Social Media Use in Higher Education: An Exploratory Multiple-Case Study

Abstract

Social media technologies have become integral in today's societies and they have been highly adopted by college age students. The emergence of social media technologies has impacted the way people learn and interact with each other resulting in communities of learning supported by collective intelligence. Social media technologies have also caused a paradigm shift in education resulting in emphasis on collaboration, personalization, and user-generated content. Research suggests that social media promotes student engagement and content learning, and 41% of faculty members in higher education are using social media for teaching purposes. However, more research is needed in this area to understand how experienced faculty are using social media in higher education in order to develop best practices for implementing social media in teaching and learning contexts.