Presented at national seminar on “Education for Sustainable Development” organized on March 28 & 29, 2014 by Department of Education, Mysore University, Mysore & SIO Karnataka, Bangalore, Karnataka, India.

1. By
Mr. Vijaykumar Meti
Ph.D Research Scholar,
Dept. of Journalism & Communication
Gulbarga University, Gulbarga
Guide
Prof. B.P. Mahesh Chandra Guru
Professor and Chairman
Dept. of Communication & Journalism
University of Mysore, Mysore
March 27 & 28, 2014 SIO Karnataka & Dept. of Education, University of Mysore
National Conference on “Education for Sustainable Development”

2. Introduction
• Over the last few years the web has fundamentally
shifted towards user-driven technologies such as blogs,
social networking sites and video-sharing platforms.
• The growth of social media over the past few years has
transformed the internet experienced.
• Now the internet is no longer one-way broadcast
delivery system, instead it is now driven by many
ordinary users, which can be described as many-to-
many rather than one-to-many connectivity.

3. ….Introduction
• People are actively engaged with a wide variety of social media
platforms, from blogs to social networking to video sharing site
• Social media applications allow users to converse and interact
with each other; to create, edit and share new forms of textual,
visual and audio content; and to categorize, label and
recommend existing forms of content.
• Along with these technological developments, many higher
education institutions and universities are now finding themselves
likely to catch up with this world of social media applications and
social media users.

4. Significance of Social Media in Higher Education
• Social media are associated with an increased tendency for
young people to multitask, to rely on a ‘digital juggling’ of
daily activities and commitments.
• They also attain increased control over the nature and form
of what they do, as well as where, when and how they do it.
• The most immediate significance of social media for higher
education is the apparently changing nature of the students
who are entering university.
• Apparently social media users are described as having an
enhanced capacity to self-organize.

5. Social Media and its Common Uses in Higher Education
Facebook
• Facebook is a popular social networking site that connects
people with friends and others who work, study and live around
them.
• When Facebook launched the fan pages concept in November
2007, many universities jumped at the opportunity to create an
official Facebook presence for their university.
• As of December 2013 there were more than 600 universities
taking advantage of this new feature .
(Wikipedia)

6. Social Media and its Common Uses in Higher Education
MySpace
• MySpace is an online community that lets to meet friends'
friends, share photos, journals and interests.
• Unlike Facebook, MySpace allows users to fully customize
their profiles by complete changing the appearance,
background and format of their pages.
• Many universities and education institutions joined
MySpace, but with the launch of more attractive Facebook
fan page, many colleges and universities adapt over
MySpace.

7. Social Media and its Common Uses in Higher Education
YouTube
• YouTube is the leader in online video sharing, and the prime
destination to watch and share original videos globally online.
• It allows people to easily upload and share video clips across the
Internet through Web sites, mobile devices, blogs, and e-mail.
• Many universities have been making videos for more than 20
years and YouTube has given them a platform to easily distribute
these videos to a much wider audience, and without the costs of
burning to CDs/DVDs and postage to mail to a narrow audience.

8. Social Media and its Common Uses in Higher Education
Flickr
• Flickr is a popular online photo site where users upload
photos that can be organized in sets and collections.
• Public photos may be viewed and commented on by
others.
• Universities have Flickr account and it is a great tool for
easily sharing photos with students, alumni, faculty and
staff.
(Wikipedia)

9. Social Media and its Common Uses in Higher Education
Blogs
• Blogs are a form of online journal. They can have a single author,
or several.
• The most popular use of blogs for marketing in higher education
is having currently enrolled students’ blog about their lives on
campus, as a recruiting initiative in conjunction with admissions.
• Blogs are also being used by some colleges to post news articles
to open conversations about them.
• Faculty blog about their teaching, travel and research as well.

10. Conclusion
• Major educational implication of social media is actually
changing nature of learners’ relationships with
information and knowledge.
• It could be argued that social media support forms of
knowledge consumption and knowledge construction.
• Many educationalists believe that universities are in a
good position to utilize social media practices to
support the collective creation of knowledge amongst
students and the wider community.

11. ….Conclusion
• Many universities are now striving to develop ways of
using social media to support these new forms of
learning.
• It is clear that social media tools and applications
present a challenge to the concept of the formal
educational establishment as it currently exists.
• The continued growth of social media presents a set of
clear challenges to the future nature of higher
education provision and practice.