Educational Technology Blog

Social Media – from Recruitment to Alumni

September 10th, 2011

Higher Education Administration with Social Media, edited by Laura and Charles Wankel, published this year by Emerald is volume two in a series on social media in higher education and follows Educating Educators with Social Media. It focuses on administration with chapters from contributors describing how universities are using social media from student enrolment, through advising, mentoring and learning to public and alumni relations.

In this brief book review I focus on the chapter on learning which describes two case studies on social bookmarking and two on microblogging in Bournemouth University. Their aim was to facilitate collaboration and foster a sense of belonging through the use of social media.

Midwifery students used social bookmarking to collaborate on a project on breastfeeding guidelines while on their clinical placements. A tool within the VLE was chosen to keep academic work separate from the students’ personal lives. The need for consistent tag names was recognised. The social bookmarking tool enabled the student to share, discuss and evaluate web-based resources. Feedback from staff and students suggested that the collaboration worked well and would be continued.

University librarians also used social bookmarking within the VLE to tag multimedia resources according to their copyright status. This arose in response to requests from lecturers who wanted to use multimedia resources in their teaching but were uncertain about the legal position. Previously librarians in different schools found themselves answering the same questions about the same resources so the use of social bookmarking avoided duplication of effort on their part.

Lecturers found that first year healthcare students were making little use of VLE for communication and discussion perhaps because it was not suitable for instant communication. Twitter can be used on a smartphone and so allows immediate, synchronous communication. The lecturer created a private Twitter account. Group tweets were used so that students did not have to follow each other. Less than half the class participated perhaps because use of Twitter was optional or perhaps because Twitter was introduced late in the semester. Tweets included questions to the lecturer, peer-to-peer Twitter support and brief reflection. It is planned to use Twitter again from the start of the course.

The law librarian also used Twitter to gather and disseminate information from law databases, legal publications and colleagues. Though the service was aimed at law students the majority of followers were external to the university. Twitter was used as a broadcast medium rather than as a means of collaboration.

Based on the limited information in the book it would seem that the librarians and their ‘lecturer’ clients made the most effective use of the media. In particular, the use of Twitter with students was novel. Perhaps it did not address a real need of many students in either case. It would be interesting to learn more about the next iteration of the two student projects.

The next book in the series will be Teaching Arts and Science with Social Media. I look forward to reading more about the use of social media as educational tools.

Entry Filed under: SocialNetwork,tool