Social Media in Learning Environments
A Case Study of Social Media in Education
- Heather Ochman
- Jul 15, 2016 at 12:11 PM
Teenagers can frequently be cited for hyperbolic phrases such as "I would die without my phone!" and in my experience as a middle school teacher, I am still astounded at the insistent urgency in my students' wide eyes as they utter phrases like this. To many of our nation's students, using social media, like breathing oxygen, is an everyday occurrence, and can sometimes happen without thinking, reflexively. In fact, according to a Common Sense Media research study,
"On average, American children between the ages of 8 and 18 spend more than 7½ hours a day using media for fun: everything from watching TV to listening to music, playing video games, and using social networking sites." (Common Sense Media, 2012)
Stereotypically, students are blamed for texting too much, posting too many pictures on Instagram, and interacting too much online and not in person. However, increasingly, students are also able to use social media in responsible ways in the classroom, gaining access to lessons in digital citizenship alongside topics in science, math, and language arts.
A Pew Research study on teens and technology use in 2013 suggests that "78% of teens now have a cell phone, and almost half (47%) of those own smartphones. That translates into 37% of all teens who have smartphones, up from just 23% in 2011." Many teachers have taken advantage of this rising number of student-owned devices, integrating them into lessons in the classroom. In fact, 73% of teachers have begun to allow and incorporate cell phone or other device use in classroom activities. While cell phones can be used for easy tasks like taking pictures, sending email and messages, and utilizing search engines, integrating social media in learning environments may be the key to engaging the current smartphone-focused student audience.
Social media use is already an integral part of students lives, "something that happens seven days a week instead of five, this is more than the equivalent of a full-time job, dwarfing the amount of time spent in school (an average of 6 hours and 42 minutes a day, 180 days a year). " (Common Sense Media, 2012) Students are already engaged in online, social media activities. If teachers can give students access to academic activities on social media platforms, learning can continue to occur anytime, anywhere, thanks to the increasing pervasiveness of information and communication technology (ICT) devices among students. The following sections will:
- introduce various social media platforms historically used in classrooms,
- explore the learning theories behind integrating social media in classrooms,
- analyze the effects of social media use on students' learning and motivation in the classroom,
- provide examples of social media use in practice in classrooms with critical analysis,
- and forecast the potential future possibilities of social media in learning environments.
Parse the Educational Technology
Our nation and our world are in the midst of the Information Age, a digital era that calls to mind an abundance of information, ease of communication, and endless possibilities for digitization. While the workplace has adjusted to welcome the Information Age, with many of the top paying jobs today not even in existence ten years ago according to Forbes Magazine, the classroom has largely been slower to adapt. Many schools, whether due to resistance to change, lack of financial capabilities, or skepticism toward educational purpose, have remained stationary in the Industrial Age. Many, however, are progressing with the times, and have plunged full-force into embracing technologies and social media to support instruction.
With the birth of Web 2.0, the Internet has decisively become a much more interactive place, diverging from the static web pages of the past (Alexander 2006). Educational environments can and have taken advantage of Web 2.0, with interactive, highly engaging, and densely user-populated social media sites at the forefront of the new definition of the Internet. This report will focus specifically on social media and its role in education today and in the future.
Social media can be defined as "a group of Internet-based applications that allow the widespread creation and dissemination of user generated content (George and Dellasega 2011)" or, simply, as "media used to enable social interaction (Davis III 2012)." An article by Gwenn O'Keefe in Pediatrics Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics further helps to determine which sites can be blanketed under the term "social media:"
"Any Web site that allows social interaction is considered a social media site, including social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter; gaming sites and virtual worlds such as Club Penguin, Second Life, and the Sims; video sites such as YouTube; and blogs (O'Keefe 2011)"
What does the average social media user look like? O'Keefe (2011) tells us that 75% of teenagers now own a cell phone, with 22% of teenagers logging on to social media sites more than ten times a day. A Pew Research study (2014) indicates that 74% of adults who use the Internet also are users of at least one social media site. An August 2014 article in Business Insider sifts out statistics which help to depict how and where the average social media user spends their time.
- Social interaction and social media sites are now the top internet activities.
- Roughly 60% of social media time is spent largely on smartphones and tablets, rather than desktops.
