Twelfth International Conference on e-Learning & Innovative Pedagogies

Abstract

Research suggests that incorporating social media into the college classroom can promote student collaboration and connections with the larger community. Integrating an experiential learning approach creates a space for student engagement, expertise development, application, and reflection. Students become their own agents of learning as they assume the role of informed and critical social media producers. Undergraduate and graduate students were enrolled in an upper-division online activity course organized as a technology company start up at a public university in the U.S. Students participated in an academic department’s social media team, publishing a weekly newsletter and producing and curating content for multiple social media outlets designed for public and university audiences, a website for the department’s students, and a career portal. Students found the entrepreneurial approach to the team both liberating and challenging as they engaged with each other and the communities in which they were embedded. Students came to recognize and embrace the multifaceted nature and ubiquity of learning opportunities. In addition, they developed key transferable skills, including effective writing, social media literacy, critical thinking, teamwork, problem solving, decision making, self-management, and leadership. Future steps include applying the model to additional outreach projects, as with developing stronger ties with alumni, and developing a toolkit for other university units interested in creating similar course structures that bring a start-up experiential learning framework to social media production.