Mobile Blogs in Language Learning, Article Review Example

In the contemporary environment, communications amongst academic institutions and education can be problematic if lines of communications are not kept up to date. There is a lack of time to communicate and discuss problems as they come up. A simple annual plan review, phone call, or even meeting is often not enough.

Social media offers the students as well as the teachers of any given academic institution information such as personal attitudes, academic interests and career goals that could help stimulate the learning experience for students and nurture existing relationships, both of which drive educational growth. This new student information can enhance educational intimacy and academic insight and move education towards delivering learning materials and class room experiences. An enriched student profile can help identify sweet spots in existing segments, select educational goals and launch personalized education campaigns. In these ways academic institutions can gain actionable insight on student needs (using such techniques as interest graph analysis and activity feed analysis) and life events at an individual, friends and family level.

Today, academic students have moved beyond just using the Internet as an information-gathering tool, to using both the Internet and mobile channels for an interactive, even social, experience. Social networks are growing at pace; by 2017, the global social network audience is expected to total 2.55 billion. While still a minority, many educators want academic institutions to get directly involved in contributing to discussions on social media, and nearly one in four are more likely to do business with an institution that they know they can interact with in a social media environment. Many academic institutions have responded by using social media to listen to their staff and monitor their academic operations. However, they are not yet using it to generate tangible business benefits. With advances in optimization tools, analytics and software, social media is now much more a science than an art. It can be a very effective means to build a community and engage with the consumer in a more personal way. By harnessing the power of analytics and integrating social media insights holistically into the academic institutions strategy to improve education, universities and colleges can drive growth, increase operational efficiency and reduce the overall workload in lines of communications.

Academic educators can better leverage their use of social media to attract new methods of studying for their students in various ways. For starters, universities should not be looking to use social media strictly to attract students to enroll into their programs of study. There are significant regulatory considerations, and in addition, these channels aren’t suitable for the delivery of educational studies. However, social media can be very powerful in other ways for educators.

Social media is a fantastic content distribution platform, giving educators the ability to showcase their academic curriculum and educational leadership. Social media can also be used to promote personal as well as ethical standards for academic studies, and help “humanize” the educators’ system. The trick is to make Facebook, Twitter and other social media outreach programs work for specific academic studies – instead of the other way around. Social media regulation for the field of education is now a reality. Some may believe that this just another compliance hurdle. However, use of social media in education offers many opportunities.

The use of social media in education through methods of mobile devices is becoming ever so popular due to the fact that mobile devices such as smart phones and computer tablets are booming in the market. Many schools and universities have already integrated such computer tablet devices into their education system for students to study with. According to an article by Comas-Quinn, Mar Domingo, and Valentine from 2009, the use of social media on mobile devices is profoundly making an adequate contribution to students who are engaging in the studies of English as a second language.

Before the inventions and exploitations of mobile devices, many students were only able to study their class room materials through either their school library or through class computers provided by the school. This was usually due to the fact that many academic programs used by educators were only verified for use by school computers. Even as academic software programs expanded online, students were still limited to study the class room materials from their home computer. However, with the use of mobile devices, students can now study their academic materials on the go. The use of social networking would better enable students to communicate with their professors on questions or concerns of the class room materials. For a student studying English as a second language, it is easy to see how this method of studying through the use of mobile device applications would become quite useful. When a student has consistent access to their course materials, it induces a more consistent basis of studying, allowing them to better retain information they studied.

Many universities are adopting mobile device applications for their students to study with. This is not only true with academic institutions. Many professional designations allow for their students to study the required course materials through a specially designed app which contains study materials. For example, the American Institute for Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) allows their Certified Public Accountant (CPA) candidates to study through the CPA mobile device application containing all of the course work materials required for the CPA examination.

One of the most popular social media platforms today is that of Twitter. According to Honeycutt and Herring, Twitter has invested a great deal of interest in the advancement of academic achievements regarding education and the use of social media that may come along with it. Twitter can also leverage education automation and campaign management platforms to deliver academic marketing campaigns through use of the “@” symbol as Honeycutt and Herring have strongly indicated in their 2009 article. For example, they can identify individual students through connections on Twitter, position personalized interest/hobby related offers based on Twitter likes and directly initiate student dialogues using the Twitter platform.

Gamification is another key tactic to enrich the educational experience, as well as to design products whose properties evolve according to social sharing. And academic institutions are able to design experiences with network dynamics in mind. A significant part of the education process now happens in review and comparison sites, communities or crowd sourced content services. In this environment, academic institutions can extend their sphere of influence through proactive analysis, outreach and relationship management activities among students as well as professors, and by enticing students to spread their influence through social media platforms such as Twitter.

Hung made an interesting topic in his article concerning the theories that go along with how social media is being used in educational activities. There are many educational theories and studies that surround the ideas and concepts of social media being integrated into the field of education for students to use as a method of study as well as for professors to use as a method of teaching. While some theories may suggest that social media impairs the educational learning experience, others may adversely suggest that the use of social media in the education system actually is beneficial towards the overall learning experience. Most of the factors are dependent on each unique system of educational study.

As every school district has varying standards of how teachers and professors must educate their students, teachers and professors use different methods of teaching. While the use of social media for educational studies may be compatible with some methods of teaching, it may not work so well in other methods of teaching. Hung talks about student participation among students. When social media is integrated into the educational learning experience, it makes it much easier for students to participate in class room activities because social media better connects students not only with the class room studies but with each other as well.