- Facebook pulls seven times the online engagement than Twitter does, in both smartphone and desktop usage.
- Pinterest, Tumblr and LinkedIn pushed to increase engagement on their mobile sites and apps. "The new race in social media is not for audience per se, but for multi-device engagement." (Adler 2014)
Not only are the faces of social media users changing, but so are the faces of the social media sites themselves, as these sites seek to become readily available online on desktop and on smartphones, for true access anytime, anywhere. The popularity of social media sites is skyrocketing in recent years, and the ability to define clearly and singularly a social media user is disappating. Social media users vary in age, nationality, and choice of social media site.
Social media sites allow users the communication and interaction through the frameworks of "participation" and "sharing" (Lewis, et al 2010) On a non-social media site, content is chosen by the author of the site, and visitors are able to statically participate by reading the content; only the author has agency in sharing. On a social media site, on the other hand, users choose to participate to varying degrees in the community; one of the ways users have unique agency is through individual choice of sharing content. A brief overview of the social media sites with the current highest number of users and daily traffic are outlined next.
The research: Per a 2013 social media update by Pew Research, "42% of online adults use multiple social networking sites, but Facebook remains the platform of choice." (Duggan 2013). *Survey polled online adults, and did not include users under 18. Overall, Facebook boasts 1.2 billion monthly active users (MAU), making it the most expansive and engaging social media site in the world today (Adler 2014).
The appeal: This social media site allows users to add friends, communicate with friends on public "Walls" or via private "Messages." Users can also share multimodally, with text, images, and/or videos. Also accessible to users through Facebook are games, quizzes, and other apps.
The social media site has expanded not just to include users for personal social purposes, but also to include companies and celebrities for self-promotion and interaction with potential customers or fans. Facebook advertises within its site, making use of users' Google searches to personalize sponsored ads within users' news feeds, making it highly useful to companies as well as to consumers, for social, practical, and business purposes. Facebook also been instrumental in social movements: "Occupy Wall Street" organized a Facbook page to organize protests against social and economic inequality (Kanalley 2011) and #IceBucketChallenge was tagged to videos of users who raised awareness and roughly $106 million for ALS (Perez 2014). Though Facebook is now more than a decade old, it has a large, loyal, and diverse user population from all around the world.
The research: Though Instagram was not overwhelmingly popular among online adult users in 2006, ranking the #5 social media site according to a Pew Research article (Duggan 2006), among all social media users, Instagram ranks #2 among all social media users in terms of highest engagement (Adler 2014). In fact, Instagram now has 200 million monthly active users, and has been doubling its user population every year (Edwards 2014).
The appeal: This social media site capitalizes on users' desire for visual self-representation, with the focus on sharing, liking, and commenting on photos, which are editable on a 1-to-1 square ratio. Users can also make micro-videos, 15-second shorts, constrained within the same 1-to-1 square ratio. Users make use of hashtags to connect with users who share similar photos and interests. The Huffington Post says last year that the breakdown of the top ten most popular hashtags is as follows:
1. #love - 143,817,139 photos
2. #instagood - 97,570,915 photos
3. #me - 80,693,198 photos
4. #tbt - 75,411,509 photos *throwbackthursday
5. #cute - 75,047,873 photos
6. #photooftheday - 70,995,806 photos
7. #instamood - 64,925,462 photos
8. #beautiful - 54,570,181 photos
9. #picoftheday - 53,776,027 photos
10. #igers - 52,997,258 photos *instagramers abbreviation
As of September 2014, #selfie has climbed into the top ten most used hashtags on Instagram with 172,034,426 photos, whereas about a year ago, the hashtag did not even make Huffington Post's top 100 most used hashtags list. "Selfie" is now defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary to mean "an image of oneself taken by oneself using a digital camera especially for posting on social networks."
The research: Business Insider tops Twitter's monthly active users at 255 million as of May 2014 (Edwards 2014), though Twitter's about page claims 271 million monthly active users in September 2014. While this is a dwarf amount compared to Facebook's 1.2 billion MAU, Twitter and Instagram are in a battle for #2 MAU. Twitter falls to #3 in this introduction list, as the site has less per user engagement time than Instagram (Adler 2014).
