How are campus students using social media to support their studies? An explorative interview study

Abstract

Social media hype has created a lot of speculation among educators on how these media can be used to support learning, but there have been rather few studies so far. Our explorative interview study contributes by critically exploring how campus students perceive using social media to support their studies and the perceived benefits and limitations compared with other means. Although the vast majority of the respondents use social media frequently, a "digital dissonance" can be noted, because few of them feel that they use such media to support their studies. The interviewees mainly put forth e-mail and instant messaging, which are used among students to ask questions, coordinate group work and share files. Some of them mention using Wikipedia and YouTube for retrieving content and Facebook to initiate contact with course peers. Students regard social media as one of three key means of the educational experience, alongside face-to-face meetings and using the learning management systems, and are mainly used for brief questions and answers, and to coordinate group work. In conclusion, we argue that teaching strategy plays a key role in supporting students in moving from using social media to support coordination and information retrieval to also using such media for collaborative learning, when appropriate.

Going Behind the Scenes at Teacher Colleges: Online Student Knowledge Sharing through Social Network Technologies

“…Our data indicate that the prominence of knowledge sharing in everyday study behavior, the motivations behind sharing and the contents of sharing materials among students align to a large extent with previous studies Hrastinski & Aghaee, 2012;Hughes et al, 2015). We found sharing categories somewhat similar to the ones in Hrastinski and Aghaee's higher education sample (2012), but, in contrast, found that knowledge sharing is pervasive rather than sporadic.…”

“…Existing studies on self-organized, SNT-based peer groups in higher education settings have predominantly focused on the social and psychological function of such communication, rather than on study-related knowledge sharing (e.g., Davis, Deil-Amen, Rios-Aguilar, & Canche, 2012;Hrastinski & Aghaee, 2012;Lotan, 2012;Roblyer, McDaniel, Webb, Herman, & Witty, 2010;Selwyn, 2009;Tess, 2013). Some studies in the organizational and informational sciences have been conducted on knowledge sharing among university students (e.g., Wei, Choy, Chew, & Yen, 2012;Yuen & Majid, 2007).…”

The Potential for Facebook Application in Undergraduate Learning: A Study of Jordanian Students

“…Finally, after interviewing a sample of 20 Swedish university students, Hrastinski and Aghaee (2012) also found that only 25% of students referred to Facebook as a useful way for initiating communication to find classmates and group work members. However, few of them mentioned Facebook when discussing social media use for educational purposes.…”

Exploring Academic Use of Online Social Networking Sites (SNS) for Language Learning: Japanese Students Perceptions and Attitudes Towards Facebook

“…These online social networking sites are used not only for sending or receiving messages and sharing information, but also providing a social and participatory virtual platform for users in virtual organizations and teams to build and expand social networks for communicating, interacting, collaborating and strengthening cooperation with different stakeholders across geographical boundaries using multiple modalities such as pictures, video, simple writing, voice or video chat and link sharing etc. [4][5][6][7][8][9].…”