Article Review #5: Effects of Student Engagement with Social Media on Student Learning: A Review of Literature by Ma Hua, Jessica McDonough & Kristen Tarantino

Hua, M. McDonough, J. & Tarantino, K. (2013) Effects of Student Engagement with

Social Media on Student Learning: A Review of Literature. Retrieved from

http://studentaffairs.com/ejournal/Summer_2013/EffectsOfStudentEngage                

mentWithSocialMedia.html

Summary:

            This article looked at how social media can be used to improve student engagement with students that were 12 years or older.  Social media included in the study were blogs, wikis, sharing tools, and networking platforms like Facebook.  The researchers found that students were more engaged because the students could form connections with peers and establish a virtual community of learners.  They also found that student engagement while using social media had a bigger impact on students making connections and learning the content better.  The researchers also found that when students used social media the students were more motivated to participate, share and learn with others.  Students are more engaged in the content while using social media because they have options for creating authentic, creative products through tools such as blogs, YouTube, and podcasts.  The article also talks about how instructors need to make sure that students understand how to use the social media or the engagement will go down.  Instructors also need to make sure that while the students are using social media for school the same rules apply; they need to stay on topic and not bully each other.  In conclusion the article found that student engagement went up when students used social media because it enhances peer interactions and opens lines of communication between students and instructors.  They also found that when students used social media it created a deeper sense of understanding of the course material.   

Reflection:

            Social media was always a very scary world for me.  I never had a MySpace account and I have only been on Facebook for 3 years, and I’m just now starting with blogs.  I never would have dreamed that any of these tools could be used in my classroom to help me reach my students and to get them working and thinking about the content at a deeper level.  After doing some research and taking some classes on using media in the classroom I have a different insight.  Social media is a great place for teachers to pose a question or scenario and then have the students respond.  It gives the students the safety of being able to think about their response before posting.  They can comment back and forth to each other without having to worry about being cut off mid sentence.  When my district goes to one to one technology (heaven only knows when that will be) I will be pushing for teachers to use social media at all grade levels to get their students actively engaged in the concepts being taught.