Abstract

Social media is transforming communication. Students masterfully navigate social media for personal use but need guidance to transfer those skills into professional work. Providing opportunities for student practice with social media in scenarios across the curriculum can help them achieve the professional understanding and applications they will want as graduates using their skills in the workforce. Additionally, students find social media platforms to be very engaging structures through which to learn. With the goal of encouraging more use of social media as instructional tools, three professors on a campus of 4,500 students united efforts to create campus-wide awareness among faculty about the potential of social media for learning and instruction. This three-year experiment began as a research study about social media trends. The outcome developed into an informative faculty in-service. Next the project grew into a series of roundtables that culminated in three annual campus presentations, a two-day practical workshop, and an e-book of practical applications created by sixteen faculty members across all disciplines. This paper shares the research and how-to steps of the experiment that blossomed into successful faculty involvement and ultimately enhanced student experiences using social media to learn course content and professional, work-style applications.