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This was a presentation that I gave to lead a discussion on the use of social media in higher education teaching and learning. Some of the points on the slides came from the discussion which took place in the group regarding social media and its use in teaching and learning in higher education
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Social media in higher education teaching and learning
Vivienne BozalekUniversity of the Western Cape
vbozalek@uwc.ac.za
Blogging
The social network
My Space
Google Plus
FlickrVimeo
Digital Media
RSS Feeds
MobileTechnology
The Student
Filtering, analyzing, accepting , rejecting information from the network knowledge nodes, but also seeding
back into the nodes and creating
Regulated environment (Teacher involvement)
Traditional Information
StaticWebsites
Creating connections (patterns) between ideas and concepts
Learning(Personal Learning)
Growing ubiquity of social media(Johnson et al., 2014)
• Higher educators use social media (70% social & 50% professional according to Pearson) but have little knowledge of applying this to teaching and learning
• Ditto for students social media literacies in formal learning situations (tend to use it informally)
• Important for students and higher educators to understand affordances and challenges of different social media for teaching and learning (Bower, 2008)
Issues to consider
Emerging Technologies course
Mission: Four institutions convening a single module for educators drawn from these institutions with a shared goal of modeling teaching with emerging technologies to improve teaching & learning practices.
disrupting existing institutional practices
The South African higher education landscape is still affected by the historical inequities of past policies, and many students and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), particularly
the Historically Disadvantaged Institutions (HDIs) are affected by scarce resources and poverty. Higher education institutions themselves are also unequally placed with regard
to resources and the students that they enroll (Bozalek & Boughey, 2012)
☜
Challenges facing SA HEIs
• Too much time wasted in reinventing the wheel - in Silos
• Best practices are 'locked up' in walls and not shared
Why we did it
Objective: to create a conducive learning space where participants could be free to share ideas and experiences with peers and facilitators from other HEIs.
We did not want to teach colleagues but
wanted them to learn, not to learn
about tools but how to teach with tools
So…We de-emphasised teaching to foreground learning and de-emphasised tools and emphasised practice
Methodology
Meaningful learning and interaction
Theory-based design framework
Pedagogical Model
Learning Strategies
Pedagogical tools
Theory: a tightly coupled relationship between pedagogical model (learning objective), learning strategies (activities) and pedagogical tools (appropriate technologies) is required for meaningful learning (Adapted from: Dabbagh, 2005)
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All four participating institutions each had a different LMS which meant that for some participants:
i) the LMS was new to them, ii) experiences might not be meaningful in their respective
contexts
We decided to focus on cloud-based tools. So re-designed to model best practices for empowering educators on teaching with emerging technologies.
What we learnt quickly
Cloud-based tools
Generic tools become pedagogical tools when wrapped around pedagogy and learning strategies
● ‘Infrastructure constraints’ hinders the real time communication (digital divide),
● not all social media is suitable for teaching and learning, and
● facilitation and monitoring can be challenging
Disadvantages of using connectivist tools?
Key Findings of study of higher educators at PGDip course
● It is difficult to separate the ‘personal’ from ‘learning’,
● some social media tools offer a better platform for ‘the personal’ than for ‘the learning’, and
Key Findings (cont.)
‘Personal’ vs. ‘Learning’?
Framework and cognitive
engagement in connectivist
learning
Wang, Z, Chen, L. & Anderson, T. (2014).
ALT survey on use of tech
• Lack of staff time and support• Lack of support at senior level• Lack of leadership in effective use of technology• Lack of incentives• Lack of funding for technologies• Reliance on certain individuals • (Laurillard & Deepwell, 2014)
• Support teachers as active, collaborative action researchers
• Encourage and support use in teaching• Build in time for teacher development• Leaders at all levels to take part in strategic approach• Develop sustainable, education-oriented IT infrastructure• Recognise and reward innovation• Engage students in active learning (Laurillard &
Deepwell, 2014)
ALT survey encouraging use
• How much control does the teacher have using social media?
• ‘Fit for purpose’• E.g. use of Twitter in teaching and learning - use
hashtags for conversations• Finding time to stay in touch is difficult• Resistance to mixing social life with academic life
– perhaps have different accounts – lack of trust
Social media in teaching
• Concern of surveillance of students• Too many tools too many sites for students to put
things in • SMS good way of notifying students who should
take responsibility for change of numbers • Relationships between lecturers and students – prof
boundaries and time issues – ethical issues• How to shape the content of what is distributed –
authenticity with social media
Social media
• Lecturer as facilitator or knowledge producer – • Quality assurance of content – what responses are being
put out there• Can have a suite of things for different purposes• Cost of developing Apps is coming down• Use what the learners know and match that with
educational intentions• Concerns about who controls social media – the issue of
security – money making. People give up privacy
Social media
• Building own social media platforms for institutions or across institutions
• Can’t control everything – students are using technology to share informally anyway – challenge to manage it
• Policies should be to guide students and academics on how to use it for educational purposes – need to look also at legal aspects
Social media
• Policies to strongly support innovative pedagogies using social media – time off, professional development (Johnson et al., 2014, Stevenson & Hedberg, 2011)
• Revise the research/teaching dualism/binary (Johnson et al., 2014) expanded social SoTL (Greenhow & Gleason, 2014)
• Guidelines on how to use social media for students and academics
• Participatory, collaborative method with top-down policy development (Johnson et al., 2014)
Policy Implications for us
ReferencesGreenhow, C. & Gleason, B. (2014). Social scholarship: Reconsidering scholarly practices in the age of social media, British Journal of Educational Technology, 45 (3): 392-402.
Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Estrada, V., Freeman, A. (2014). NMC Horizon Report: 2014 Higher Education Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.
Laurillard, D. & Deepwell, M. (2014) ALT survey on the effective use of learning technology in educataion. Education Technology Action Group.
Seaman,J&Tinti-Kane,H. (2013). Social Media for Teaching and Learning. Boston: Pearson Learning Solutions.
Social media in education: ethical concernsPosted on 01 July 2014. Tags: Changing the learning landscape, ethics, HEA, Mark Childs, social media, Steve Wheeler,Teresa MacKinnon
Stevenson, M. & Hedberg, J.G. (2011) Head in the clouds: a review ofcurrent and future potential for cloud-enabled pedagogies, Educational Media International, 48:4,321-333, DOI: 10.1080/09523987.2011.632279
Wang, Z, Chen, L. & Anderson, T. (2014). A Framework for Interaction and Cognitive Engagement in Connectivist Learning Contexts. The International Review of Open and Distance Learning, 15, 2, 121-141https://www.canvas.net/courses/introduction-to-learning-technologies
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