Social networking as a tool in universities

We know how social networks have impacted the world of internet. We talked at length about it in Bitelia, and also mentioned a few times what influence they have on education. Now, a computer graphics of Online Universities published by Mashable shows us exactly what that influence through some interesting data collected from different sources.

Not all universities fully understand social media well. Many of them do not even include in their curricula, but what happens when students begin to use in class? How teachers view them as a business tool? The real question is whether universities are accepting this new challenge coupled to the communication time.

According to this study, 100 percent of the U.S. universities are using social networks to some extent. Two years ago it was unthinkable that Twitter was part of the classroom, today, 84 percent of students use the microblogging social network to send real-time ads to other students. As for Facebook, the popular social network in the world, in 2008 only 61 percent of students used it. Today, 98 percent use it, making Facebook the social media tool most used in universities.

LinkedIn, meanwhile, also is emerging. In three years we can see how the use of this professional network increased by 47 percent. Blogs, meanwhile, are more or less the same percentage, with a 1 percent decline in its use. The same occurs with billboards or message boards, which are among the percentages of 36 to 37 percent in the last five years.

Now, how universities are using these tools? In the classroom, teachers choose social networks to share learning materials with their students, while these prefer to make announcements and begin discussions on the topics seen in class. In addition, students tend to make pages of "school spirit", related to experiences on campus, for example, the fan page of the school mascot. In short, social networks are being used to create more conversations, create a network of professionals and to find content quickly.