Abigail Morris

English 7701
Research Methods in TPC
Project 5
Social Media and Higher Education

Introduction
I am an instructor of First Year Composition and Writing courses at East Carolina University and
a champion of the benefits of incorporating social media in course pedagogy. To most effectively
include social media platforms as course tools requires research into several aspects of teaching
pedagogy. Not all of that research is easy to locate, and much needed research has yet to be done,
but research of this sort demands a willingness to experiment with different and emerging
technologies and platforms. Teachers must also be flexible and mindful of limitations when
creating course materials and lesson plans because of the lagging state of techno-resources
available for individual students and in individual classrooms. They will also need to know what
is available and how to use it, so they can be more aware of what the possibilities of any platform
are.

Background
Research from numerous resources show that many of the teachers who currently employ social
media as an educational tool for students primarily use Facebook, YouTube and Twitter as well
as blogging platforms. As such, most available research into social media in pedagogy and
higher education has involved the use of these forms of tech. Research shows that teaching tech
is often necessary to educate students in both basic use of the platforms and new ways of
thinking about how to use platforms they are already personally familiar with. It also shows that
students use of platforms made optional tools, rather than mandatory will also rapidly decrease.

Problems with current research

While research about older available platforms exist, it remains inadequate based on the
proliferation of social media in the lives of both students and instructors. Very little
academically professional research or writing is available regarding the use of other platforms

like Instagram, Pinterest, Tumbler, and any combination of available platforms. By contacting
instructors directly or via survey based email, researchers might be better able to locate
instructors who do use new and emerging social media platforms or combinations of platforms as
part of their assigned course work for students. Researchers could then work with select
respondents to develop research into a wider variety of platforms and students using those
platforms.
For studies conducted in non-first year writing intensive courses, it could prove very
useful to survey students about how the experience in the course compares with previous work
completed in writing intensive courses, since they will have had at least one previous course of
this variety. Such a study would also need to determine multiple other factors that may be
relevant to student perceptions, such as what tech was available, how and when students used the
tech, their familiarity with the tech both before and after implementation, the privacy parameters
of tech used, policies and procedures for resolving tech based problems encountered during
course work, etc.
To achieve the most reliably replicable results, the study would also need to be conducted
over multiple classes with multiple instructors, however, and this could require several years of
research if multiple instructors are not using the same varieties of tech. The study could be
conducted with only one class, but that would be a huge limitation with it. If multiple classes
taught by the same teacher in either a semester, or multiple semesters, were used for the study, it
would provide more reliable data based on students, but it would not necessarily mean that such
pedagogy would have the same or similar results if utilized by another teacher, so that would
also be a severe limitation of study benefits to other instructors interested in using that tech in
their own courses.
While many studies exist that show reduced or discontinued use of encouraged, but nonmandated tech, few relevant studies ever inquire about students reasons for diminishment or
discontinuation of such tools. If students consider the use of Twitter or some other platform to
simply be extra work, then it may not matter what the benefits or potential benefits are for
continued use. The key to successful use of social media in course work may be making use
mandatory rather than an option, or extra step that students dont wish to allot time for in their
already busy school, work, and private lives, but questions of why students make the choices
they do regarding use would have to be asked by researchers.

Another significant problem is in the very necessity of acquiring academic, peerreviewed, and profession research results. While primary research of the sort mentioned here
is most useful in terms of providing secondary academic research for others, instructor narratives
that treat the same subject matter are also needed. Though a research group may not have
conducted any studies on a teachers social media inclusive pedagogy, that should not be
considered as diminishing the real value of the work being done by that instructor. For that
reason, it is very important that instructors who use social media write professional, academic
papers about their methodology and experiences with using social media as a tool for students,
and submit those works for publication in peer-reviewed journals. For many potential users of
such tech in classes, the experiential data offered by other instructors via personal narrative style
works may be not only more relevant, but even necessary in making the final decision to use a
particular platform, or any platform, or not.

Conclusion
Though there is data available for teachers who are considering or have already decided to
include social media as part of their course work, the available resources are in a near constant
state of flux because of the nature of social media in an economy driven society. This reality
means that such tech, as with all tech really, will always need continuing research. Use of
emerging tech in education should mirror in many ways emerging tech in the wider world. As
students are increasingly members of participatory cultures, they will need educational
opportunities that embrace the nature of participatory cultures, and that are willing and able to
incorporate the forms of technology that the students dont just encounter in their private lives,
but that are also becoming increasingly entrenched in the global market they will be thrown into
after graduation. It is an instructors duty to ensure that students are prepared for what they will
encounter in the world outside of academia, and doing so means finding ways to use tech like
social media to open new worlds of possibility for communication, strategizing, and engagement.