Social Media: Academic Tool for Promoting Learning Outcomes

Essay Instructions:

Organised by sides , involved critical thinking

It is not possible to use any subheadings. The transition between segments should be clear and natural.

1. Beginning paragraph

General topic

Issue

Thesis/argument

Preview

2. Article body: (No limit to the number of paragraphs)

(1) First write side1: The negative impact of social media on academic learning/performance

(2) Write side2 again: positive impact (The aspects/angles/points involved and the number of words are significantly more negative than negative influences)

(3) The negative impact of rewriting can be mitigated/solved through... or the root cause of negative impact is not in social media

(optional) If there is still a small amount of vacant words, suggestions can be given appropriately (previous three points are the main words. If you have enough characters, you do not need to write)

3. Ending paragraph: conclusion

Reiterate argument

Summary of sides

Bibliography:

At least 12 references

The 12 articles must contain the following two articles. The two articles should also be emphasized in the main content of essay (I have already written Annotated Bibliography, please read it carefully and refer to it):

1. Khan, T., Kend, M. & Robertson, S. 2016, "Use of social media by university accounting students and its impact on learning outcomes", Accounting Education, vol. 25, no. 6, pp. 534-567.

This exploratory study provide a comprehensive understanding of university students' social media use in an informal setting, particularly focusing on its impacts for academic purposes on student engagement and academic performance. The authors pointed out as a premise that social media should be and has been considered as a promising academic learning tool for enhancing students' self-regulated learning outside the classroom based on the changed learning environment, as well as the proliferation, the self-motivation aspect and informal use of social media. The data was collected from an online questionnaire (which is the research method of this study) with responses from university accounting students. Quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis are both adopted as the analytical approaches, which provide dominate and positive results in general: Social media use for academic purposes including information exchange, undertake discussion implement mentor-mentee relationship and other various activities are widely used among students in university-related contexts. are strongly supported by the majority of student because of the general convenience and positive impacts on learning outcomes.

There are 2 parts with considerable merit in my opinion, which may be considered redundant for some other readers: 1. The detailed introduction of Leximancer and NVIV as qualitative analysis tools O 10. 2. The comparison of negative and positive relation between social media use and academic performance concluded from a number of prior studies.

The contradiction between different studies does not make the authors' argument and research less convincing. In contrast, it makes this article more objective, critical and rigorous. This “battle” is very useful for the essay I want to write about the impact of social media use on academic performance, because it enlightened me with different perspectives and research directions.

With the usage introduction of the 2 empirical applications/websites and the pictures of Leximancer's concept map and NVIVO 10's word cloud, the results become more visual, understandable, scientific and convincible. It also let me aware of empirical approaches if further analysis is needed in my own research essay.

2. Aladwani, A. and Almarzouq, M. (2016). Understanding compulsive social media use: The premise of complementing self-conceptions mismatch with technology. Computers in Human Behavior, 60(60 (2016) 575e581), pp.575-581.

This article studies the relations among compulsive social media use, two important self-awareness factors (self-esteem and interaction anxiousness) as its antecedents and academic performance as one of its consequences, moderated by one of the other factors: social media complementarity. Based on numerous theories or measurement scales of each variable, this study offers research questions for exploration. The results indicate that self-esteem has a negative influence on compulsive social media use and that interaction anxiousness has a positive influence on the same. The results also reveal that only compulsive social media use has a significant direct influence on problematic learning outcomes and social media complementarity plays as a moderator in the model (which means the above relations vary across social media complementary levels).

The strengths of this article are clear logical structure, sufficient theoretical and methodological support, scientific path and subgroup analysis, which together ensure the reliability of the research results.

This article provide statistic evidence for a negative attitude towards social media use and academic performance, which is a complete opposite perspective comparing with the positive one of the other article I found. This comparison enlightened me that while universities should adopt social media for academic purpose and take advantage of their learning assistance, at the same time, universities ought to keep an eye on students' compulsive usage inclinations or behaviours, especially in the case of students with problematic self-awareness issues.

A small defect of the article is that there is no possible solutions, especially when the moderating roles of some important technological conditions are discovered and detailed unprecedentedly. On the base of the useful theoretical insights, it will be my mission to do more research about practical solutions which may magnify the positive impact meanwhile alleviate the side effects of social media use on academic performance.

