Abstract
Social media are extremely popular online destinations that offer users easy ways to build and maintain relationships with each other, and to disseminate information in an activity referred to as “social networking”. Students, teachers, parents and organisations, in increasing numbers use tools available on social networking sites, to communicate with each other in a fast and cost effective manner. The use of social networking sites to support educational initiatives has also received much attention. Popular social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, WhatsApp, Flickr, ResearchGate, YouTube, LinkedIn etc. demonstrates an emerging opportunity for students and educators within formal higher education contexts to share ideas, celebrate creativity and participate in an environment which offers immediate feedback from other members of the specific network. The present paper offers an introduction to social networking and emergence and growth of popular social networking sites. This is followed by an extensive review of researches on social media in the context of higher education. The scope and implications of social networking in educational context have also been discussed at length. Finally, major problems and issues involved in the use of social networking have been brought out. The inherent challenges and promises to optimize the use of social media in the context of higher education still require concerted efforts of educational technologies and academicians as conclusive evidence on the effective use of social media for attaining objectives of higher education is lacking at present.
Highlights
Social media are extremely popular online destinations that offer users easy ways to build and maintain relationships with each other, and to disseminate information in an activity referred to as “social networking”
The results indicated that while the respondents were using social networking sites for the purpose of informal learning activities, only half (50.3%) used it to get in touch with their lecturers in informal learning contexts
Promote Stronger Connection: Heiberger and Harper (2008) reported findings which suggest that students who had utilized social networking sites such as Facebook were more engaged in offline activities, and they reported greater life satisfaction and stronger connection to their institutions
Summary
Researchers create new knowledge while using existing knowledge. Their activities often take place in a social context made up of informal exchanges, brainstorming, idea exploration and cross-fertilisation. Social networking allows researchers to draw from a social network of information and people outside of their traditional circle of friends. ResearchGate is an example of social networking platform for researchers
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