Role of Social Media in Teaching – Learning Process

Social media are becoming the most important tools for interaction among people, where everybody can share, exchange, comment, discuss and create information and knowledge in a collaborative way. Social media tools are rapidly changing the communications landscape, their emergence has impacted significantly how students learn and the way instructors teach. In today higher education settings, instructors, students and others collaborate on the tasks of knowledge construction.

The definition of social media is “the relationships that exist between network of people” The influence of social media on teaching and learning environment is growing every year and its applications can reinforce class materials, positively influenced discussions, collaborative work, etc. The educators and researchers experimenting the social media technologies to stimulate collaboration, knowledge constructions and thinking skills. The emergence of social network sites has revolutionised communication tools for facilitating teaching and learning activities. In recent years, social networking has become one of the most significant communication tools among people; in which exist through the Internet that provides accessibility for tremendous amount of people. Applying Social Networking Sites (SNSs) in teaching and learning offer a positive impact on the adoption of SNSs and open the door to the new days of learning and teaching. Social network mainly focused on identity, network infrastructure, privacy concern, technological issues, and necessitation of its use as a tool for teaching and learning. Recent years have witnessed an increased interest in using social media/social learning with courses in higher education.

New technologies, most often referred to as Web 2.0 have created a growing phenomenon in public and academic use, changing the way organizations and people create, engage, and share existing or newly produced information through multi-way communication. With the use of social media interfacing through computer and mobile devices becoming more prevalent, user interaction from the platform to face to face engagement is being promoted. Recent attention of students to social networks brings a privacy and safety concern in educational environment.
The increasingly widespread use of social network sites to expand and deepen one’s social connections is a relatively new but potentially important phenomenon that has implications for teaching and learning and teacher education in the 21st century. The main aim of the paper is to find the gap of knowledge in adoption of social network sites in teaching and learning process in formal sites that can efficiency applied in educational system and provides direction for subsequences researches and as a guideline for future research in social network sites in education. Appearance of social networks that are focused on teaching and learning like Ning, Elgg and Edmodo give an opportunity to students and lecturers to minimise the privacy and safety concerns.

Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330497773_Role_of_Social_Media_in_Teaching-Learning_Process