Essay Sample Content Preview:

SOCIAL MEDIA AS AN ACADEMIC TOOL FOR PROMOTING LEARNING OUTCOMES By Course Name Professor’s Name University City, State Date of Submission Social Media as an Academic Tool for Promoting Learning Outcomes Social media broadly refers to the computer-mediated technologies such as applications and websites that make it possible to create and share ideas, information, career interests, as well as other forms of expression (Power 2014, p. 897). Social media differs from the traditional media in several ways, such as frequency, reach, quality, immediacy, interactivity, and permanence. This has driven a complete change in the way individuals and organizations communicate. Social media avenues include Facebook, Instagram, Viber, Twitter, Google+, among a multitude of others. With over 100,000,000 registered users across the various social media avenues, the 21st century is undoubtedly the age of social media (Lenhart, 2015). As the social media usage surged in the recent years, its scope grew beyond the traditional role of providing information and keeping people in touch. Organizations embraced social media as a marketing tool (Stelzner, 2014, p. 45), and activists adopted social media as the new ground for their activism and protests (Gerbaudo 2018). More recently, social media has been greatly utilized in academic and learning institutions (Mao, 2014, p. 220). Though there exist a few negative impacts of social media on academic performance, the positive impacts far outweigh the negatives. This paper seeks to discuss the use of social media in learning, its positive and negative impacts, as well as the solutions to the negative impacts. More and more learning institutions are incorporating social media into their systems as a way of improving the student life. Social media also helps connect various learning groups and acts as a large pool of information for the students. Through social media, students are also able to link with experts and benefit from their expertise (Badri and Rashedi 2017, p. 1441). When one discovers an expert in a particular field, they can easily follow and engage them, which helps gain insight and empowerment. Learning institutions are also increasingly using social media avenues such as YouTube and Facebook to make announcements, communicate campus news, as well as other information of importance to the students. Social media is also a good source to obtain data for research. Social media has also enabled enhanced learning management systems. The enhanced learning management system involves the use of software to help in the administration as well as educational programs. Instant chat functions and programs to share lesson resources improve student participation and collaboration. Social media in learning institutions also helps to improve the social credibility of the students (Dlamini, 2018). As the usage of social media in academics rises, various studies have been done to find out the impact of the use of social media on learning outcomes. A 2016 study sought to understand the consumption of social media by students in an informal setting with a special focus on the impact on student engagement and academic performance. Owing to the great proliferation of social media into the lives of the students, the authors suggested that social media presents a promising learning tool, especially outside the classroom. The study used online questionnaires to collect data from university students pursuing accounting. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data provided positive results on the use of social media on academic performance. Use of social media in activities such as exchange of information and implementation of mentorship programs influenced learning positively and was supported by a majority of students. Though other studies have documented different impacts of social media on learning outcomes, the findings of this study can be relied on (Khan et al. 2016, p. 565). Students are more willing to participate and connect when they use technology to carry out research and share their ideas. Employing social media, therefore, helps them share and communicate ideas more readily. This improves their mastery of skills and enhances learning. In situations where social media is incorporated into the lessons, learning becomes more fun, and the outcomes of learning are enhanced (Balakrishnan et al. 2015, p. 44). New technologies emerge every day. By spending considerably on electronic devices and various social media avenues, the students build skills that do not only improve their academic outcomes but also give them a competitive edge throughout their careers. Humans are inherently social beings. Incorporation of social media in learning fulfills this inbuilt desire for human beings to interact and socialize, a factor that has an overall positive effect on the learning outcomes. For instance, by encouraging the use of Twitter during discussions or preparing for tests, the students develop connections and collaborations with peers, which positively impact on learning. Where students are encouraged to explore a variety of content on social media, their creativity is enhanced. Communication among the students themselves, with the teachers, as well as with the world helps them acquire vital skills for both the world in the college and at work (Michikyan et al. 2015, p. 269). Through social media, a student can identify people with similar passions and interests. From these people, some who might be professionals, the students obtain inspiration that in turn improves their academic outcomes. Social networking also increases the rate of collaboration among the students. This teaches the students how to work well in groups and also enhances communication of important information, which ultimately improves their productivity. The connections created through social media can also help to kick-start and enhance one’s career. Strong relationships with peers as well as open communication enhanced by social media increase peer feedback on assignments as well as thoughtful reflections. Social media also helps students to retain information for long periods. Extension of classroom discussion and work to incorporate social media promotes a deeper und...

Updated on January 26, 2024

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