Social Media and its Impact on Education

Are today’s students tweeting their way to better grades? Not really. However, at least, nine out of ten people hold one of these social media accounts like Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook.

There are big differences in the patterns of use  from one social media site to another. Facebook is the most visited site and the one with highest rate of postings. YouTube is the second most visited but posting rates are low. While most of us only think about the negative effects of social media which includes cyber bullying, internet addiction etc, we tend to forget that social media is here to stay and there could be a positive upside, too.

A real time example of this use of social media was illustrated by one of my professors during our Microprocessor class. As soon as the class got over, the professor would give us a problem to solve along with a dedicated hashtag like ‘#EE3Micro’ and asked us to post our solutions on Facebook with the particular hashtag. Now just with one hashtag search, professor and students were both able to see all the solutions. This helped the students in figuring out many different approaches to tackle a single problem without point to point communication with their peers.

Setting up hash tags for individual courses to create online discussion communities for their students not only  allows the students to tag their academic posts, and view submissions to see what has been collectively produced but this strategy provokes more thoughtful responses from the students.When students know that their posts can be read not only by their peers but also by their professors, they not only pay more attention on what to say, but take more care of their grammar, spelling and punctuation. 

Social media is all about collaborating, networking, sharing knowledge and content. Thereby, it can be used as a tool to reduce the communication gap that exists in our day to day classroom activities. Use of social media is not without its problems. The two most important concerns about use of social media are privacy and integrity. In spite of these concerns, people believe that social media offers value in teaching and learning.

Social media makes it easier and convenient to access and provide information. Teachers and students remain connected with each other. Professors have started discussion forums by creating groups on Facebook, where students can post their queries, ideas and doubts. This also helps them by inculcating peer learning in their lives. These groups are also helpful to students who shy away from asking questions during classroom sessions. Besides making their work easy, another reason behind professors adopting this social media approach is to create a branding for them professionally. Facebook pages, twitter accounts, various blogs are highly accessed and hence can help professors in getting a high reputation. I guess everyone wants to get known for their work while working!

In every college and university, social media is being integrated in every way possible, including admissions, campus life, alumni relations and in the classrooms. If we are missing out  on the usage of social media, we are pushing away a lot potential audience. It is rightly said, “We live in a digital ecosystem, and it is vital that educational institutions adopt it”.

This article is written by Harpal Singh, an intern with the E-QUAL - Jadavpur University team. He is a final year student of Electrical Engineering at Jadavpur University, Kolkata.