Social Media in Learning: Explorations overview

Background

Use of social media is becoming increasingly widespread in higher education, and it is suggested that it may be used to enhance the educational experience. To date, its application in areas such as mathematics and engineering is rather less prevalent than in applied areas of social science, arts and humanities. A wide range of different approaches and uses of can be identified. Social media includes any application which provides opportunities for publishing, curating, sharing, commenting and discussing materials online. The media can be video, audio, text and documents. Well known and currently popular examples include Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Storify, Pinterest, ScoopIt, Tumblr and Mendeley.

Universities use social media for marketing, building reputation and establishing connections between institutions and students prior to admission. Institutions, departments and individual teachers can be found using social media to sustain social connection to students.

Students, make use of social media throughout the student life-cycle discussing institutions and destination during application, organising social life, running clubs and societies, convening meetings, and perhaps, sometimes discussing topics related to their studies, and after graduation maintaining contact with teachers and fellow students.
In this context it is hardly surprising that social media is being purposefully used by academics, curating resource collections, recording and archiving discussions, and dynamically during their teaching to promote discussion and engagement in topics during and beyond the lecture slot.
It is not clear whether benefits of such approaches are equal across different subject areas and disciplines, or what approaches are the most successful. This paper presents an account of some purposeful actions to introduce and use social media in Engineering Mathematics classes taught to Foundation Year Students. It explores the motivations, potential advantages and potential pitfalls in adopting this type of educational intervention.
Building on known high usage of Facebook for discussion and interaction, Facebook groups have been created for Foundation Year students to accompany and supplement the lecture course. There is immediate evidence and feedback that the resources are viewed by the majority of students, although there is an apparent reluctance to engage in online discussions through this group. However students continue to have related discussions in other Facebook groups, and to some extent on other social media. This is broadly consistent with what is known as the 1% rule of participation in Internet communities.
Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data gathered through surveys, observations, interviews and group discussions, this paper explores students’ use of social media formally and informally in the context of the Foundation year as a whole, and

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specifically in the context of the engineering mathematics. Differences identified between practices and behaviours in these two contexts are presented and discussed. Research Question:
How do students use social media in support of their learning?

1. (i)  Are there any identifiable patterns of usage for social media in learning?
2. (ii)  What factors appear to influence any pattern of engagement with social

   media in learning?