Journal of Social Media for Learning (LJMU)
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Crossing Boundaries: Twitter and online Communities of Practice for Nursing Students
No full textNurse education in the United Kingdom is undergoing its biggest transformation in decades. Widening participation has presented challenges for Higher Education Institutions, increasing numbers of Nursing Students from a diverse range of backgrounds. Changes also to the new NMC standards mean that those nurses qualifying from 2020, will need to be better prepared to deliver care to people with increasingly complex needs, thus requiring a wider range of skills, proficiency in those skills and a breadth of knowledge to support their practice.
Social media (SocMe) has the potential to enhance the delivery of Nurse education, providing increasing opportunities to engage Nursing Students whilst also contributing to the development of student knowledge and skills. Online Communities of Practice (OCoPs), via platforms such as Twitter, support the creation and exchange of knowledge through an active engagement and a shared discourse with expert clinicians and Academics in the field. This paper considers the benefits of OCoPs in the education of Nursing Students. Whilst formal practices of engaging Students using SocMe currently vary from institution to institution, increasingly undergraduate Nursing Students are engaging with OCoPs, contributing both to the development of their online professional identities and to their socialisation into the nursing role. A recent student-led conference at a University in the north of England is used to illustrate how Twitter as an OCoP, has the potential to benefit Nursing Students, contributing to an increase in their social capital and the development of professional identities.
Despite potential reservations around the use of SocMe, such as the blurring of social boundaries, this paper argues that both Students and Academics, alike may benefit from its innovative use and that further research is needed to establish how SocMe may be incorporated into new pre-registration Nursing programmes. 
Flipped classroom and case studies facilitated using social media to enhance learning in Higher Education.
Full text linkThe trouble with teaching sciences is that it could lead to an inactive and boring learning process (Kankofer, 2014). To avoid this, many have incorporated active learning approaches such as the inclusion of case studies which also provides a link between knowledge and application. However, this still could lead to low student engagement as they do not feel like they have any ownership over their learning. The discussed teaching innovation includes the adoption of a combined flipped classroom in which students use social media to identify news stories as case studies that discuss real-time real-world applications of the theory learned. This approach may not be feasible for all sciences or all other subjects, but this study reveals that it has had great impact on the teaching of an Agricultural Economics and Business module
Escaping the inactive classroom: Escape Rooms for teaching technology
Full text linkFree Ed was a one-hour fun and interactive hands on Bring Your Own Device workshop which explored the functions necessary to build collaborative classrooms using Microsoft Teams.
This paper is intended to give you an insight into the pedagogy and technology used in creating the Free Ed workshop delivered at Social Media in HE (SocMedHE) conference, which utilised an Escape Room to deliver Microsoft Teams teaching. This paper aims to give you an insight into the workshop itself, what participants thought, reflections on delivering the session and finally, some key points for you to take forward if you would like to try this yourself.
 
Social Media for Learning: Advancing Theoretical Frameworks to Understand Complex Learning Environments
Full text linkStudents in higher education are driving the informal use of social media to support their cognitive and socio-emotional learning experiences during their undergraduate studies, with a growing literature base supporting the use of such technologies. This paper highlights a need to take a longitudinal approach to explore how students’ use of social media tools may change over time and promotes the use of social learning theories as a useful lens through which to explain this complex and situated learning of a given community of practice. It argues that to enhance social media pedagogies the research community needs to explore more explicitly ways that innovative pedagogy can inform theory development within the field, and equally how a greater maturity in understanding those theories can enhance our pedagogical practices. The potential for cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) as a framework for researching the multi-dimensional, or dialectical, interactions that may occur in the social media space is examined. CHAT is promoted as a useful theory for introducing a greater focus on the role of the social media tool itself in mediating learning. The paper concludes by proposing that that whilst existing social learning theories provide useful starting points for making sense of how social media can support learning, there may also be a need for the advancement of such theoretical frameworks to ensure that we develop theory capable of exploring the complexity of learning that could take place in social media spaces
Co-creating learning experiences with students as partners
Full text linkThe focus of this paper is a reflection on the co-created learning experience that led to three students leading a workshop at SocMedHE19. This students as partners initiative has developed over the course of four years, each set of students building on the work of the group from the previous year. Consideration is given to the outcomes of the continued learning experience, the development of a virtual community of practice and potential future steps to continue this work
How Virtual Communities of Practice via Social Media might enhance Nurse Education
No full textNurse education in the United Kingdom is undergoing its biggest transformation in decades. Changes to educational standards mean that future nurses, will require a wider range of skills; proficiency in those skills; and a breadth of knowledge to support practice. Meanwhile, widening participation initiatives have increased the numbers of Nursing Students from a wider range of backgrounds with more diverse academic abilities. Potential challenges for Higher Education Institutions, may therefore arise from increased numbers entering programmes and the tensions between Learners’ prior educational experience and the demands and expectations of new curricula.
