How can academics use social media?

It’s not just students grappling with how they can use social media to enhance and manage their studies.  Academics and researchers have a raft of social channels open to them to help both with their teaching and their own research and career.  But what is worth spending time on, and how can social media work in an academic context?

Following our last post, we’ve come across this handy blog giving advice on How to do a Literature Review.  Covering a host of topics, there are a couple of top tips posts on using social media in academia, sharing lots of useful links across a variety of social media topics to get you thinking:

• Institutions and social media
• Social media in general
• Digital identity
• Blogging
• Twitter
• Other social media platforms.

Highly recommended whether you want a quick round up on discussion about using social media in academia or you’re ready to jump in and set up your own blog or Twitter account and develop your online profile.

Our own tip for today?  Join the conversation! 

Find social media channels in your areas of interest, whether academic or not, so you can see what other people in your field are talking about, sharing, and looking at.  From there you’ll find ideas, tips and links to other social platforms to explore, and widen your digital horizons.

To get started, look for:

1. Institution, department and colleague Twitter feeds
2. Blogs written by key authors and thinkers in your field of study
3. Relevant publications, journals and news channels RSS feeds.

And don’t forget publisher networks – at SAGE we have a range of social media channels sharing content and knowledge across journals, books, authors and subjects, which are great places to expand your own network. Come and say hello:)

Why should researchers be on social media?

Following a previous guest post on using a blog as a research journal by Mark Carrigan, we’ve found some great blog posts by the Text and Academic Authors Association (TAA) for academics who want to use social media, so thought we’d share with you.  If you’re a researcher planning (or trying) to develop a social media presence, check out these practical tips and tools.

8 Reasons why academics should be on social media

From enhancing your research and improving your writing, to building a network and staying up to date with your field, there can be many benefits to get involved with social media.  Do you agree with these top 8 reasons?  What other benefits (or drawbacks) do you see?  Tell us in the comments field and share your experiences.

5 Must-use social media tools for academics

Following the first post, these tools can help speed up your time on social media.  With the best of intentions, sometimes the practicalities of fitting social media in can get in the way of progress – but on the flip side this means there are some great tools to help you create and manage your messages and content more efficiently.  Again, if there are any other tools you recommend please share these in the comments field below.

Have you come across other handy resources or advice on using social media for study and research?  Feel free to share in the comments field!

Do students like using social media in the classroom?

You might be really comfortable using social media as part of your studies, but what about everyone else in your class?  Not everyone is convinced of the value as part of their learning and teaching experience.  Find out what some recent research uncovered about using social media in higher education…

This piece was originally posted on SAGE’s Management Ink Blog and is re-posted here with the kind permission of Management Ink Editors. 

By Christa I.Carlson, Management INK

Social media is trending in higher education. About 41% of faculty members use social media as a teaching tool and 87% of Facebook users are between the ages of 18 and 29, according to Pew Research Centre.  But does social media enhance learning or does it disrupt pedagogy? How does social media affect the students’ opinion of the instructor and university overall? Is the use of social media in higher education a trend worth following?

To answer these questions, researchers Stacy Neier and Linda Tuncay Zayer surveyed and interviewed marketing students at a private university about their motivations for using social media in class. 

The students’ responses detailed their familiarity with certain social networking and microblogging sites, and most importantly, how they contributed to their academic performance. Based off the study’s findings, the researchers discussed social media’s potential as an engaging and entertaining educational tool.

To learn more about how students and teachers use social media in education, read Students’ Perceptions and Experiences of Social Media in Higher Education, a new study out today in the Journal of Marketing Education.

How to use audio-visual presentations for study and research – Part 2

This is the second part of our post on using audio-visual formats in your work, following part one last week.  Continuing the extract from Studying and Researching with Social Media, Megan Poore discusses how to develop appropriate style and format with your AV presentations, and shares one of the activities from her book on analysing an AV format. 

You can read the first part of this post, which introduces types of AV presentations and typical tasks you may be set, here http://studyingwithsocialmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/how-to-use-audio-visual-presentations.html

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SUCCESSFUL ENGAGEMENT WITH AV PRESENTATIONS

Depending on your viewpoint, it can be exciting, daunting, or confusing to have to produce an AV presentation for class. In any case, you will be most successful if you can perform according to the following advice.

