1. SOCIAL MEDIA – A VALUABLE LEARNING TOOL? Manu Sharma, Maria Stover, Kathy Menzie Washburn University

2. PURPOSE Research questions and methodology 2

3. Factors: Social media & Millennials & Teaching & Kansas 3 Influence of social media on academic outcomes at a mid-size, Midwestern university.

4. Questions 4 ▸ How do our students use social media? ▸ What factors motivate their use of social media? ▸ How do they use traditional versus non- traditional communication methods? ▸ How do they perceive its usefulness in supporting their learning experience? ▸ What obstacles do they see to the integration of social media into the classroom?

5. Method ▸ Stage one: online survey - distributed among students taking general education classes during spring and fall of 2015 ▸ Responses: 320 ▸ Stage two: paper diary – students record their media use habits daily for a three-day period ▸ Completed diaries: 71 5

6. RESULTS What we found out? Results from stage one. 6

7. Demographics 7 Gender Age

8. Demographics 8 Year in school Ethnicity

9. Social media use (frequencies) 9

10. National data 10

11. Number of friends (social capital) 11

12. Factors motivating the use of social media among students (frequencies) 12

13. Communication methods used with friends and acquaintances (frequencies) 13

14. Communication methods used with faculty (frequencies) 14

15. Do you think social media could be helpful for learning? 15

16. What do you think is THE MAIN benefit of social media for learning? 16

17. How helpful do you find the following social networking site functions in a standard college class? (means) 17 On a scale of 1 to 5

18. Key takeaways 18 Social media use and motivations are in line with national data. Most students use F2F, text messaging and social media to communicate with friends, while they prefer email and F2F to reach faculty. Majority of students (71%) see social as a valuable tool for learning, yet close to a quarter (24%) are still unsure about it. The main benefits of social media for learning are: Class interaction (36%) Social support (29%) Content creation (25%) Social media are seen as a way to connect with classmates and quickly exchange information between instructor and class

19. Biggest challenge to social networking site integratio n into the classroom 19

20. OTHER reasons for challenge to SNS integrati on into the classroom ▸ Social network sites are meant for connecting with and sharing personal lives with friends. ▸ For academic purposes there’s already a full- fledged Washburn site (D2L) which separates school work from personal lives. ▸ More than 18 % felt that if integrated into a classroom system, social media could also distract student's attention. ▸ There were some who felt that it can lead to issues of privacy, confusion and stated that old school teaching is better. 20

21. 21 THANKS! Any questions? You can find us at: ▸ manu.sharma209@gmail.com manu.sharma209@gmail.com ▸ maria.stover@washburn.edu maria.stover@washburn.edu ▸ kathy.menzie@washburn.edu kathy.menzie@washburn.edu