Session 2: Socialisation: Enriching education with social media
Introduction
In the last session you reflected upon how you engage with social media and developed some awareness of the need to self-regulate its use as part of your studies. Here, we consider more specifically how and why students in higher education have driven informal use of social media as part of their studies, using it to enrich both their sense of social connection to their peers and their learning on modules. You will also consider how universities and lecturers are beginning to use social media as a formal part of their provision.
Listen first to Cath Brown from The Open University speak about what she has gained from using social media in her studies.
Download this video clip.Video player: Video 1 General use of social media
Transcript: Video 1 General use of social media
Cath Brown
Most students aren’t in a position these days that they’re seeing their colleagues every day. That, you know, for a lot of people they’re doing some sort of hybrid thing. They’ll go in sometimes for lectures or whatever. We’ve got, there’s quite a lot of commuter students across the sector or people even in halls from miles away. So they don’t see people every day. Keeping up with your friends is something that builds a friendship, particularly when it’s a comparison with the new friendship, as when you first go to university. It also lets you connect with people who you wouldn’t necessarily see every day. For example, my closest student friends aren’t actually people I’ve ever been on a course with. A couple of them I met online first time, others I have met face to face, but again we don’t live particularly near each other. It enables us to keep up. You can also connect with people who share interests or for support. For example, in our place, we have a very active disabled students group, and that offers advice and support from other disabled students, you know, helping students understand what they might be entitled to, how to request things, what sorts of, shall I say, work rounds exist, those sorts of things, and sharing common interests. I mean I know it’s a stereotype that the internet’s full of cats but you know you can have a group that’s students who like cats and people share lovely photos of cats sitting on their work or typing things inadvertently on their laptop and that’s just quite a nice palate cleanse isn’t it, just nice things like that as well.
Video 1 General use of social media
Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).