It seems like everywhere you look these days, social media platforms are making headlines—and usually not for very positive reasons. But what if instructors could leverage the mass use of social media in their own higher education instruction?
Maybe you’ve already considered integrating social media tools into your course, but you have concerns about how to do it or challenges doing so would present. Maybe you’ve heard of other courses or instructors using social media in their lessons with varying levels of success, and you’re skeptical that making that move would be helpful to your instruction.
So let’s explore why you might want to consider using social media as a tool in higher education in spite of concerns.
Research Regarding Social Media as a Learning Tool
Whether for good or bad, social media is here to stay—so some educators are trying to find ways to use it to their advantage. As a result, a lot of research has now been done to find whether social media can be useful in a higher education setting—and if so, the best ways to implement its use.
The Results: Social Media Is Effective in Higher Education
Such research has found that social media use in higher education settings can actually be remarkably effective at encouraging cooperative learning (Hamadi et al 2022), and it can be highly useful in promoting active learning and engagement from students (Dougherty and Andercheck 2014). Social media also enables asynchronous discussion and resource sharing (Chugh and Ruhi 2018), which has become increasingly important in recent years thanks to changes in traditional teaching and learning patterns stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Example Study
One study conducted by professors of a large introductory class found that using a Facebook group for the class had a profound impact on student engagement (Dougherty and Andercheck 2014). The Facebook group provided more space for discussion than was available within class time, encouraged students to collaborate with other students in decision-making for class assignments, and helped students understand course requirements, obtain class notes, and fill in gaps in knowledge and understanding. The study reported, “students took action to manage their own learning, thereby practicing self-regulation” (Dougherty and Andercheck 2014, 101).
Additionally—and importantly—the Facebook group encouraged a sense of belonging among students. A sense of belonging is highly correlated with student success in higher education, so even just belonging to and participating in a social media group associated with a class can improve student performance. This is especially true of large classes, where students may have a harder time engaging and being active in the learning process (Dougherty and Andercheck 2014).
Suggestions for Using Social Media in Higher Education
So what is the best method for integrating social media as a learning tool in higher education? Here are some suggestions.
Choose the Right Platform
In this post, we talk mainly about Facebook integration into higher education settings. Because Facebook has been around longer than most other social media platforms (it has existed in some form for 20 years as of 2024), it is the focus of most of the research regarding social media use in higher education (Al-Qaysi et al 2023). This means that the suggested patterns and pedagogy for Facebook use within higher education are more robust than they are for other platforms. If walking in well-trodden footsteps with established guidelines is important to you, Facebook may be the way to go.
Another major benefit to Facebook is that, because most students are very familiar with Facebook, it is easy to use and implement as a learning tool (Dougherty and Andercheck 2014). Usually you won’t have a steep learning curve to contend with along with all the other challenges of higher education.
Tips for Platform Use
If you do adopt Facebook as your platform of choice, Kevin D. Dougherty and Brita Andercheck have some tips on how to be successful. And even if you choose another platform, the suggestions here may still be applicable and provide some great guidelines and starting spots:
- Have content waiting for students. Blank space can be very intimidating, limiting the students’ contributions.
- Add content regularly to keep the group relevant to students. Some possible options that Dougherty and Andercheck found effective were images and videos from class time, simple polls, questions of the day, and articles relevant to class material.
- Actively encourage use of the group and students contributing their own content—make suggestions in class and offer prizes for posts with most engagement.
While Facebook may be a good choice for many reasons, remember that “the choice of social media platform should be student-centred with an aim to promote learning” (Chugh and Ruhi 2018, 614); make sure that the platform you choose is the one that will best benefit your students.
Integrate Your Choice of Platform into Your Curriculum
Authors Hamadi, El-Den, Azam, and Sriratanaviriyakul outline the following process for integrating any social media platform into a higher education learning environment:
- Establish strong pedagogical basis for the integration process
- Mitigate major challenges associated with social media in education
- Develop clear measures and guidance (instructions) for students
- Develop incentives to encourage students’ participation in the activities
- Control and monitor course-related activities on the platform
- Evaluate the integration process
Adapt Social Media Use to Fit Your Needs
When it comes to challenges associated with implementing social media use in a higher education setting, consider the following options to overcome roadblocks and make social media an effective tool (Chugh and Ruhi 2018,):
Conclusion
Social media use in higher education can provide a significant contribution to the learning experience in higher education. While there are challenges to overcome when integrating a social media element into a higher education learning environment, there are also many pros to finding effective ways to use it.
In the words of authors Chugh and Ruhi (2018, 609), “in spite of the limitations, it is clearly evident that Facebook provides many benefits and it should be leveraged to improve educational outcomes by integrating it in higher learning environments.” The same can be said of other social media platforms. Social media, after all, is not going anywhere any time soon—so you might as well use it to your benefit.
References
Al-Qaysi, Noor, Andrina Granić, Mostafa Al-Emran, T. Ramayah, Edwin Garces, and Tugrul U.
Daim. 2023. “Social Media Adoption in Education: A Systematic Review of
Disciplines, Applications, and Influential Factors.” Technology in Society
73 (May): 102249. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2023.102249.
Chugh, Ritesh and Umar Ruhi. 2018. “Social Media in Higher Education: A Literature
Review of Facebook.” Education and Information Technologies 23: 605–616. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-017-9621-2.
Dougherty, Kevin D. and Brita Andercheck. 2014. “Using Facebook to Engage Learners in a
Large Introductory Course.” Teaching Sociology 42 (2): 95–104. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43187470.
Hamadi,
Mostafa, Jamal El-Den, Sami Azam, and Narumon Sriratanaviriyakul. 2022. “Integrating
Social Media as Cooperative Learning Tool in Higher Education Classrooms: An
Empirical Study.” Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information
Sciences 34, (6): 3722–3731. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jksuci.2020.12.007.
