Development of a Strategy for Social Media Usage in Higher Education

Abstract

Social media (SoMe) is everywhere in our daily life. People have started to use social media in almost every aspect and field of life, however, limited attention has been paid so far to studying the potential of social media for educational purposes. So an important question is “How to use social media efficiently for teaching-learning processes?” To answer this question standards or strategies should be defined for a more effective and efficient social media usage in an educational context. Hence, being a part of an international research project1, this article aims to develop a strategy for social media usage in higher education.The article starts with (1) presenting findings of an ongoing international project researching the status quo- and potential of social media application for teaching, learning and research in higher education institutions. (2) After that, findings from the literature, qualitative research and web searches are related to the results. Based on the previous steps, in a final step (3), a general strategy for social media usage in higher education is presented as a framework for consideration by various higher education institutions.