Style and tone

Style refers to the forms and techniques of communication that you choose to convey a message; tone means the ‘mood’ you adopt to convey that message. With written work, style and tone are usually proscribed by ‘genre’ conven­tions; that is, blog posts must sound like blog posts, essays must sound like essays, and reports must sound like reports. AV presentations, on the other hand, often give you greater flexibility when it comes to choosing the style and tone you will use to get your point across.

It is important that your style and tone should be natural and not forced: if you feel uncomfortable with a more ‘relaxed’ design, then aim instead for a strategy involving a ‘Standard English’ approach. With all this said, it is still really important that you check with your lecturer to see what are the limits to the style and tone they will accept for AV assignments.

Visual and auditory ‘grammar’

Grammar comprises the systems and structures of language that help us communicate effectively. Mostly, we use the term ‘grammar’ to refer to the written word, but the notion of grammar can also be applied to auditory and visual forms of communication, in which both sound and vision have their own ‘language’ – a language that needs to be structured and presented in ways that make sense and that can be easily decoded by listeners and view­ers.

So, a highly developed visual grammar will communicate a message using everything from line, form, surface, size, colour, position, spacing, rota­tion, mirroring, inversion, movement, dimension, perspective, depth, juxta­position, angle, focus, texture, background, foreground, scale, weight, and the many other elements that constitute visual design. A highly developed audi­tory grammar communicates using elements such as tempo, speed, pitch, tone, background, modulation, volume, silences, fill-ins, sound effects, music, rate of delivery, slow and fast fades, truncation, and echo.

Creativity and format

AV assignments give you the opportunity to show that you can do more than just write. In fact, the level of creativity allowed to you in producing an AV presentation can be quite high and you might very well have the leeway to record real or imaginary interviews, produce mini-documentaries, gather vox pops, add sound and visual effects, or assemble an animation. Before embark­ing on a creative response, however, check with your lecturer to be sure that you have the freedom to do something different or original with your presen­tation. Give them a sense of what you are thinking of doing and ask them 1) whether or not they think it will work, and 2) for any suggestions they might have in terms of content, format, or traps to avoid.

Content and structure

Getting content and structure to come together to form a coherent whole is vital if you are to effectively communicate using any audio-visual medium. This is, of course, the same for a written piece of work, but, arguably, more is at stake with AV presentations because your audience doesn’t have the benefit of being able to skim your work to get a sense of its overall quality before scrutinising it in more detail: once someone has hit ‘play’ they are pretty much committed. Thus, making the right choices at the planning stage is essential if you are to engross your audience.

Content

In choosing your content ask yourself:

·         What outcome do I want?

·         What do I want to convince my audience of?

·         What is the most effective evidence I can marshal to support my main points and how can I best present it?

You may not be limited to ‘the literature’ in an AV presentation: images, sounds, video, animation, could all be acceptable. Your content for any AV presentation needs to be not only relevant but also engaging.

Structure

Any form of academic communication, whether it be written, visual, or auditory, needs to be competently structured if your audience is to follow your argument. But ensuring that you have an adequate structure is perhaps even more important for an AV presentation than it is for an essay or report – if the structure of a written piece at any point breaks down, then the reader can always flick back and forth and try to establish how your argument hangs together; this isn’t so easy with AV presentations. So, introduce your topic properly, allowing your audience to orient themselves to what is coming up in terms of argument, and subject matter, present your points logically, and end with a clear and concise summary and/or discussion of the implications of what you have presented.

ACTIVITY: Analyse documentary audio

Planning to create an audio presentation?  Follow Megan’s instructions to critically analyse some existing podcasts before applying to your own work.

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Text and activity extracted from Studying and Researching with Social Media by Megan Poore.

How to use audio-visual presentations for study and research – Part 1

From creating a narrated slideshow, interviewing an expert or making a mini-documentary, to producing an ongoing video or audio series, audio-visual formats can be used to bring your assignments and research to life.  What kind of tasks might you be set and how can you create an engaging style and format to effectively present your work?  In this extract from Studying and Researching with Social Media, Megan Poore discusses the use of audio-visual formats in higher education, and shares one of the activities from her book on analysing an AV format. 

