Use of Social Media in the Academic Environment: A New Platform for Enhancing Independent and Collaborative Learning

Abstract

Social media technologies generated deep transformation in societies by capturing worldwide audiences. Initially used for socializing, and entertainment have in recent years experienced a rapid increase in participation that has been accompanied by a diversification of purposes and usage patterns. They expanded their reaches into learning activities providing an open space to create content, share ideas and engage with universal knowledge. They are offering a new perspective to students’ engagement in collaborative learning to expand their own learning outside the classroom boundaries. As education institutions are embracing social media technologies there is a need to optimize the positive effect of such technologies to bring them into pedagogy to make instruction and learning active and applicable to the cyber environment of the new millennium. Social networking appears very helpful in building academic groups to achieve independent and collaborative learning. Students learn to communicate and collaborate electronically, conduct research online, create digital objects in form of text documents, images, email messages, online discussion and create their e-portfolio. This requires rethinking the way pedagogical activities are carried out in the networked environment and assessing their effect on instructors and learners to create the best learning model in line with this new educational paradigm. The paper is investigating Algerian students’ engagement in academic interpersonal relationships. It examines students’ interpretation of collaborative learning to understand the developmental implications of academic achievement. The author seeks to advance the use of instructional interactions:enhancing the academic validity of social networking, making the link to students’ collaborative learning explicit.



Author Information
Behdja Boumarafi, University of Constantine 2, Algeria

Paper Information
Conference: ACTIS2014
Stream: Social Media and Communities

This paper is part of the ACTIS2014 Conference Proceedings (View)
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Posted by James Alexander Gordon