The appeal: Twitter allows users to share, search for, and reply to messages, called "Tweets," which feature 140-character or less messages centered around any manner of topics, usually harnessing the power of hashtags, as previously mentioned above in the Instagram section. Unlike Instagram, Twitter focuses on text, rather than pictures. The power of Twitter relies on its large number of users and in its brevity of text; its format is highly conducive to news headlines, play-by-play updates, and quick, witty conversation, among other types of communication.
Many moments in history have been captured on Twitter, as one Twitter user unknowingly updated the world with multiple tweets of the nightime mission to capture and kill Osama bin Laden: "Helicopter hovering above Abbotttabad at 1am (is a rare event)" (Brown 2012) With real-time, quick updates, users can be up to date on just about anything.
Other Social Media on the Rise
Snapchat allows users to share a picture with a caption, and to choose the length of time the receiver of the photo is able to see it (e.g. 10 seconds).
Pinterest is a "visual discovery tool," which allows users to search for, save or "pin", and upload pictures which may link to other content like a website, blog, or article.
Google+ is arguably Google's version of Facebook, allowing users to connect with other users and with companies, interact in "communities," and share and comment on multimodal content.
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LinkedIn is an increasingly popular professional networking site, where users can bulid a professional profile and connect with other professionals; it allows users to have a credible, professional presence on the Internet.
The Underlying Learning Theory
Social media's presence is broadening within people's lives among all ages and nationalities; however, its significance to the social lives of our nation's tweens and teens is undeniable. Social media use should not be limited to personal use; it can be expanded and applied to education. With 75% of teens owning a cell phone, and more than 50% of teens logging on to social media at least once a day, there is an opportunity for education, both in core content and digital citizenship that cannot be ignored.
A Penn State study maintains that "Social networking tools have progressively gained a foothold in education and have demonstrated value in the learning process." (George 2011) As such, schools can harness students' use of social media in the classroom to improve socialization and communication (O'Keeffe 2011) supported by the learning theory of social constructivism (Deubel 2009) and Vygotsky's theories of learning (Darling-Hammond 2003), and to prepare students for tomorrow's workforce within the twenty-first century standards and skills as set forth by P21 and ISTE.
ISTE supposes that all students, in order to be successful in the twenty-first century workforce, must meet the following standards:
- Creativity and innovation
- Communication and collaboration
- Research and information fluency
- Critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making
- Digital citizenship
- Technology operations and concepts
*For a description of each standard, ISTE has provided a PDF for students, Also available are PDF's detailing standards for teachers, for administrators, for coaches, and for computer science educators.
Social Learning Theories
Social constructivism theory supports that student learning occurs through social interaction and communication; it "emphasizes the importance of culture and context in understanding what occurs in society and constructing knowledge based on this understanding." (Kim 2014) It is closely linked to Vygotsky's theories of learning, which support that "learning and development take place in the interactions children have with peers as well as with teachers and other adults." (Darling-Hammond 2003). While these theories have upheld many schools' pedagogies in decades past, the appearance of this pedagogy has changed.
In a traditional classroom, students could respond to the teacher when called on (usually one student per question) or to each other during discussion times within the classroom, within the time parameters of the school day. However, with social media sites, this social learning can now occur on a larger scale. Rather than one student answering at a time, all students can answer a question with real-time apps like Socrative. Rather than a teacher being able to monitor one discussion at a time, the teacher can facilitate and monitor discussions synchronously during class time and asynchronously outside of the school day. Teachers' knowledge of technology and ability to integrate it in the classroom can support student communication, collaboration and learning.
Social media can empower students to continue the classroom conversation online, building knowledge, relationships, and social skills. Chen (2012) cites "Collaboration [as] the most important characteristic of social learning." Further, O'Keeffe (2011) argues that social media participation may offer adolescents deep benefits including:
1. opportunities for community engagement
2. enhancement of individual and collective creativity
3. growth of ideas from the creation of blogs, podcasts, videos, and gaming sites;
4. expansion of one’s online connections through shared interests to include others from more diverse backgrounds
5. fostering of one’s individual identity and unique social skills
Even in a blended learning environment, research states that the "availability of traditional plus virtual learning options will create new environments in which students make choices to customize their learning experiences to suit their personal and changing needs." (Grant 2014) Students can become more aware of their own learning, while reaping the benefits of learning through social media and onine learning environments.
