Social Media and Higher Education

Today students, learners, and scholars, are living in a digital age. Having Web 2.0 technology environment they are very much exposed to the wide range of Social Web tools and software that provide gateways to a multiplicity of interactive resources for information, entertainment and, mainly communication.

Web 1.0 was all about delivering content, primarily in the form of online courses and produced by experts, teachers or subject matter experts. While Web 2.0 is about user generated content (UGC) in a variety of formats and sharing information and knowledge using social media tools like blogs, wikis, social bookmarking and social networks within an educational or training context to help and support a new collaborative approach to learning.

"My vision of school/classroom 2.0 is, more than anything else, about conversations. Traditional schools involved teachers and textbooks delivering information to students, and students reflecting that information back. To better serve their future, today’s classrooms should facilitate teaching and learning as a conversation — two-way conversations between teachers and learners, conversations between learners and other learners, conversations among teachers, and new conversations between the classroom and the home and between the school and its community (David Warlick)."

“Social Media is a blend of sociology and technology, transforming monologues (one-to-many) into dialogues (many-to-many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers (Wikipedia).”

Higher educations providers are now seriously thinking, how to adopt social media for its blended learning system. They are now starting to believe that these social media tools can be utilized to enhance the creative process by engaging students, staff, researchers, in conversation and discussions.