This post comes in 2 parts – this first part introduces types of AV presentations and typical tasks you may be set; the second part, discussing style and format plus the activity, will follow next week.

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WHAT ARE AUDIO-VISUAL (AV) PRESENTATIONS?

There are many forms of AV presentation, with slideshows, videos, and podcasts being the most common formats used when you undertake some kind of AV task.

Slideshows

Most students and researchers will be familiar with the slideshow format as an essential part of lectures, seminars, demonstrations, and tutorials. Slide­show software such as PowerPoint (for PC) or Keynote (for Mac) is typically installed directly on your computer desktop or tablet device, but an increasing number of users are choosing to create, store, and share their slideshows ‘in the cloud’, that is, on the web via a service such as Google Drive’s ‘Presenta­tion’.

Other services such as Slideshare.net and Voicethread.com will convert an uploaded slideshow to a flash-type ‘movie’ that permits viewers to easily click through the presentation and even to download it. But you don’t have to be restricted to the sequential arrangements intrinsic to more traditional presentation software: many lecturers and students are using sites such as Prezi.com to design a dynamic, less ‘linear’ visual environment for their oral presentations.

Audio

Audio presentations can be recorded via a number of devices equipped for the task: computer, laptop, smartphone, ‘dumb’ phone, hand-held digital voice recorder, tablet, or stand-alone digital recorder and mixer. Once you have a recording, you can edit it on your desktop using simple sound editing soft­ware such as Audacity (which is free, downloadable from Sourceforge.net, and suitable for both PC and Mac) or GarageBand (which normally comes free as part of the software already installed on a Mac). More powerful soft­ware is available, but it can be expensive. There are also free, online audio recorders and editors available.

Audio presentations can be hosted on websites such as PodBean.com and PodcastDirectory.com; many are put into iTunes as part of an ongoing podcast series. As with most social media, listeners can like, share, and comment on your audio.

Video

Video recording is an almost banal affair these days, with even the most basic mobile phones being equipped with a video camera. Of course, you can also film material using a dedicated, high-definition video recorder, just about any digital camera, a webcam, or a camera built-in to your computer or laptop. But the trick is turning your recording into a ‘movie’, which involves a knowledge of editing and file formats. You will probably have little control over the recording software you use, as it will already be loaded onto your recording device, but you will be able to find editing software that suits you: the most popular desktop software is probably Windows Movie Maker for PC, and iMovie for Mac. There are many more available both free for use on the web, for down­load to your desktop, or for purchase from a computer store.

Once you have recorded and edited your video, you can host it on one of the many videosharing sites on the web. YouTube is clearly the most ubiquitous videosharing site online, but Vimeo and Blip.tv are others (photosharing sites such as Flickr often also allow videos to be uploaded, but file size and running time are normally quite limited).

Other forms of visual media used in higher education: ü  Photosharing ü  Videosharing ü  Animation ü  Comic strips ü  Multimedia/mashups ü  Virtual worlds.

AV PRESENTATIONS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Lecturers have been assessing various kinds of student presentation for a long time now; usually, such presentations have taken the form of a talk given in class either by individuals or by small groups. But digital media and computer software such as PowerPoint now give lecturers the option of hav­ing you complete oral work without your actually having to be in the room to present it.

Typical AV tasks set by lecturers

Creating a narrated slideshow

·         You should already be familiar with how to create a slide­show using software such as PowerPoint, but you may not have added a voice-over track before. Once you have created your narrated slideshow you may be asked to upload it to your class site or a site such as Slideshare so that other students can view and com­ment on it

Interviewing an expert

·         Recording an audio or video interview with a subject expert can be a terrific experience. In some instances you will be asked to find your own expert (in which case sites such as ExpertGuide.com.au are useful); in others, potential interviewees may already be lined up for you by your lecturer

Making a mini-documentary

·         Some lecturers will require you to put together a video or audio documentary or one-off ‘radio’ (audio) or ‘television’ (video) show. You may be given a format to follow or you may have to develop your own, in which case you could con­sider including interviews, narration, music and/or sound effects, tips, vox pops, reports, etc.

