Have you ever thought that social media would become a powerful tool to facilitate students in their education? Not really.
You know- in recent years it has just transformed the teaching and learning methodologies. To be more precise, reshape the whole education practice.
Now it is considered part and parcel of any institution. So, if you aren’t aware of its benefits and how you can incorporate it to advance your education then give this blog a must-read.
There are several benefits of using social media but the top three are listed below.
The top benefit of using social media in education is, it opens room for multiple learning opportunities. Now online and remote classes are new education practices. Therefore, teaching students to do their work from a distance is essential to make them digitally literate.
So, in this case, the platforms of social media facilitate students in many ways, from sharing announcements to live lectures and taking assignment help from peers.
Today, networking and connection-building are the foremost things. No one can deny its importance. Hence, effectively utilizing social media helps you develop better connections. Through this, you can make your communication faster with peers, faculty, alumni and staff.
Moreover, it keeps your parents informed about your academic progress and also facilitates you in promoting on-campus events.
Social media develops an institution’s identity. It helps other people know about the activities and practices of a particular institution. It is similar to personal branding.
Here, an institute can use its marketing team to build the positive identity of it. Hence, with the right strategies an organization can attract potential staff and students.
You can utilize social media in numerous ways, below we have shared some for you.
Use social media to broadcast updates by creating posts. Such that, you can ask your students to follow an institution page or can ask them to join a group. The most common medium to do all this work is Facebook. It is quite a flexible and easy channel. Most of the learners know about it and can use it easily. You can share updates on course progress, test conduction and homework assignments efficiently.
Also, you know – here, universities can create publicly accessible pages where students remain informed even if they are not active on the platform. However, when utilizing social media it is important to develop a professional boundary. It shouldn’t be the case that students or teachers exchange informal communication on pages. This will simply hinder the institution’s reputation.
Hence, it is advisable to set rules prior!
Another best way to use social media for education is the live streaming of lectures and discussions. Teachers can use YouTube and LinkedIn Live as well as Facebook Groups and Instagram Live to make teaching more accessible to their students or wide across.
Just suppose, if a student does not come to a lecture hall or due to some reason unable to attend the lecture, then live streaming will help him join the lecture instantly without missing anything or he will be able to review it later.
Moreover, a great add-on while streaming is providing captions which help deaf or non-native speakers make the most of the lecture or discussion. Further, platforms like YouTube and Instagram provide an option to record live streams. This facilitates student in reviewing the material before their exams.
Also, this recording feature helps the institute to increase its outreach by making the lectures available to other scholars, professors or countries.
You know – the best way to keep your students updated is by using X. It is a great option for providing quick reminders to students. It simply prioritizes a conversation between a student and a teacher.
Here, instructors can develop a single handle per class and can reuse it every year. What teachers can do is create X threads and share resources like interesting perspectives, thought-provoking quotes and practice quizzes to enhance the critical thinking skills of students. Also, it marks your particular conversations or chats with important speakers.
Through blogs, you can bring advancement to the learning process and create opportunities for yourself. How? By linking blogs to social media platforms. For instance, a student can share his blog on the best online business ideas of 2023 with low investment (i.e. online essay writing services provider etc.) on LinkedIn or any other social media platform. Hence, this will generate views on the blog because these are trending online businesses or topics, so people might be interested in reading them.
Also, don’t assume blogs are limited to only English or particularly writing because you can utilize and transfer its usage across all subjects. There are platforms like Tumbler, Medium and WordPress which help you create blogs. Moreover, you can share course syllabus, updates and other learning resources on the blog as well.
You can use platforms like Instagram to enhance the digital story-telling skills of students. Ask learners to create class-specific accounts to display their photo-capturing and story-telling talent. Learners here can show their graphic designing skills as well. The add-on is, through practising this they will get to know about the response of the audience.
It is best for classes which have heavy use of visuals. For example, either you can train your photojournalism students by assigning them challenging work and asking them to post it on the social media channel or can train your marketing team by handing them a task to launch a brand-specific campaign on the social media platform.
Yes, social media is interlinked with education. By providing numerous learning opportunities to you it helps in making your learning process easier. Not only this, but it facilitates instructors as well.
The biggest challenge for students using social media in education is privacy concerns. Learners are mostly not aware of the consequences of sharing sensitive data which seriously leads to data breaching or privacy issues.
It is very simple, you can educate people by sharing valuable content related to any field on your social media. This can be any news, funny content, quotes, educational blogs, language-specific posts etc.
Yes, social media is helpful in academic performance if used appropriately otherwise not. Through social media, students remain motivated and collaborative which helps them yield better academic results.
Finally, summing it up! The positive use of social media in education has empowered most institutions along with teachers and students. In this digital age, this is of course the best use of technological advancement. Who would have thought that common chatting platforms could bring satisfying results when implemented in education practices? No doubt, its usage has transformed the whole education system. From communication to sharing small learning resources, social media platforms have made the teaching-learning process quite flexible yet modernized.
Social Media and Education,
A Perfect Combo of Advanced Learning!
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