Student Stories - Social Media

Learning Services regularly run workshops to both students and staff on how to effectively use Social Media to help engage their learning at University Campus Suffolk. We include sessions in the student inductions and the early adopters Get Ahead sessions.

We thought it would be nice to gather a couple of success stories of how students have been using social media to showcase it's effective use while we run our workshops and sessions.

Pam Ramsden and Geraldine Barker gave up their time to talk to us about their experiences, you can listen to our discussion below.




The examples both Pam and Geraldine gave, highlight two very different ways of using Social Media and these stories will hopefully help reinforce our message that the effective use of social media for learning can help gather resources and connect with peers and professionals based around your discipline.

If you would like to know more, keep an eye on Learning Services publications as we run social media workshops where get to run a more hands on approach to the subject.

Learning Services Workshops - http://ucslssessions.blogspot.co.uk/p/workshops.html

Alternatively if you are a member of staff at UCS who wishes to use Social Media with your cohort, please don't hesitate to contact the Elevate Team in Learning Services.

Learning Objects via Google Slides

Following the successful Getting Ahead programme and the social media elements, I thought I would put together a quick 'how to' for Twitter. This taster session followed the same lesson plan as the face-to-face. Talking through the process of creating a PLN (Personal Learning Network) and how flipping an every day too (Twitter) can lead to a great learning experience.
To deliver the materials I wanted a tool that was quick and easier to author, but also easy to make available and multiple places, and then also easy to amend when required.

For this I've decided to try and use Google's presentation tool 'Slides'. The idea being that I would make a presentation that would guide people through a number of tasks, with Google Slides being online and usable through just a browser I thought this should work well.

The huge advantage to being web-based and easy to embed means I can add this 'learning object' to many different places, like here on the blog, or on our 'Support for Learners' page on MyUCS.

It doesn't matter where or how many places it is embedded, I still only need to edit it in one place. These changes are then live where ever it is embedded.

Below is the set of slides that guide people through creating an account, following other users to build a PLN to hashtags and being safe online.  This has been embedded to fit this blog, you can always click the fullscreen icon to the right of the slide picker.




I believe using this tool/technique for small bite-sized learning objects works very well, and is much more accessible than other tools currently being used by our academics.

Some uses of Twitter in Teaching and Learning: Example from PGCAP

The following outlines how the PGCAP course team are encouraging students to use Twitter within their teaching and learning.

The expected models of use of social media within the PGCAP context, are;

1. developing your (informal) personal learning network - keeping up with the latest news and views from the authors and organisations on your indicative reading list
2. developing your (informal) social learning - support the dissemination of resources across the cohort and within your learning sets.
3. Professional use of Social Media at UCS

Be aware, social media can be a double edged sword. Read the awareness, support materials and toolkits on My UCS (http://my.ucs.ac.uk/socialmediaatucs). Any further questions with respect to effectively managing your online presence, please contact Learning Services (learningservices@ucs.ac.uk)

In class tasks

1. Create a Twitter Account (assuming you do not already have one) - http://www.twitter.com
2. Follow the following people / organisations (based on your Indicative Reading from the PGCAP Handbook)
• Beetham, Helen
• Salmon, Gilly
• Goodyear, Peter
• Higher Education Academy
• Elevate at UCS
• JISC
3. Find an online resource or case study (including YouTube) which explains or applies the Flipped Classroom Teaching Model. Tweet the link to this resource, and use the hashtag: #ucspgcap

The student induction and support material included a set of short how to videos, and advise on creating you account. The intention is to include the hashtag search within the course area, and make reference in the face to face sessions.

How to engage the Public with Research from PhD Students

Yesterday I supported the Graduate School by running a 45 minute workshop for their PhD students.  The workshop looked at how they engage the public with their research.  The main topic of the workshop looked at Social Media and online tools that would enable the creation of communities to allow the building of a Personal Learning Network.

As the workshop was only a 45 minute session I decided to target some specific tools, these were:

• Blogs
• Wordpress
• Blogger
• Twitter
• Google +
• Facebook

The idea I wanted to get across was to use a blog as the base/central hub for materials and content that they want to share.  The use of a blog would allow for ease of posting and therefore sharing.  Blogs also have keyword tagging built in, allowing for easy searching in future.

Once a blog post has been made, the other tools come into their own, sharing that blog post via Twitter, Google + and Facebook really opens up the reach, allowing many more people to find and engage with it.

We went through how to create an account and how to use each tool, in the case of Google + and Facebook it was about creating a public group rather than a personal page.  In the world of Web 2.0 and beyond it is very easy to linkup and integrate these systems, allowing a single blog post to automatically be tweeted and shared on G+ and Facebook.

One real advantage of Google + is that it will inject anything shared public directly into Google Search indexes rather than requiring Search Engine Optimisation and crawling.

As the session drew to an end, I felt the group were enthused and would take up the challenges posed and start to look at using these tools.  After the session I was pleased to have the following exchange on Twitter with one of the attendees.