Social media is an increasingly important part of work practices in higher education providing opportunities for promoting academic work, networking, and learning. However, alongside opportunities, it poses challenges about how to engage and represent yourself online. This workshop asks about your use of social media and presents some ideas on engaging with social media.

1. Social Media in Higher
Education
5th September 2017
Dr Muireann O’Keeffe
LTTC, DIT

2. “The word online is becoming old
fashioned”
Sheryl Sandberg, COO Facebook

3. What will we talk about?
• Is there benefit in using social media for academic development?
• How do you use social media
• as an academic?
• as higher education staff?
• as a teacher in higher education?
• as a researcher?

4. How do Canadian
universities use
Twitter?
• https://www.youtube.com/w
atch?time_continue=5&v=Hw
sLsPykaGM

5. Why might you want to use social media?
• Learning
• Networking
• Connecting
• Developing digital identity
• Promoting your work
• Research impact

6. (Weller, 2011)
(Lupton, et al, 2017)
(Carrigan, 2016)

7. The Digital Academic (2017)
• ‘The growing use of social media in academia, and the increasing
importance of maintaining a digital profile and professional online
identity, should be recognised, acknowledged and discussed
Melissa Terras, Professor of Digital Humanities, Department of Information Studies,
University College London
• ‘From using Twitter to running MOOCs or writing on open platforms,
the modern academic identity is increasingly constructed online
Martin Weller, Professor of Educational Technology, Learning and Teaching
Innovation, The Open University

8. Exploring Twitter for Professional Learning

9. Top Tool
for
Learning
Collaboration
& learning
Supports
sharing of
practice
Builds
connections
Keep up-to-
date
Benefits of Twitter

10. Twitter: ego boosting echo
chamber or learning tool?
Muireann O’Keeffe DCU @muireannOK
#DRHA2015 1st Sept 2015

11. Barriers to using Twitter for professional
learning
• Confidence
• Vulnerability
• Risk-taking
• Capacity to participate
(O’Keeffe, 2016, see http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1521971/)

12. It’s not the technology ....it’s the technique
“Yesterday’s cutting edge is todays dustbin”
(John Seely Brown, 2015)
The technology is the easy part, the hard part is about the social practices
We need to know use to use networks effectively rather than just technical
functions of tools such as Twitter, Facebook
More questions:
• How to integrate into the culture of an online social network ?
• What are the social norms online?

13. AS AN EDUCATOR, WHAT DOES YOUR DIGITAL
PROFILE LOOK LIKE TO OTHERS INTERESTED IN
TEACHING AND LEARNING PRACTICES?
Image from: mkhmarketing.wordpress.com CC BY 2.0)

14. Your Online Presence?
(Goodier & Czerniewicz 2014)

15. Being aware of your online visibility is useful
• What is your digital footprint? - content about you posted and uploaded by you or
others
• Make informed decisions about your digital footprint
• What you want your contribution to and interaction with the online world to look
like.
• Increasing your own visibility enables you to:
• Gain recognition in your field and beyond
• Communicate your research to a wider audience
• Grow your networks
• Increasing the visibility of your practice will:
• Increase the impact of your work and potentially increase learning about practice
• Make your work available to the widest audience
(Goodier & Czerniewicz 2014)

16. (Goodier & Czerniewicz 2014)

17. Multi modal
communication of
research
• Sabina Brennan (TCD) psychologist
& science communicator.
• http://sabinabrennan.ie/animatio
ns/
• Laura Pasquini:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
time_continue=5&v=HwsLsPykaG
M

18. Opportunities and challenges
• Higher education should use social media for teaching, learning, and
research - not in the service of branding and marketing.
• How to represent yourself professionally?
• My digital presence?
• What is my digital profile?
• Am I a brand?
• What do I want my online profile to be?

19. Online conflict for academics is increasing.
• Bullying, trolling, Early in my career
• “I don’t want academics and higher education professionals to be
afraid to be online”
• Academics and higher education professionals need tools and tactics
for dealing with online conflict
• We need to openly talk about how to engage in this conflict in our
professional capacities.
(Linder, 2017)

20. Metrics

21. See more : https://business.twitter.com/en/blog/organize-your-twitter-strategy-around-content-pillars.html?utm_medium=paid&utm_source=twitter

22. What are principles of good practice?

23. What next?
How might you:
• Develop digital capability
• Develop digital confidence
• Develop digital identity?
Development opportunities:
• DIT MSc in applied eLearning
• Develop your online portfolio
• Join a MOOC
• Experiment with social media