Presentation on Social Media in Learning Development given at the National Conference of the Association of Learning Advisors of New Zealand / Aotearoa in Napier, New Zealand on November 29th, 2013

1. Using social media in
LD
SESSION AIMS
Review online tools for communicating with
students and colleagues
Highlight challenges in the use of social media for
learning
Explore how ATLAANZ members could make greater
use of social media to strengthen our communities
of practice
Martin McMorrow, Massey University
Centre for Teaching and Learning

2. What is Social Media?
Social media is an online environment opened for the
purposes of mass collaboration, where all invited
participants can create, post, rate, enhance, discover,
consume, and share content without a direct
intermediary (Bradley and McDonald, 2011). The term
Media in this context is a collaboration environment
characterised by storage and transmission of messages
around and about content, while social describes the
distinct way these messages propagate as one to many
and many to many conversations (Minocha & Petre,
2013, p. 10)

3. Social Media includes Social Networking Sites
(e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc): “personal
and personalisable spaces for online
conversations and sharing of content based
typically on the maintenance and sharing of
‘profiles’ where individual users can represent
themselves to other users through the display of
personal
information, interests, photographs, social
networks and so on” (Selwyn, 2009, p. 157).

4. Could also incorporate blogs and podcasts:
http://blogs.city.ac.uk/educationalvignettes/
http://masseyblogs.ac.nz/thelighthouse
Academic English Podcast
http://tinyurl.com/6xy9hy
http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/LearnDevDist/

5. … and media repositories
such as YouTube and Slideshare
http://www.slideshare.net/martinmcmorrow
http://tinyurl.com/ctlvideos

6. How can social media be
used in LD?
It can be difficult for Learning Advisors to engage
with students in the Social Networking (Facebook)
environment
• Student use of FB etc seen as a ‘backstage area’ for
students, embedded in the identity politics of their
offline social lives (Selwyn, 2009) – shown by Unirelated comments on FB wall mainly limited to:
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
recounting and reflecting on the university experience;
exchange of practical information;
exchange of academic information;
displays of supplication and/or disengagement;
‘banter’ (i.e. exchanges of humour and nonsense)

7. Students I’ve interviewed have spoken about using FB
in this way (as a kind of ‘counterculture’ to the
official, sparsely-used forums provided by the
University)
• „Cause I can‟t just rely on my own instincts. I don‟t know.
• Yeah, because I think if I was to do everything all by myself, I
would just …
• Fail [laughs]
• … be second-guessing myself and I‟d be like, ok, cause I‟ll write
something and I‟ll make a point and I‟ll put that in and I‟ll be like
„sweet. But [pause] I don‟t know if that‟s relevant‟
• So I‟d say to [other student], „I‟m thinking of putting this in‟
• It‟s kind of down to how vague the assignment direction is.
• Because when we get directed to do an assignment, we‟ll say as
a whole group on in our Facebook page, „What does this mean?
What do you think this means?‟ And they‟ll say, „I thought it
meant this.‟ And I‟ll say, „Oh, that makes sense.‟ So you‟ll do it
based on what they thought it meant. But if you both got
the wrong idea, even if you end up writing similar things,
then she‟d say, “Plagiarism”.

8. •It‟s also very hard now because everyone‟s aware of the extent
which they‟ll take what you‟re doing as collusion, or whatever it is
and people are becoming very cautious and are less likely to help
people out because people would be like, “Just what are you going
to say?”
• “Oh, we shouldn‟t talk about this”
• Or if people ask me that, I‟ll just say something very
vague, because I don‟t want to give them my points, because if
they start writing about that
• It looks like we‟ve been working together.
•[interviewer] OK, so it might have the unintended
effect of putting you off working together and sharing your
ideas?
• Yeah.
• Which is a shame.
• It‟s like, „cause we don‟t want to share ideas, but we want them to
understand what they have to do.