Producing an ongoing video or audio series

·         This kind of task is, clearly, a semester- or even year-long proposition and requires you to use a variety of skills. Firstly, you will have to con­ceptualise your series, develop a format for it, script individual ‘episodes’, record material, edit it, and distribute or publish it.

Check the blog next week for Part 2! 

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Text extracted from Studying and Researching with Social Media by Megan Poore.

How to use a wiki for study and research

Wiki’s can be a great collaboration tool in study and research (and we’re not talking about quoting Wikipedia sources in essays!).  In this extract from Studying and Researching with Social Media, Megan Poore discusses the use of wikis in higher education, and shares one of the starter activities from her book on creating your own wiki.

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WHAT IS A WIKI?

A wiki is a website that allows people with access to easily edit, add to, and delete webpages and/or their contents. Wikis are very similar in appearance to ordinary websites that have ‘static’ information on them; the difference is that you cannot edit regular websites but you can edit a wiki. Wikis are thus typically created by groups of people as they seek to build and share knowledge on a topic or topics (unlike globs, which are normally – but not always – written by individuals). In this way, wikis are about the ongoing process of knowledge construction around a particular topic and contributors collaborate on a wiki to build a webspace that constantly changes, according to what the community knows at any given point. Therefore, a wiki is by its nature a ‘work in progress’ and the knowledge that it contains is always ‘unfinished’.

Wikipedia is probably the best-known example of a wiki. Wikipedia is a website that anyone can contribute to by creating and editing articles on any topic. It is important to understand that Wikipedia is just an example of a wiki – not all wikis are Wikipedia, however.

WIKIS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Wikis are used for both study and research purposes. If you are a student, you need to know that there are some typical educational models that lecturers work within when they ask you to complete an assignment by using a wiki. Having a general ‘feel’ for how your lecturer (or research team, if you are a researcher) is using the wiki, and appreciating the rationale that lies behind such use, will help you understand what’s required of the particular wiki task you have been set.

VIDEO CLIP Wikis in Plain English To get an overview of how wikis work, watch CommonCraft’s ‘Wikis in Plain English’ video

Typical wiki tasks set by lecturers

Learning-focused wikis are generally used when lecturers want you to undertake one or more of the following tasks – research teams often use wikis in a similar fashion:

Contributing to pages

§  The main feature of a wiki is its pages. Wikipages are just like regular webpages except that people can easily edit them and add their own content (think of Wikipedia)

§  How the pages are organised and structured will depend on how your lecturer has designed the wiki task

§  In some cases, your lecturer will expect the class to structure the wiki itself, that is, from scratch; this means that students decide as a whole how best to organise the wikipages

§  In other cases, however, your lecturer will already have created a ‘shell’ or a set of pages that provides a basic structure for your wiki.

This structure is, of course, usually based around key course themes, and provides an example of the single class wiki described above. Your job is to take the basic shell and add to it – but how this happens will vary. Some lecturers will want everyone just to build the wiki in a fairly ad hoc manner, with people deciding when and where they want to contribute; other lecturers will put you into small groups and ask you to contribute to one section, theme, or area only. Small group tasks such as this may be undertaken either on a single class wiki or on multiple class wikis. Sometimes, lecturers will set a word limit on pages. You need to know if this applies to your situation.

Contributing to and using the discussion forum

Your class wiki’s discussion forum can be used in one or both of two ways.

§  First, if your lecturer is using a wiki purely for administration purposes then you will likely be expected to post any administrative queries (such as those relating to readings, assignments, lecture times, etc.) in the forum, as opposed to emailing your lecturer directly

§  Second, you may be asked to contribute to the forum as part of the assignment you have been set, which will mean that you are expected to participate in online discussions around course themes and content – that is, the intellectual content of what you are meant to be studying.

Being part of a wiki group

Some lecturers use the wiki medium as a way of getting students to do group work; after all, wikis are perfect for this purpose. Your group will be expected to build a page or set of pages around key course themes and then have your contributions assessed – either as a group, individually (remember, your lecturer can track your individual activity on the wiki by using the history function), or both. If you’re not sure about how group work is being assessed, ask your lecturer.

