Students & Social Media

Presentation to:

Organizational Learning and Engagement Committee

By:

Susan McFarlane-Alvarez

01/19/2012

Today’s Discussion

• Personal Experience

• Defining Terms

• Dominant Issues and Current Trends

• Considerations for Clayton State

SPEAKER BACKGROUND…

Personal Background

• Visual and Performing Arts – Communication

• CSU’s New degree in Corporate Communication

• Career in Corporate Communication

– Public Relations

– Advertising

• Course in Social Media

– Theories

– Applications

– Production (Posting, Blogging, Vlogging, Podcasting)

– The Dark Side

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Great Resources…

• New New Media• Paul Levinson• Publisher: Allyn &

Bacon

Great Resources…

• BrianSolis.com• Brian Solis – Social

Media Guru• Author• Blogger

Great Resources…

• Mashable.com

• Great articles• Trending issues in

social media

WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA?

Insights into Social Media Impacts• 1 in every 9 people on Earth is on Facebook

• Facebook today is the size of the entire Internet in 2004

• If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest• YouTube has 49- unique users who visit every month

• YouTube generates 92 billion page views per month

• Users on YouTube spend a total of 2.9 billion hours per month• Wikipedia hosts 17 million articles• Over 91,000 contributors author articles on Wikipedia

• People upload 3,000 images to Flickr every minute

• Flickr hosts over 5 billion images• Twitter adds nearly 500,000 users a day

• 190 million Tweets posted per day

Insights into Social Media Impacts• One in five divorces are blamed on Facebook

• 69 % of parents are friends with their children on social media

• Groupon will reach $1 billion in sales faster than any company in history

Social Media = New New Media

• Media– Traditional mass media

– Radio, television, newspapers, film, books

• New Media– Internet

– Email

Social Media = New New Media

• New New Media– Facebook

– Twitter

– Second Life

– Blogs

– YouTube

– Wikipedia

– Digg

– MySpace

– Google+

• Podcasting

• SoundCloud

• Reddit

So what defines social media?

• According to Brian Solis:

Short Version

Any tool or service that uses the Internet to facilitate conversations.

Long Version

Social Media is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. It is the shift from a broadcast mechanism, one-to-many, to a many-to-many model, rooted in conversations between authors, people, and peers.

So what defines social media?

• According to Paul Levinson:

Every Consumer is a Producer

You can choose a medium that suits your talents

Anyone can gain credibility

They’re usually free

Are symbiotic (E.g. blogs link to YouTube through hyperlinks)

Interpersonal: One to One

Mass: One to Many

Many-to-Many

STUDENTS + SOCIAL MEDIA

Changing Trends

• 2009: Brian Solis (SM guru) – Social Media still considered disruptive

• Today: Transitional approaches

• Many/Most still view Social Media as disruptive (late majority & laggards*)

• SM are valued for reaching out to students for marketing and non-learning related

• Innovators among educators already using SM to enhance teaching

• Early adopters and early majority open to trying, but lack skills

*According to Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations Theory

Social Media & Students: Acc. To CNN…

CNN Article Highlights

• October 2011

• Students choose colleges based on school online profiles

• Students enjoy when they have (some) control over school’s:

– Online personality

– Information dissemination

• By 2011, 100% of universities use social media to communicate with students

– 98% of colleges have Facebook page

– 84% have Twitter account

CNN Article Highlights

• Social media: here to stay

• Students trust social media (more than school-developed brochures)

CNN: How to do social media right

• Make it fun

• Encourage student engagement

• Invite students to be contributors/authors/senders

• Make use of multimedia environment of social media (audio, video, etc.)

• Don’t let your tweets dry up!

• Blog, tweet and vlog frequently.

Strengths & Weaknesses of Social Media

Strengths• Connectivity

• Multimedia

• Empowerment of users

• Instantaneous

• Interactive

• Self-promotion

Liabilities• Reputation

• Privacy

• Distraction & Disruption

CSU & IN THE CLASSROOM

Clayton State Students & Social Media

• Based on my interacting with students in CMS

• Based on teaching social media class

Clayton State Students & Social Media

• We can’t think of students as monolithic

• Some are “addicted” to social media

• Others detest and avoid it all

• Common experiences:

– Personal lives changed by social media

– Common opinion that social media are negative

The educator’s perspective

• Educators have a fear of embracing social media:

– Many to Many = lack of control

• Social media as a distraction and disruptive

• BUT: There should be mutual respect for all channels of communication as potentially positive and negative

• Dr. Steven Smith:

– “Educators should examine ways to integrate social media into their classroom”

– Social media can become tools for further engaging students

How to use SM in the classroom

• Of all SM, Many students prefer to use Facebook– According to Dr. Rey Junco’s Blog Social Media in Higher Education

– Professor of Academic Development, Lock Haven University

– http://blog.reyjunco.com/

Social Media in the Classroom: Applications

• Basic Course Communication:

– syllabus & assignments

– E.g.s: Nurph, BackNoise, Livestream

• Connecting beyond campus:

– Connecting with professors & classmates

– Connecting with experts in their field of study

– Brainify, Classroom 2.0

• As a Research Site: E.g. Google Insights, delicious

• Creating and Sharing Media: WordPress or Blogger

Excellent article: http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2011/09/using-social-media-in-the-higher-education-classroom/

Graduating social media ready

• Corporations seek workers who are “social media savvy”

• Corporations increasingly use social media to engage workers – Recruitment

– Ongoing conversations about work-life balance

– Learning and Development

• Corporations now see human resource relationships as ongoing conversations:– Not just one-way communication

– Performance reviews are going away gradually*

*As discussed at a recent Argyle Executive Leadership Conference

Alignment with Strategic Plan

• Active Learning

• Innovations in Teaching and Learning

• Community Outreach and Internships

• Partnerships with External Institutions or Entities

• Civic Engagement

Towards a Conclusion…

• Great tools for reaching students

• We are in a transitional phase:

– Resistance among students, staff and faculty!

• We need to educate ourselves about strengths and liabilities of SM

• We owe it to our students to explore possibilities of social media

• Words to the wise: recognize that students find empowerment through SM

• Foster SM conversations among students, staff and faculty

• Let students guide how we use social media to their benefit

Works Cited

• Junco, Rey. (2011). “Social Media in Higher Education.” Dr. Rey Junco’s Blog. http://blog.reyjunco.com/ Accessed January 14, 2012.

• Levinson, Paul (2010). New New Media. New York: Pearson.

• Pidaparthy, Umika. (2011). “How Colleges Use, Misuse and Abuse Social Media to Reach Students.” CNN.com Accessed December 2011.

• Schroeder, Stan (2011). The Social Media Revolution in Remarkable Figures. Mashable.com. Accessed January 2012.

• Smith, Steven. (2011). Interview with Dr. Steven Smith by Susan McFarlane-Alvarez at Clayton State University. December 2011.

• Solis, Brian. (2009). Does Social Networking Impair Learning? On Brian Solis.com. Accessed January 2012.