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| social media technology |
The appropriation and repurposing of social technologies in higher education.
Web 2.0 is revolutionizing communication, social interaction and just about anything else you can think of. By their very nature, Web 2.0 applications are interactive and open.Institutions of higher education are increasingly incorporating social media tools into their pedagogy.
Higher education cannot ignore the sweeping changes that social media has wrought. Claiming issues of privacy and safety, the academy is appropriating and repurposing these tools.Rather than embracing the "open" nature of these Web 2.0 tools,higher education is locking them down, enclosing them within course management systems that require authentication and have restricted access.
It is clear that commercially available online learning environments, i.e. WebCT, Blackboard, Angel, Moodle etc are not engaging students. They are clunky, boring and difficult to use. As this article points out, they are also “dependent on pre-digital metaphors which are increasingly anachronistic as new media gains in significance.” These course management systems are built around dated academic frameworks, the critical essay. New media is built around the visual and digital. New media is radically altering our concepts of “writing” as we have previously conceived of it.
We need to integrate the long held traditions of the academy with the new values of social media. To ignore the social media technologies, facebook, blogs, social bookmarking applications is to negate how the majority of the population spends much of its’ time. Social media will revolutionize education, it will shift the balance of power once closely guarded within the walls of the academy to the crowds beyond the palace walls.
Great post!
ReplyDeleteI agree that issues of privacy and safety seem to be the big holdups for academia in embracing new modes of learning. I guess those are valid concerns though right? In litigious modern world, can institutions do anything but trip over themselves with those issues?
Maybe it's a downside to institutionalized education that is impossible to get around... Makes me wonder if there are any upsides...
You have a very well thought out post here! I really like the points you made; especially the one about new media altering our concepts of writing. While we cannot ignore the new media, we must be sure to hold on to what was once important to us - i.e. the now altered forms of writing. I also like how you point out in the end that social media will shift the balance of power... its interesting to think about how that will affect students and those within the wall of the academy, like you point out.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up an interesting point Will.
ReplyDeleteYou are right! There seems to be so many legal restrictions with social media and their use in a higher educational, academic environment. Just this semester (well it has been going on for a while) with one of my classes we had to switch our class blog three times because of the university regulations on published articles, fair use of documentaries, rules on shared material, etc.
However, I do think there are upsides to social media in higher education. I think actually more so than primary and secondary schools we (college and graduate students) can benefit the most because to some degree I believe we have self-control and self-motivation more so than let's say middle school students. I mean we made it all the way here to graduate school...we must have done something right, right?
Like in our class the blog I think works really well...at least I know that it does for me and Christine H. because we talked about this in our blogs, I believe, in last week's post. In Schroeder's article from this week's reading we can see that there are plenty of strengths to social media:
"Social software can be defined as ‘applications and services that facilitate collective action and social interaction online with rich exchange of multimedia information and evolution of aggregate knowledge’...These applications allow users to create highly dynamic content, often created in collaborative ways with peer-based quality assurance" (p. 161).
As you can see from what we are doing here on this blog right now, in class webs (for online courses at TC - which was my experience) and more we are collaboratively creating content and exchanging ideas constantly. As long as motivation is there and people are willing to make the best out of it social media can really benefit learners and instructors, in my opinion.
Good post Sandra! You're right about some of these Course Management Systems. I am very surprised that our iteration of Moodle does not have blog capabilities built in, but then it very well may be aesthetically boring that way. Even at the University I work at, the Blackboard system we use has a built in Blog tool which has a difficult learning curve. It is not so obvious about how to get to it and updates too frequently (with glitches). Nonetheless, I feel like the integration of these facets needs to be improved upon rather than ignored.
ReplyDeleteYour presentation style was great, thank you. You gave me a lot to think about. Happy Thanksgiving.
ReplyDeleteLiz
GREAT presentation Sandra!
ReplyDeleteDo you think you could share the power point slides with us if you don't mind? Thanks!
"We need to integrate the long held traditions of the academy with the new values of social media. To ignore the social media technologies, facebook, blogs, social bookmarking applications is to negate how the majority of the population spends much of its’ time."
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree with you more. Tradition and Contemporary go hand-in-hand. At least, when I think of learning, it's the past, present, and future melding to together to make sense of who we were, are, and will be. In that sense, as innovative as ICTs and SNS are, there equally needs structure and certain boundaries, which academia upholds. Granted that not all of academia is great and/or transparent, there are things that have been true and through, hence why they still exist. I guess my ITSF background wants me to argue that innovation is an evolution--not a revolution.
Thank you for the post!! :)