Editing others’ work

The whole point of a wiki is that its content gets built up over time as the wiki community adds to and refines its understanding of a topic. If your lecturer is using a learning-focused wiki model then it is highly likely that you will be expected to edit other students’ work. Some students find this idea uncomfortable for a number of reasons, but, for now, know that there is a very high probability that your lecturer will require you to undertake wiki tasks that may require the alteration of others’ contributions.

ACTIVITY: Create your own wiki

Why not try setting up your own wiki?  Follow Megan’s instructions and see for yourself what’s involved.

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Text and activity extracted from Studying and Researching with Social Media by Megan Poore.

Your best tips on using social media for study and research – competition winners!

Thanks so much to everyone who entered our competition to share their best tip on using social media for study and research, there were some great suggestions.  From Facebook and Twitter, to blogs, dropbox and research tools, there are clearly lots of tools you’re using in different ways to make studying and researching easier.

You can see all the entries here: http://studyingwithsocialmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/win-kindle-fire-hd-with-your-best-study.html

But most importantly…

We’re very pleased to announce that the winners are…

Ø  Overall winner: Saila Naomi

Ø  2^nd place: Alex D

Ø  Runners up:Maria, lucyhensher93, Polde Petek, Manca Urankar and Mikkel Guldberg

As a reminder of the prizes, Saila Naomi wins a Kindle Fire HD, a copy of Studying and Researching with Social Media by Megan Poore, plus a goody bag; Alex D wins a copy of Studying and Researching with Social Media by Megan Poore, plus a goody bag; Maria, lucyhensher93, Polde Petek, Manca Urankar and Mikkel Guldberg each get a goody bag.

To claim your prize, please contact us using the ‘get in touch’ form at the bottom of the blog, giving your name and email address so we can contact you to arrange delivery of your goodies.

And here are the winning tips…

Winning tip from Saila Naomi

Facebook groups! Make sure to create a Facebook group with your peers to share files via the upload function - such as class notes, or paper drafts you'd like comments on. Also consider joining existing groups with people from all over the world who share the same interests. There are fx numerous groups where news articles and research about economics are being shared and discussed, which can be a great source of inspiration. The group "political science data" is basically free advice: people post about what sort of data they need and a lot of people respond with suggestions for sources or proxies. This can be an extremely helpful way of getting advice and sharing resources!

2^nd place tip from Alex D

I research social websites that evolve around the production and dissemination of Internet memes. I use ethnographic research tools (such as interviews, material collection, and observation) in order to understand the motives and purposes behind these user-generated products. I have found the software NVivo highly useful in this process. NVivo helps me collect, organize, classify, and code the vast amount of data I collect in a way that makes the emerging patterns more discernible.

Runner up tips

Maria I find Facebook Group-Conversations an amazing way to avoid meeting up with people for all those group projects/assignments. In this way, I save both time and energy and money! Oh and I also protect my mental health, which get worse and worse with actual human interactions. :D

lucyhensher93 The most important thing is to use to right media tool for what you want to do. So I use twitter to post links to articles or follow what my student union is doing. I use Facebook groups for presentation work such as sharing one document so everyone can edit it and sharing pictures. Facebook groups can also be used for uni societies to post events and relevant info. I wouldn't talk to my tutors on these mediums however, I would use a separate forum on my VLE or email them directly. Feel free to check out our blog where me and two other second year students write about how students study as well as focus groups and surveys we run: http://blogs.sussex.ac.uk/sagestudents/

Polde Petek Follow your lecturers and other academic in your field of study on Twitter - they will often retweet useful articles from the area that won't be highlighted during lectures. Having that 'extra' shows interest in the subject and will boost your grades.

Manca Urankar Like your favourite academic journals' official Facebook page and don't forget to click on 'Get Notifications'. You will get a notification immediately after the new edition comes out!

Mikkel Guldberg Dropbox is invaluable for group work - even keeps old versions if somebody forgets to put on track changes Social media is a great way to spread online surveys - You won’t get a random sampling but for projects where quantity trumps quality of data it's a great tool!