In a research study article by Johnson, C.M., he explored how well students were able to engage in their online study communities through a survey which he conducted. As computer systems have become more exploited and widely used over the years, online distance education has become common practice among many academic institutions. Many students have taken advantage of such online learning classes because they have a certain level of convenience as many students are also full time employees. Online learning classes allow students to receive the same level of education with the benefit of a more flexible schedule to fit their daily activities with work, family, and other factors. Social media platforms have been well integrated into online learning classes. As a matter of fact, many universities are beginning to program their own private social networks that are specific to the academic institution.

These educational social media platforms are similar to public social media platforms, but they are specifically and solely intended for the students in the pertaining online class. This is probably the most effective method of integrating social media into the educational system. Consider an online class room social network that is specific to the professor and students in that class. These students can now interact with each other much more accessibly due to the tools and benefits that come with any adequate social network. Online participation is more prevalent and students can better engage in class room discussion just as adequately as a traditional class room. Such versatility in the communications elements of the educational experience is only possible through the use of social media integrations.

In an article by Lipka, it is addressed that colleges are taking in interest in social networking as a way of recruiting students. Many universities, mostly public universities and colleges, are in the business of recruiting students either to build the reputation of their school, or to drive in profits from student tuitions. It is likely that such universities and colleges would make use of social media platforms to advertise their educational services and try to recruit more students. This is commonly seen with public universities such as the University of Phoenix and ITT Tech. This is a different way of using social media platforms in the education system because it is not exactly being used in the academic studies themselves, but rather the processing of students to being those academic studies. Recruiting would easily be regarded as a big part of driving profits for public and for-profit universities, and it is not surprising that Lipka would address this.

In an article written by Pemek, Yermolayeva, and Calvert, it is well noted that the most popular social media platform, Facebook, has been serving as a beneficial tool towards the learning experience as well as education itself. Facebook has well over a billion users worldwide which demonstrates its popularity among a vast array of life styles, including education. It was noted by the authors that in a study conducted by the University of Georgetown, their results supported their conclusions in suggesting that Facebook had beneficially contributed to education for students in enhancing their learning experience because of the nature and framework of the social media platform. This would not be surprising due to the simplicity that Facebook has to offer for the social networking experience. When this level of simplicity is incorporated into the educational experience, it can very well serve as a beneficial and effective tool for students to learn with.

This framework of using Facebook in the educational experience also enhances student interaction on a level that most social media platforms, including privately programed university social networks, may not be able to offer. This may be attributed to the idea that Facebook was the first social media platform of its kind in terms of simplicity. As universities and colleges adopt their own academic social media platforms for their students, they tend to make it similar to that of Facebook. The University of Maryland recently adopted an academic social networking program called the Learning Experience Online (LEO). LEO serves as the online class room for student attending specific classes. Each class has its own LEO network of students and professor. The LEO use interface is similar to that of Facebook with private messages, notifications, and news feeds. There are of course the links to course materials and homework assignments needed to make it an academic online class room.

Young, J.R. noted in his article that social media is on its way to completely replacing the use of traditional e-mails in the educational experience. This is because social media platforms tend to be easier to use than e-mail. The conversations of messages exchanged between multiple users on a social media platform are usually saved so that a user may go back and look at the historical messages. This would be useful for students and professors to see where they left off on a conversation pertaining to an academic study.

As social media continues to expand, it is likely that it will become a primary element of the educational system if it has not already. Technology is constantly advancing and is it continues, the field of education must be able to keep up with it so that the prospect of earning a college degree remains credible. The use of social media in education is a great start in keeping up with this trend in society.

References

Comas-Quinn, A., Mardomingo, R. & Valentine, C., (2009). “Mobile blogs in language learning: Making the most of informal & situated learning opportunities”. ReCALL, 21(1), 96-112.`

Godwin-Jones, R., (2008). “Emerging technologies mobile computing trends: Lighter, faster, smarter”. Language Learning & Technology, 12(3), 3.

Honeycutt, C., & Herring, S., (2009). Beyond microblogging: Conversation and collaboration via Twitter.

Hung, D. (2002). Forging links between ‘communities of practice’ and schools through online learning communities: Implications for appropriating and negotiating knowledge. International Journal on E-Learning, 1(2), 23-33.

Hung, D. W. L., & Der-Thanq, C., (2001). “Situated cognition, Vygotskian thought and learning from the communities of practice perspective: Implications for the design of web-based E-learning”. Educational Media International, 38(1), 3-12.

Johnson, C. M., (2001). “A survey of current research on online communities of practice”. Internet and Higher Education, 4, 45 – 60.

Lipka, S., (2009). Colleges using technology to recruit students try to hang on to the conversation. The Chronicle of Higher Education, Today’s News.

Moore, B. (2008). Using technology to promote communities of practice (CoP) in social work education. Social Work Education, 27(6), 592-600.

Pempek, T. A., Yermolayeva, Y. A., & Calvert, S. L. (2009). College students’ social networking experiences on facebook. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 30(3), 227-238.

Young, J. R., (2008). “Forget E-mail: New messaging service has students and professors at witter”. Chronicle of Higher Education, 54(25), A15-A15.