9. •It‟s not like any of us kind of like leeches of each other; we all do
our own work; we all are hard workers. But we do need to come
together as a group to discuss things.
• And check that what we are doing is OK
• But now it‟s like, „Should we be doing this?‟
• And I also feel that the point of assignments is to learn
something, and you‟re going to learn more if you build your
knowledge from other people; all of their references coming in; all
of your references coming in. And kind of bring in as much
information as possible. To get a good outcome and the most
learning from it.
• But we‟re being discouraged from that
• And learning less because we‟re being encouraged to work
together but almost not work together.

10. There is a potential for Tertiary Institutions to
help students develop social media skills for
professional purposes (‘digital professionalism’)
“Social media is not just for socializing. When handled correctly,
you can use it to enhance your personal brand, establish your
expertise, or demonstrate your digital fluency. Commit to using
social media for professional reasons and be proactive about
managing your activity and image. Consider what potential
employers or colleagues will see - you don't want them to
discover only pictures of you and your dog, or worse. Make sure
at a minimum you have a LinkedIn account with a completed
profile. Try tweeting or blogging about your area of expertise,
thereby creating content that others can forward, retweet, or
repost. This can help you establish yourself as an expert in your
field.”
Harvard Business Review Management Tip, 9 March 2012 (as
cited in The Handbook of Social Media, p. 6)
See also BBC resources on appropriate social networking:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/0/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-16859744

11. Use of Social Media to
develop our CoP
The range of uses of social media by researchers,
summarised in Minocha and Petre (2013, p. 27),
would probably apply equally to Learning advisors:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Formal dialogues (e.g. with supervisors)
Informal dialogues (e.g. with peers)
Document authoring, storage, exchange
Space for reflection, working on ideas etc
Engaging with the community at large
Keeping informed
It was interesting that despite the wide range of
online tools used for these purposes, email was by
far the most used and highly rated

12. To develop our Social
Networking tools, I have
set up ATLAANZ accounts
on
Twitter, Facebook, Slides
hare and Flickr
To learn about Twitter, I joined up the 10
Days of Twitter course for Learning
Developers, run by Helen Webster from
Cambridge University – details in the blog:
http://ld5d.wordpress.com

13. The key to Twitter is the use of hashtags to link
postings on the same topic
• A hashtag is any word preceded by # in a
tweet
Useful hashtags to include in your tweets might be:
• #studychat (when giving advice to students)
• #loveLD and #ATLAANZ (when sharing with other
learning advisers
• # + name of your institution’s twitter account –
for example #MasseyUni

14. This means that your tweet will come up in
any search for that hashtag
For instance, these are some tweets that
included the tag #studychat

15. Social Networking Issues for ATLAANZ
• Developing our own social media skills
• Contributing to the development of students‟
digital professionalism / literacies
• Using social media – whether based on
emails, Facebook, Twitter or whatever – to
enhance the cohesiveness and
„organisational learning‟ of our members

16. USEFUL ONLINE
RESOURCES
http://www.paulselearning.com/education/resources
http://imaturestudent.wordpress.com/a-z-of-web-2-0-tools/
• two lists of online tools for educators
from Paul Andrews and Andy Mitchell
from the UK
http://socialmedia4us.wordpress.com
http://tinyurl.com/gettingstartedwithtwittertips
• a blog and presentation from Sue
Beckingham, an educational developer
at Sheffield Hallam Uni

17. http://tinyurl.com/socialmedia4researchers
• A guide to using Social Media in research by
Shailey Minocha and Marian Petre from the
Open University
http://www.scoop.it/t/social-media-for-higher-education
• A „curated‟ collection of resources on social
media in higher education

18. REFERENCES
Minocha, S., & Petre, M. (2013). Handbook of social media for
researchers: Digital technologies for research dialogues. Retrieved
from
http://www.vitae.ac.uk/CMS/files/upload/Vitae_Innovate_Open_Univ
ersity_Social_Media_Handbook_2012.pdf
Selwyn, N. (2009). Faceworking: Exploring students’ educationrelated use of Facebook. Learning, Media and Technology, 34(2),
157–174
Thanks to Ximena Riquelme for passing on some really useful articles on this
topic, including the Selwyn paper – and to Helen Webster, Sue Beckingham,
Sandra Sinfield and other Learning Developers from ALDinHE in the UK
– Social Networking in action!