It is said that the young lead the world. This means that right now, our world is led by those who were born and grew alongside technology. The truth is, technology has affected almost every person in this world. Did you know that 2.87 billion people own and use a smartphone today? We are more obsessed with things like technology and social media than we’ve ever been with anything else.
This doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Social media and technology have opened up amazing opportunities for the people, shaped most of our industries in an unimaginable way, and are still helping us on a daily basis. That being said, social media can also play an integral role in the educational world. If used properly, higher education social media will offer innumerable chances for collaboration and learning.
There are plenty of things you can do to harness the powers of social networking platforms and improve your education. These go beyond just taking a social media and marketing course, though this move definitely couldn’t hurt you nowadays.
Below you’ll find some of the best ways to use social media in higher education.
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Get Access to Recent Updates
Platforms like Facebook are now widely used as a way to broadcast changes in schedule, updates in the curriculum, as well as inform students of exams, deadlines, and assignments. In the past, it took a while for a student to learn that a class has been cancelled, get crucial information about an exam, learn when a paper is due, or get an update on the class syllabus.
Social media changed all this. Groups on Facebook link students and instructors, giving them a chance to update everyone involved in the learning process instantly. If you use higher education social media platforms like your class’ group on Facebook, you can even set it up to send an alert when something is posted.
To be more, you can even take part of a student group on social media and get updates on exam questions, get reminders of assignment deadlines, as well as get advice on how to pass a given subject.
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Take Part in Discussions and Get Answers
With social media, you no longer have to wait for the actual class to begin to ask questions about the material. You can post questions in a group and get fast answers from peers and even instructors. These are also excellent places for discussions on various topics and can provide you with excellent ideas for your projects.
Once you’re done crafting your paper, you should try EduBirdie plagiarism checker to make sure that your content is 100% original, especially if you got your idea from a post or a group on social media platforms.
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Use Them to Communicate via Messages
Social platforms usually work differently, but most of them can be used for communication. Establishing good relationships with your peers is now easier when you have continuous access to this useful tool. You can use Facebook to reach out to a friend, help out your peers when they request your assistance, or use platforms like Twitter as a message board for the entire class.
Twitter is now rather frequently used by teachers. Some of them have started posting reminders of assignments that are due, reminding students in case they have forgotten about a deadline. They are also used to share important information, interesting facts about the subject, or inspirational quotes and helpful links.
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Find and Download Important Subject Materials
Nowadays, more and more instructors choose to post digital study materials in groups on social media. This eliminates the need for sending them individually to each student via e-mail and ensures that the files remain in groups or messages for everyone to download when they need them.
If you use social media, your professors, as well as peers, can send you digital files via message or as a post in groups. This way, you can see the paper your friend wrote on a similar subject, pass on notes between your peers, and download class materials that you requested from your instructor for some project.
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Use Images and Videos for Visual Learning
Platforms like Instagram use images and videos to share messages. This is an excellent way to stray from traditional studying techniques and enjoy a new, refreshing way of learning. You can also find a lot of useful information in the Pinterest board, such as infographics, educational videos, or information in the form of images you can save as a pin.
Social media allows you to save things to use for later. When you need those pins for class, you simply need to access Pinterest and it will be there. Right now, many teachers have started using this social media platform to share lesson plans, worksheets, as well as organize different visual resources for learning.
Conclusion
Social media is an excellent place to relieve all that tension students have because of academic obligations, have fun conversations, or watch interesting things. But, it can also be used for learning purposes. These ways have been widely accepted and highly successful in classrooms nowadays. They are an excellent way to boost your learning and become a more successful student.
Author’s Bio
Rey Campbell is a professor at a college based in London. He teaches literature and speaks four foreign languages. Thanks to his amazing writing skills, Campbell has been published on many pages online, as well as journals and magazines. You can follow him on Twitter.
Hi Rey,
Thanks again for another informative post.
There are some really good points in here to help you make use of social media.
I think it’s a great tool for helping students collaborate with each other, although it does come with it’s distractions too.
It’s great that we live in this age where we can share and communicate with each other so easily.
Looking forward to your next post.
I couldn’t agree more! Social & Community sites like Quora, educational forums can be used to grow our knowledge and learn new things very subtly and quickly. Please share their real-life experiences on these platforms that sound easy to relate with which helps us to learn way faster.