Module 7 Activity 7: Learning through Social Media

Social media learning takes the form of interaction which is a highly effective form of active learning. Involving social media in the learning/teaching process opens new avenues of communications between students, their peers, teachers, experts and the wider communities throughout the world. Students benefit especially from these extra communication channels that provide opportunities for them to process information and contibute meaningfully to class/group discussions at their own pace. They are able to ask quetions of their peers and teachers in a relaxed, comfortable environment without being intimidated. In using social media the classroom is expanded to a 24/7 experience where accessibility to all is dramatically increased.

However, the use of social media is not without some concerns. There are some measures of uncertainty in using social media since it is subjected to continuous change which have implications for a required structure to fit into the exact learning need. There is also the concern of managing a social network site since when one logs into a site there are numerous invitations to log on to other similar sites which makes it difficult to manage and eventually becomes cumbersome. We are also aware that integral to the the learning process is the ability to track students performance and measure progress. At present, measuring tools for the use of social media are limited. However, despite thes concerns, the benefits of social media in learning far outweigh the drawbacks.