Implications of social media use on instruction and student learning: An exploratory study

RM 239, JHJ School of Business, Houston

In this paper we explore the use of social media on the content delivery aspects of instruction and potential impacts on student learning. It is our conjecture that impacts of social media use might depend on factors such as the interface of particular medium and learning style, teaching style and instructor skill, and the demographics of students and their instructors. We propose a framework that links instructor to students through social media. That is, social media becomes a channel though which learning occurs. Classifying multimedia technology as tools and social media as interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications, we employ case studies in developing the framework and we follow up with a discussion of potential implications of social media applications in academia.