A 10-year Longitudinal Study of Social Media Use in Education

Abstract

Students, as digital natives, are fascinated by social media as they use it in their everyday lives. However, not only opportunities but also challenges for education have arisen with the new bottom-up approach of using social media for educational purposes. In order to investigate different aspects of social media adoption and use in higher educational learning environments, a longitudinal study starting in 2010 was conducted. This paper summarizes and analyzes our findings based on several studies with quantitative and qualitative data collected and presented in 16 different articles throughout the last decade. Based on our results, we reached the conclusion that when there is proper infrastructure, appropriate strategies are applied, security and privacy are of high priority and teachers become accustomed to using modern technologies, social media can be used as an effective educational tool which improves the overall educational process and learning outcomes. Specifically, by using social media in a creative and student-centered manner in educational settings, students’ engagement, motivation, interactivity, soft skills, communication and collaboration are promoted and improved. Finally, social media can be used as a means to help create virtual communities in which students will be able to exchange ideas, opinions and knowledge in both academic and extracurricular environments, mature and flourish. The aim of this ongoing longitudinal study is to enhance teachers’ comprehension of social media and its use as an educational tool to create interactive learning environments for students of various disciplines in geographically and culturally distributed environments.