Using Social Media in the Classroom:

What our Education Colleagues Can Teach Us

Steve Brewer

College of Saint Mary, Omaha

sbrewer@csm.edu

Today

oMacro

• Review published literature

oMicro

• Teacher Education program at CSM

Focus on three social media

o Facebook

o Twitter

o Pinterest

Definition of social media

“A networked communication platform in which

participants:

1) have uniquely identifiable profiles that consist of

user-supplied content, content provided by other users,

and/or system-provided data;

2) can publicly articulate connections that can be

viewed and traversed by others; and

3) can consume, produce, and/or interact with streams

of user-generated content provided by their

connections on the site.”

Boyd & Ellison, 2013

Business education articles

• 4 on Facebook

• 5 on Twitter

• 3 on LinkedIn

• 14 on general use of social media

• 0 on Pinterest

• 26 total

Teacher education articles

• 21 on Facebook

• 17 on Twitter

• 27 on general use of social media

• 0 on LinkedIn

• 0 on Pinterest

• 65 total

Facebook

Primarily as substitute for a

learning management system

oDiscussions

oPosting articles and videos

oPublic rather than private

Facebook studies

Miron & Ravid (2015)

•Students preferred over LMS

•Easier for instructors to use

Baran (2010)

•Built library of learning resources

•Discussed resources

Facebook studies

Wang, Woo, Quek, Yang and Liu (2012)

• Posting announcements

• Sharing resources

• Organizing weekly tutorial

• Conducting online discussions

Facebook at CSM

Educational Research course

o Develop 5-question survey

o Test on classmates

o Place survey on Facebook

o From samples of 5 to samples of 100

Twitter

Carpenter & Krutka (2014)

Most used by teacher educators and K-12 teachers

o Intense and multifaceted utilization

o More common for professional development

o Personalized, immediate nature

o Positive and collaborative community

Twitter study 1

Junco, Elavsky and Heiberger (2013)

Students required to interact with instructor on Twitter

Components of improved outcomes

o Faculty participation on platform

o Integration based on theoretically-driven pedagogical

model

o Requiring Twitter usage

Twitter study 2

Evans, 2014

o Encouraged students to use Twitter for

communicating with tutor and each other

o Positive correlation found between amount

of Twitter usage and student engagement

Twitter at CSM

History, Philosophy and Trends in Education

o Class hashtag

o Find relevant articles, tweet them out, and lead a

discussion about topic

o Read all classmates’ tweets

o Frequently re-tweeted and followed by others

o Able to interact with teachers on a statewide and

national basis

Pinterest

o Virtual bulletin board

o Popular in Teacher Education

courses

o No published journal articles

Pinterest at CSM

Teacher Education course

o Create personal children’s literature boards

o Books from seven literature genres

o Short summary, descriptions of features,

grade level, and how to use in teaching

Pinterest at CSM

Technology in the Classroom

o Create Classroom Technologies pinboards

o Select images from ed tech sites and pin them

• Describe how they would use each ed tech tool

• Grade level

• Why worth pinning, and how to use it

Pinterest at CSM

o Also used in Theology, Occupational

Therapy, and Nursing courses at CSM

o Article “90+ percent of our students

use Pinterest; shouldn’t we?”

How to use Pinterest

Using Pinterest for Teaching

http://bit.ly/1WV4fJu

LinkedIn

o No Teacher Education articles

o Business Education articles in

bibliography

Summary

o Facebook

o Twitter

o Pinterest

o Published articles

o Used at CSM

Sources

Albrecht, W. D. (2011). LinkedIn for accounting and business students. American

Journal of Business Education, 4(10), 39-41.

Baran, B. (2010). Facebook as a formal instructional environment. British Journal

of Educational Technology, 41(6), E146-E149.

Boyd, D., & Ellison, N. B. (2013). Sociality through social network sites. In W. H.

Dutton (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of internet studies (pp. 151-172). Oxford, UK:

Oxford Press.

Carpenter, J. P., & Krutka, D. G. (2014). How and why educators use Twitter: a

survey of the field. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 46(4), 414-434.

Cooper, B., & Naatus, M. K. (2014). Linkedin as a learning tool in business

education. American Journal of Business Education, 7(4), 299-305.

Evans, C. (2014). Twitter for teaching: Can social media be used to enhance the

process of learning? British Journal of Educational Technology, 45(5), 902-915.

Sources

Junco, R., Heibergert, G., & Loken, E. (2010). The effect of Twitter on college

student engagement and grades. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 1-14.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2010.00387.x

McCorkle, D., & McCorkle, Y. L. (2012). Using LinkedIn in the marketing

classroom: exploratory insights and recommendations for teaching social

media/networking. Marketing Education Review, 22(2), 157-166.

http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/MER1052-8008220205

Miron, E., & Ravid, G. (2015). Facebook groups as an academic teaching aid:

case study and recommendations for educators. Educational Technology &

Society, 18(4), 371-384.

Peterson, R., & Dover, H. (2014). Building student networks with LinkedIn: the

potential for connections, internships, and jobs. Marketing Education Review,

24(1), 15-20. http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/MER1052-8008240102

Sources (cont.)

Towey Schulz, M., Kolker, J., Haas, K., & Paris, A. (2016, April). 90+

percent of our students use Pinterest; shouldn’t we? Online Cl@ssroom,

16(4), 2-4.

Towey Schultz, M. Personal Communication (3/9/2016)

Tuten, T., & Marks, M. (2012). Adoption of social media as educational

technology among marketing educators. Marketing Education Review,

22(3), 201-214. http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/MER1052-8008220301

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