According to an article in The Journal, with its slogan of "Transforming Education Through Technology," a "true" social learning network in schools "incorporates innovative pedagogy through internet-connected communities, digital resources, and a series of Web 2.0 tools that empower students to master the curriculum and to learn issues beyond the classroom."(Deubel 2009) Though social learning theories support using social media in schools, many schools have yet to put theory into practice, too dubious to dive in. However, some in higher education, high school classrooms, and middle school classrooms have taken the plunge, integrating social media in the classroom.
Social Media Integration in Practice
There has always been a divide between students' school life and home life, but social media sites provide the chance for the two separate lives to intersect, to interconnect. "Unfortunately, social networks have little or no integration into formal learning environments." (Chen 2012) Phones sit still and silent in studens' pockets. Lessons crave interactivity. Benefits remain to be reaped. In many schools today, and hopefully in increasingly more in the future, this is not the case.
Phones are active tools, utilized in Bring Your Own Device policies. Lessons created by teachers are interactive, and integrate technology in ways that support student learning. Benefits are plenty, including increased student motivation and performance. The following sections will explore social media integration in higher education, high school, and middle education, with specific attention to Twitter use.
Social Media in Higher Education
In higher education, students already hold many of the higher level thinking skills that educators in primary and secondary education are beginning to teach. With these faculties already in place, students in higher education can engage with tasks in a much deeper way. As such, giving students access to higher-level discussion and a broader audience via social media can "offer expanded opportunities" for learning. (Veletsianos 2011)
In a Pearson study, a survey of higher education faculty revealed that social media plays a role in learning:
- nearly two-thirds of all teaching faculty used social media in their class sessions, and
- 30% of faculty posted content for students to view outside class
- 40% of faculty have required students to read or view social media as part of a course assignment
- 20% have assigned students to comment on or post to social media sites
Veletsianos (2011) has explored Twitter use in higher education, analyzing survey responses from international faculty as well as the last 100 tweets from the Twitter feeds of those international faculty. Veletsianos found seven main themes around which user communication centered:
- information, resource, and media sharing
- Expanding learning opportunities beyond the confines of the classroom
- Requesting assistance and offering suggestions
- Living social public lives
- Digital identity and impression management
- Connecting and networking
- Presence across multiple online social networks
Within tweets, users frequently linked to website URLs or to other users, so that more users could interact with content and peers. Though scholars had to have previous technological know-how to some extent (how to use Twitter), interestingly, Twitter has also served as a place to introduce students to other online networks and virtual communities for their courses. (Veletsianos 2011) Most Twitter discussions seem genuine, helpful, and relatively focused on class content (outside of living social public lives in which one user shared: "[Husband’s name] and I are celebrating our Xth anniversary today!" (Tweet edited to preserve user anonymity.) However, the study posted the following observations:
- Users share both personal and professional information, which serve no real function, but do contribute to significant social networking purposes; this sharing may build relationships or hinder them.
- Users' motivations behind content sharing are unclear: are users sharing themselves authentically, or are they sharing out of impression management to present their idealized professional selves?
- Causality between Twitter and scholarly practices is unfounded: Does Twitter allow for more learning-focused interactions, or do students who already use Twitter happen to engage in learning-focused interactions in addition to personal interactions?
The interactions observed in this study showed a participatory learning community, making use of Twitter as a social media learning platform. Veletsianos (2011) envisions that Twitter and other online communities may serve to create scholarly networks supported by participatory technologies, but also cautions that "it is still too early to tout online social spaces as closely knit scholarly communities." Nonetheless, it seems that social media can serve as a place for scholars in higher education, and indeed any level of education, to gather for support, assistance, deeper conversation, and general sharing of experiences and ideas.
Social Media in High School
A quick Google search of "twitter in high school," narrowed to news, does not return a majorly positive array of articles, with headlines ranging from "Commack school seniors face disciplinary for Twitter photos" to "Vulgar Twitter Targets Preble High School Students." The news is not all negative, however, as Bill Ferriter (2011) reports in "Using Twitter in High School Classrooms."
The article suggests that Twitter can be used in a positive manner in three, broad categories:
- Twitter can be used as a backchannel, encouraging reflection and conversation among students.
