platforms for revision; digital platforms for micro-teaching and micro-learning (in respect of MXit); and value-added platforms for just-in-time mobile teaching and learning.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (01) ◽  
pp. 2040023 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mamoun Masoud Abdulqader ◽  
Yousof Zohair Almunsour

This research aims to investigate the effects of social media use on higher education teaching and learning as well as the students’ academic performance. A total of 275 students and faculty members from the College of Computer Science and Information Technology at Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University took part in the study. The participants answered survey questions to analyse information on their use of social media in education and how that has affected their teaching, learning and grades. A majority of the participants reported that they used social media in training. However, they also stated that social media platforms were beneficial in academic matters. The number of participants who stated that the use of social media in learning helped improve their grades was 43%. The other 57% thought that social media had no impact on their grades or had an adverse effect or were undecided.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. p478
Author(s):  
Jorge F. Figueroa ◽  
Emarely Rosa-Dávila

This article presents a study on the perspective of two higher education professors from Puerto Rico in the use of social media for the ESL classroom. It covers the millennial generation characteristics and its influence on the teaching and learning process at the university level. Several strategies within the use of social media and emergent technologies are presented. The study participants reflect on the use of social media in the classroom and present how beneficial it has been in student achievement, retention, and engagement. Several remarks are made within the use of social media for the classroom and participants expose their experiences in the ESL classroom at the university level.


Author(s):  
Tamara R. Meredith ◽  
Scott J. Warren

Although faculty may not believe that they are legitimately “teaching” while engaging with students via Facebook, results of interviews and publicly available Facebook data clearly document intentional music faculty activities that fit the description of teaching through enculturation. This situates the phenomenon of Facebook groups firmly within the larger apprenticeship model in use in music departments; the process of enculturation through Facebook is used to teach new apprentices how to become functional members of their musical communities. Recommendations generated from the research and discussed in this chapter include addressing faculty concerns about personal and professional risk, departmental development of guidelines for Facebook group use and management that is based in enculturation theory, and training for music faculty in the use of social media channels as opportunities for teaching and learning.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-90
Author(s):  
Nguyen Trung Kien

Care of the self, according to Michel Foucault, is the practice of coming back to one’s soul and construct the truth of self. While in ancient times, people cared for themselves by writing in hupomnemata, in our modern times, we use social network sites (SNSs) or social media. These digital platforms have provided users with many technological advantages to conduct the online care of self. Sharing a post, posting a status, tweeting a photo or video, replying to a friend’s comments, or revising stories stored in their virtual timeline is one of many self-care acts in a virtual space. However, these advantages of digital technologies accompany with the challenges of losing freedom or being supervized by algorithms whenever individuals engage in social media. This paper tries to answer the question that how modern practices of hupomnemata and care for self, are supported and manipulated by social media’s algorithms. The paper is expected to contribute a new understanding of the self and care for the self in contemporary social media engagement.


Author(s):  
Ann M. Simpson

This chapter considers future directions for emerging social media technologies and their potential for teaching and learning practice in higher education. While technologies that support social media constantly change, it provides some simple and practical guidelines to assist teachers with their practice and use of social media technologies in their classrooms. This chapter acknowledges the evolving nature of the technologies available in today's teaching and learning context as well as ones that are considered to impact higher educational learning and teaching in the future, including descriptions of augmented and virtual reality and gamification and gamified learning.


Author(s):  
Julie Willems ◽  
Chie Adachi ◽  
Francesca Bussey ◽  
Iain Doherty ◽  
Henk Huijser

The integration of social media into higher education is having a significant impact on learning and teaching. As they become enmeshed in the fabric of academia, they are also becoming a site of contestation, especially in relation to teaching and learning. This research paper explores the key issues dominating current debates about the use of social media in higher education in Australasia. By exploring themes emerging from a debate around the use of social media in higher education in Australasia, it integrates additional comments from the collective wisdom of experienced colleagues from around the globe, as captured in the debate’s Twitter feed and live Periscope streaming. These comments highlight points of sensitivity in the adoption of social media in higher education in Australasia. This paper presents the findings and some key ideas that emerged from the debate.


Author(s):  
Tami Seifert

The use of Web 2.0 environments and social media in teaching and learning facilitates the provision of participatory and creative, learner-oriented teaching. The proposed chapter describes the role of social media in teaching and learning in colleges of higher education and suggests possible uses and applications for a variety of social media environments in education, especially the environments of Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Social networks facilitate activities that promote involvement, collaboration and engagement. Modeling of best practices using social networks enhances its usage by students, increases student confidence as to its implementation and creates a paradigm shift to a more personalized, participatory and collaborative learning and a more positive attitude towards its implementation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1S) ◽  
pp. 100S-115S
Author(s):  
Arianna Mainardi ◽  

This article engages with the current debate on feminisms and digital media by looking at the tension between individualism and collective action. Drawing on an empirical research project involving girls, carried out in Italy and focusing on female processes of subjectivation in a postfeminist new media context, it will discuss constraints and opportunities shaped by the everyday use of social media. The article places itself in the latest trend of cyberfeminist studies, by analysing friendship relationships developed among girls in and through digital media. It also looks at how the mediated nature of social network sites offers room for the building of alliances among girls, and how this challenges online and offline gender norms. In doing so, the article reflects on the way female relationships change and are reworked in digital culture, thus giving a new meaning to the feminist concept of sisterhood.


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