NOVEL TOOLS FOR IMPARTING HIGHER EDUCATION: A REVIEW

Abstract

Social media tools are rapidly changing the communication, learning and thinking scenario all around the globe. Emergence of these tools has greatly affected how students learn and the way teachers teach. In today’s higher education system, teachers, students, and others work together on the tasks of knowledge construction. Faculty is using a variety of software tools and free web applications to improve learning, increase interactions between teachers and students, immediate exchange of information and engagement. The utilization of social media tools is on the rise in higher education classrooms. Social network services offer a variety of tools that learners can mix and match to enhance their individual learning styles and to maximize their academics. Tools are helping in improving class notes, prepare better assignments, conduct discussions, encourage synergistic work, and authoring. By using social media tools students are actively participating in knowledge creation for themselves and their fellow classmates thus changing the flow of information from ‘unidirectional to multidirectional’. This paper focuses on most popular social media tools and explores the potential of these tools as learning spaces for students in the higher education. Also the use of these tools has greatly enhanced the teaching learning process thus proving to be very beneficial for the students.