- Twitter can help students develop their civic voices.
- Twitter can become a place to imagine.
High school teachers have taken Twitter seriously and have enacted the above categories in the ways below:
- Students tweet the Most Valuable Point from every lesson, using a shared classroom hash tag.
- Social studies students use Twitter to reach out to political candidates in local elections.
- Students in English class pretend to be characters from the novels that they are studying in class. (Ferreter 2011)
Twitter is a place for the collection and discussion of important ideas. Twitter is a community, where students learn to professionally interact with this nation's citizens. Twitter is an imaginative Internet playground, where students gather to make-believe. In high schools across the nation, Twitter is becoming all these things and more.
In fact, Piedmont High School principal Richard Kitchens created a school Twitter account to update students attending this California school. Brent Daniels, the current principal of Piedmont High carries on the Twitter tradition today, as a way to update students, parents, and the community on the ongoings of the school.
Twitter can be a way to engage both students and the community, and it is not just teachers and students who can partake in the power of Twitter, but administrators as well, whether in primary, secondary, or higher education. Twitter can serve to support engaging, imaginative lessons in class, and to inform and connect a community.
Social Media in Middle School
In the past, many schools had clear-cut bans on devices: No students would be permitted to bring or use personal devices in school. Many schools shared the belief of Michelle Wade, a spokeswoman from New Haven Public Schools in Connecticut: "It was getting just too disruptive to the learning process.” (Johnson 2010) In more recent years, schools have begun to rethink the ban and the belief behind the supposed device disruptions.
Enrique G. Legaspi, an eighth grade teacher at Hollenbeck Middle School in Los Angeles, embodies this newer, growing belief that devices can engage and elevate student learning. His dream had been to create a paperless classroom, but Twitter was the social media platform that he believed could make this vision a reality. (Shein 2011) He utilized Google docs, among other sites, but he claimed "a lot of what I was using wasn't cool to the students." Student buy-in is essential to any technology integration. Without student motivation to use the technology, students will not effectively show learning of class concepts on that platform.
With that in mind, Legaspi, signed all his students up for Twitter and began to explicitly teach them the basics: the 140 character limitation, the concept of hashtags, and how to research and interact on Twitter. Legaspi uses the classes' tweets as formative assessment and conversation points, never as a graded assessment. In fact, he says, "I like to see what their language is like and I want to know for myself if they are mastering the content." (Shein 2011). In this manner, authentic student conversation and interactions are encouraged. In an interview with CNN Legaspi says that Twitter has helped students with "finding their voice" and that for shy students who failed to raise their hands, "Twitter became that vehicle" for students to speak up. (Simon 2011)
Legaspi understands that full freedom with devices would ultimately lead to distractions from learning, which is why he limits activities on Twitter to very specific times during lessons. (Shein 2011) If Legaspi were able to have a discussion with Wade from Connecticut, chances are she may no longer see technology as "too disruptive to the learning process." In middle school especially, it seems Twitter and other social media will find greatest success with student buy-in, explicit teaching of the technology, and limited and specific use in and out of class. If students learn how to responsibly use the technology, it can become an invaluable tool for creating community, collaboration, and communication, in any level of education.
Critical Reflection
With regard to social media entering the classroom comes a host of questions and cautions, as well as success and celebrations. Negativity permeated conversations of technology and social media in schools in the past; while negativity still looms in present day discussions, positive benefits are now diffused into the discussion. For the purpose of reviewing social media integration within learning environments, this reflection will refer to positive findings as Strengths and negative findings as Cautions.