Whilst Social Media is already widely used by Academics for the purposes of research, debate and self-promotion, its use as an education tool varies from institution to institution. Social Media platforms such as Twitter, promote active connections with peers, and have the potential to encourage a shared discourse with expert Clinicians and Academics alike. If harnessed correctly, Social Media may be used to develop Virtual Learning Communities which may address these emerging challenges in Nurse Education, supporting a wide-scale exchange of knowledge, reflection and the development of academic skills such as writing and critical thinking.
This paper considers the benefits of Social Media, specifically Twitter, and how it can be used to support the education of Nursing Students. A recent student-led conference is used to illustrate how Twitter has the potential to increase student’s social capital whilst contributing to the development of professional identity. This paper argues that both Students and Academics alike, may benefit from the innovative use of Social Media and that further research is needed to establish how it can be incorporated into new pre-registration Nursing programmes. 
Editorial: Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Journal of Social Media for Learning
No full textWelcome to our inaugural edition of The Journal of Social Media for Learning.
A new journal where our ethos is centred around the creation of a supportive space where all colleagues, but particularly those new to publishing, can contribute to the scholarly discourse about their academic practice, and if they so wish secure opportunities to gain experience of peer-review and journal editing.
To view the complete journal please follow this link
Self-regulation strategies of smartphone use during university self-study
Full text linkThe role of smartphones within education has received a lot of media and academic attention. This has typically focused on their use in the classroom, within tutor-directed sessions. However, less has been focused on how smartphone use is negotiated within self-study. Using semi-structured interviews, the current study sought to explore final year undergraduate students’ (N = 6) strategies for smartphone self-regulation during self-study time and the extent to which these strategies were effective. IPA revealed three main themes: “Urgency, Context and Consistency”, “Learned Helplessness” and “Fear of Missing out (FoMO)”. The findings extend our understanding of how conceptual frameworks such as self-regulation apply to smartphone regulation during self-study, and provide insight into the barriers for effective regulatory behaviour. Implications for both self-study efficacy and smartphone regulation are discussed
Problematising the use of Snapchat in Higher Education Teaching and Learning
Full text linkThere has been relatively little research exploring how Snapchat can be used within Higher Education teaching to date. In this viewpoint, we draw on extant empirical data to explore the strengths and weaknesses of using the Instant Messaging (IM) app to support student learning and teaching within universities. We conclude by considering whether it is appropriate to fully integrate apps like Snapchat into Higher Education in light of the revelations of data misuse by these platforms. The growth of ‘surveillance realism’, whereby citizens feel increasingly powerless at their personal data being repurposed by these companies for financial gain, arguably supersedes any supposed pedagogical benefits for student learners
Dog filters & flower crowns: Using Snapchat as a Pedagogical Tool in Higher Education
Full text linkAcademics overwhelmingly value social media as a tool for enhancing student learning (Moran et al, 2011). Generally, academics use information technologies and social media to engage with students in a top-down fashion i.e. it is the norm to use whatever the learning technologists deem appropriate (Liu, 2010). Snapchat is a social networking platform that is reserved for communicating with close relationships and, unlike Twitter, is generally not a method for communicating with strangers (Vaterlaus et al, 2016). Thus, any effective use of Snapchat within a learning environment must finely balance engaging with students on social media to facilitate their learning on one hand, and invading their private space on the other (Woodley & Meredith, 2012). After all, the main reason that students use social media is for social engagement, not classroom engagement (Liu, 2010).
In this paper, we discuss the use of Snapchat as a learning tool, our own experiences of using this platform to engage students from two very different academic disciplines – Festival Management and Prosthetics and Orthotics, using this platform to enhance student learning and engagement in different ways. From creating ‘stories’ that help package concepts and theories to make them more accessible; to curating learning and observations from field trips; in addition to creation of learning resources, discussion groups; the possibilities of Snapchat usage within the learning environment are endless.
This paper sets out to provide participants with practical advice on how to use Snapchat within the learning environment. We encourage teachers in higher education to think about how they can creatively use the app to make learning more accessible. Ultimately, Snapchat is a playful app, and the facilitation of playful learning can help promote creativity, engagement and academic achievement among students (Kangas, 2010)
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