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Making social media work in Higher Education
Making social media work in Higher Education

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3.1 WhatsApp in education: a help or a hindrance?

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The rapid expansion of WhatsApp among students has meant that universities are still catching up with what it means for a student’s study experience. During a recent research project, students at the Open University were interviewed about the ways in which they use online communication to form a community with each other. WhatsApp emerged as a popular app. Watch the video to learn from Cath Brown who describes her personal experience of WhatsApp and she now manages that interaction.

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Transcript: Video 14 Caution about WhatsApp

Cath Brown
As a student I don’t tend to use it much because you end up in a large group and it’s pinging all the time and it’s kind of annoying. I was in one large WhatsApp group a few years ago that had a specific thing that was useful to me and the balance was in favour of being in it despite the fact it was pinging all the time.
I think... I’ve used it with staff in a smaller group when we’ve been organising things like going to an event or that sort of thing and to me WhatsApp is the most useful when it’s a smaller group of people who need to keep in touch with each other fairly constantly.
I know some students have found it very supportive when for example they’re coming up to revising for their end of module assessment or exam and they’ve had a group of people who things like discussing past paper answers and that sort of thing in it. But again I think that works a lot because it’s relatively smaller.
I’m sounding like I’m being very negative about the very large module WhatsApp groups and I’m not intending to be because I know for some people they provide a very useful sense of community but I’m just a little bit cautious about people not getting overwhelmed by them.
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Video 14 Caution about WhatsApp
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As the video suggests, there were many negatives to its use, however, students also reported a great deal of positive experiences about the app, particularly if engagement was carefully managed. In this next activity, you will explore in more detail how WhatsApp divided student opinion.

Activity 7 The threat v the opportunity of WhatsApp

Timing: 20 minutes

Below are a series of quotes based on students’ experiences of using Whatsapp as part of their studies. It’s important to note that experiences in WhatsApp groups vary significantly from group to group. You will have had positive and negative experiences. In this activity you will consider particularly how these groups work in the educational setting.

Read each of the quotes below and reflect on your personal use of WhatsApp by entering your thoughts into the response box below. To view these, click on each box below. Alternatively, click on the ‘show description’ option.

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Connection to student life

Connection is helpful: we’ve had quite an active WhatsApp group and it’s been really good and really helpful. It’s nice to sort of feel that you’re connecting with the other students in between sessions, especially when you’re someone like me, I live at home still so it is hard to connect with my peers informally.

It is intrusive: I find them too intrusive. They’re just pinging all the time. I don’t like WhatsApp, Sometimes you know you’ll come to it and you’ll have hundreds of messages to go through, so I didn’t really use them too much to be honest. I find Facebook more manageable.

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Informative

Helps with the tricky bits. Actually there were a few students helping people through tricky bits, and especially for something like math. Like, I’m currently staring at this really tricky you know equation and I don’t know what to do. Then immediately Whatsapp is useful. I think that people really benefited from that extra support just being there and then.

Information can be unreliable. I know they are sort of unofficial and everything, so obviously you’ve got to take it with a pinch of salt because sometimes the wrong advice is given. or talking about things they shouldn’t be in that kind of stuff, so I tend to steer clear of them now.

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Relationships

It’s like a coffee shop. I think it’s nice to have that support network. It’s nice to have those relationships. The relationships feel more real and informal and people are much more sociable.

Oversharing Things like WhatsApp groups. They either go off into massive long, constant conversations about stuff that’s completely irrelevant, like what their kids are having for lunch? And I don’t want to have my phone pinging all the time about things.

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Connection to module peers

Motivational It was no student left behind, with the EMA, we were supporting each other, just saying you can do it, you can do it. And keep at it, be strong, that sort of thing.

Leads to Clashes I do feel in touch with students. But sometimes there will be unpleasant clashes when everyone is saying what is bad about things with the university. So I found some of it is quite negative as well.

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Discussion

As these quotes have illustrated, for each student who had a positive experience on WhatsApp, there was a student who had a negative experience. The individual nature of these groups, and of the individual experience of WhatsApp more generally, mean it’s hard to write generic guidance for students on how to make the best use of WhatsApp. Like all social media engagement, ensuring that you gain more from your participation in WhatsApp should be at the core of your thoughts about the use of it as a tool in your learning.

It is worth noting that as most WhatsApp groups operate outside of the university network, it is hard for universities to monitor or control activities in these groups. The important thing about social media use, including WhatsApp, is to realise you do have a choice about how you use it. As this student summed up.

‘I found it’s a mixed bag. Sometimes you can have something said that’s really helpful and other times, it’s just I don’t need this negativity here so I only tend to go on there when there’s something specific that I’m looking for.’