| Strengths | Cautions |
| Social media sites can encourage socialization and communication: "Social media sites allow teens to accomplish online many of the tasks that are important to them offline: staying connected with friends and family, making new friends, sharing pictures, and exchanging ideas." (O'Keeffe 2011) | Social media use can have negative emotional and social impacts: "Researchers have proposed a new phenomenon called “Facebook depression,” defined as depression that develops when preteens and teens spend a great deal of time on social media sites, such as Facebook, and then begin to exhibit classic symptoms of depression." (O'Keeffe 2011) |
| Social media platforms provide students with a place to enrich and extend learning: "Social media applications provided platforms that enabled novel moments of learning to occur. In the classroom, tools such as Skype and YouTube enriched learning by connecting students both with external experts and novel educational content." (George 2011) | Social media may open students to positive experiences, but it also exposes students to potential hazards like lack of privacy and cyberbullying: "The main risk to preadolescents and adolescents online today are risks from each other, risks of improper use of technology, lack of privacy, sharing too much information, or posting false information about themselves or others." (O'Keeffe 2011) |
| With equal access to technology, students can employ social media to reach learning equality: "Research results indicate that social media approaches to learning can mitigate existing inequalities and can be employed to successfully re-engage individuals who are at risk of exclusion from the knowledge society." (Redecker 2010) | Digital equality cannot be assumed; not all students will be equipped with the same technologies or experiences: "Access to ICT at home and in schools and basic digital skills constitute a major obstacle for the use of social media in Education and Training, and a key problem for inclusion and equity." (Redecker 2010) |
| Social media can be inherently motivating and support student achievement: Social media can "increase academic achievement with the help of motivating, personalised and engaging learning tools and environments." (Redecker 2010) | Using social media is not an inherent skill for students: skills may have to be explicitly taught: "Not all students are comfortable with new technologies." (Chen 2012) |
| Social media platforms give students a collective place to discuss school-related topics online: In a national survey, "almost 60 percent of students who use social networking talk about education topics online and, surprisingly, more than 50 percent talk specifically about schoolwork." (Deubel 2009) | Social media platforms are created for socializing, personal purposes; it can be difficult to control students' contributions of content: One teacher "acknowledges that Twitter can be a distraction and has opted to use it in limited doses for any given activity." (Shein 2011) |
| Social media can allow for personalized learning and differentiation for every learner: "Features of a personalized learning environment can be implemented at all grade levels by focusing on students’ abilities to make sensible choices and to assert control over their learning." (Grant 2014) | Social media and online learning can pose problems for students with special learning needs: "Though Learning 2.0 supports different learning paces and cognitive styles, thus generally empowering learners, it can also create and increase difficulties for students with physical or cognitive disabilities, or special learning needs." (Redecker 2010) |
Social media integration in learning environments has positive potential, if taught explicitly and monitored routinely. Students must know how to use the technology at hand and have motivation and an understanding for the purpose of the technology. Teachers and administrators must recognize that all students must have access to technology and the Internet for equality in technology-integrated education to be reached. Social media use can be motivating, imaginative, and collaborative, but not all social media will hold these qualities for all students. This study is limited in that it only reviewed Twitter with integration in classrooms; Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram among other social media sites can and should be explored across different grade levels to view its varying success in supporting student learning. Social media holds immense potential for enriching student learning, but the research also tells many cautionary tales for students, teachers, administrators, and communities to bear in mind.
Conclusions and Recommendations
A Pew Research survey finds that 95% of all teens aged 12-17 are now online. (Pew 2012) This staggeringly high statistic is only bound to continue rising. Whether students are accessing the internet on their own devices or accessing the Internet at school or in their community, students have access to the Internet and are engaging in social media practices. It would be irresponsible for schools to continue to ignore a communication platform to which most students are literate and loyal; schools can and should take advantage of social media to aid student learning in the classroom.
While many platforms are quite popular today (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter arguably the top 3), there is no guarantee that these platforms will still be relevant in coming years, or even tomorrow. In a world that is constantly changing, our students are learning to adapt daily to updates to their favorite apps or their phones' operating systems; administrators and teachers must learn to do the same. We must continue to recognize and realize the power that lies in current social media trends and work to integrate them in the classroom with explicit teaching, frequent monitoring, and routine communication of expectations.
According to Grant (2014): "Technology changes the way teachers teach, offering educators effective ways to reach different types of learners and assess students’ understanding through multiple means." By integrating social media in learning environments, learning breaks through the barriers that once were the classroom walls and the seven-hour school day. Social media can be a distraction, but so can everything else whether a note passed in class, a fly buzzing around the room, or an eraser with a tiny piece missing. Focus, and responsible digital citizenship, are skills which must and can be taught in the context of social media. Social media gives teachers a means to teach students tolerance and citizenship, to differentiate for all students, to personalize and globalize learning, to open communication to all students and to other users of the Internet, and to encourage sharing and collaboration; no one type of worksheet can do this. But social media can.
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