How To Tackle the Use of Social Media In Your Course

Take a look at the advantages, disadvantages, and inherent objectives of social media in the classroom

While hosting an online course, it is understandable to make the best use of all the resources provided for the Internet. Social media is the most prominent in these resources, and there is a strong temptation for many online teachers who have to find creative ways to use it in their curriculum.

There is nothing wrong in it unless its purpose is. However, social media is not for everyone – or every course supporter and an instant stop below the election, shows us the following:

Major advantages of social media include:

User familiarity. Many of your learners already eat and know how to use the forum.
Access to functionality. You do not need to design all these tasks on your own, because the social media platform has done this for you.
Networking for new and old learners alike. Make a place for learners with previous courses and your current learners to connect.
Continuity of engagement. Your learners can do their course on the social media platform, which they already use, and they can do this even after graduation.

Major disadvantages of social media include:

Users leave your LMS. Students of the course must get out of the LMS environment to be attached on a separate platform.
Lack of control. Social Media Platform updates and changes in ways that may not prove useful for your curriculum.
Privacy concerns. Connecting to social sites can make you feel very personal for both your online learners.
Course bloat. The temptation to add social media because it is “to do,” even if it does not help your course.

As you can see, many of these are outside each other, your users know the social media platform, but they have to leave it to use their course environment. You do not have to make everything, but you have less control over it. Your learners have to meet each other, but then they will have to meet each other … You have many ways to get busy, but you can not need them.

For this and vice versa, decide whether you should use social media for your curriculum, there will be some deeper scrutiny. Here are some questions to ask yourself before you add social media quickly or dismiss it manually.

Does social media violate your privacy or your learners?

Social media users come to know about their privacy and degree, on which they want to share personal information online, some users feel comfortable posting something publicly, no matter how personal Others take their privacy seriously, whose friends they choose to request, and some posts only by certain groups Defense allow a view.

Requesting all our learners to follow each other or to become online friends, some people can feel like an intrusion on their own personal life. It is partly platform-based LinkedIn and Twitter, through design, more public networks, while Facebook has more control over the privacy of the user, the key is that you are asking to give your personal information to your students, And without any reason their class should have the key to tell to share their social media profiles.

Of course, confidentiality is also a concern for teachers, in particular, online courses for young viewers. If you want to use social media in your course and maintain a barrier between your personal and professional life, consider creating a separate account for your curriculum.

Are you using social media as part of your curriculum, or as a networking and sharing-sharing tool?

Most social media uses one of the two categories of online education: learning aids, or communication equipment. For example, if you were running a course on advertising, you would like your learners to take pictures of certain types of advertisements and You can ask them to share on Instagram. This will be a learning aid, where social media becomes part of the content of your course.

On the other hand, in a social networking tool, learners may need to share interesting related news articles to their Facebook group or build a special networking group on LinkedIn for course graduates.

As the content of the course, it is more difficult to offer than an alternative networking group. If you want to try social media courses. It is easy to start with a group, which can choose a candidate rather than a fully developed its experiment. When you decide to try later, consider running the exam as an additional credit program. So you can see how well it works before being included in the main course.

Is social media relevant to your course?

If you cover social sites (marketing, PR, sociology, modern journalism) in any of your curricula. Then there is a clear way of action, including a social media-based project. It is not only relevant, but it is also a very practical exercise that will give experience to the hands of your learners and make the lesson more memorable.

Even if social media is not directly relevant, then it can become a useful skill for some businesses. For example, many small businesses use social sites in their marketing. So a social sites-based project can help them in getting content to promote their business. For example, in an online cooking course, learners shared weekly pictures of their culinary experiments on Instagram. His colleagues again reacted and gave feedback about food and drinking techniques.

What are the alternatives to using social media in your course?

Occasionally, the social media platform is already a duplicate of functionality provided by your LMS. For example, do you have a facebook group if you have a forum already? Perhaps they have some functional overlaps, but they are not exactly the same. However, both walks can divide your time and attention, and confuse learners.

Or, before you connect to Instagram to share pictures to each person. Why does not it show that your LMS provides add-ons with similar features? It may be that the facilities you want are already at your fingertips.

Avoid gimmicks at all cost

When talking about social media (or any new fascinating elements that you want to add to your curriculum), the bottom line is simply to include those programs that add value to your program. If you do not have a good reason to include social media in your course, leave it. You will not attract learners by adding waste facilities. Instead, keep your focus on your main content, and make sure that you are doing the best.