This paper describes the role that aggregation of social media can contribute to teaching and to learning. With respect to teaching, assessment is enhanced because the aggregate stream of social media activity produces an artifact that exhibits what and how students are learning and discovering. With respect to learning, engagement is enhanced because the aggregate stream of social media activity encourages students to interact with each other by cooperating and by commenting on others’ learning and discovery. Especially promising is the prospect for the course (and subsequent learning) to “continue” even after the semester ends and even for assessment data to be collected longitudinally.

1. What can social media aggregation contribute to teaching and learning?
Thomas I. M. Ho, Ph.D.
Educator.DrThomasHo.com
Keywords: social media, curation, education advocacy
Abstract
Political, societal, and financial forces exertpressure threatening education which is sorely in
need of advocacy. Advocacy should be based upon evidence of the accountability of students
and teachers engaged in learning and in professional development. Such evidence can be
revealed by students’ and teachers’ LearnStreams which result from aggregation of their social
media content created as a natural by-product of their learning and professional development.
This paper identifies some social media aggregation tools which can be harnessed for education
advocacy.
Social media aggregation
The C4LPT Guide to Social Learning ( Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, 2010)
is a comprehensive resource on the use of social media for teaching and learning. Most notably,
it cites the creation of user-generated content via Web services which facilitate sharing to
enable collaboration by making connections among people. Whereas content creation was once
the primary responsibility of the instructor, students are now able to document their learning by
creating content in a variety of formats.
Social learning (Hart, 2010) is the application of social media tools to learning. While previous
attention has been focused on social media such as social networking, social bookmarking, and
blogging; this paper will emphasize the role of social media aggregation via emerging social
mechanisms such as lifestreaming and Twitter hashtags.
As powerful as social media itself is, it is even more powerful when viewed through the lens of
aggregation. Because of the diversity of sources of user-generated content, it is imperative to
organize that content! In the same way that digital celebrities and tech-savvy companies “build
their brands” via their online identity, learning can leverage these tools to enable similar
innovation.
Teaching and learning
Although there are numerous learning outcomes that are desirable, we will describe how social
media engages the student during learning by enabling him to present his learning experiences in
a way which documents learning for purposes of assessment.
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2. Engagement
With respect to learning, engagement is enhanced because the aggregate stream of social media
activity encourages students to interact with each other by cooperating and by commenting on
each others’ learning and discovery.
Using these indicators of engaged learning(Jones, B., Valdez, G., Nowakowski, J., &
Rasmussen, C., 1994), we can envision how social media tools can contribute:
Vision of Engaged Learning
Students take responsibility for their own learning. Social learning enables them to do so by
making it so easy for students to generate content.
Tasks for Engaged Learning
Social learning tasks can be challenging, authentic, and integrative because they enable
interaction with collaborators outside of the classroom.
Assessment of Engaged Learning
Social learning facilitates assessment because it generates artifacts which document learning
beyond traditional mechanisms.
Instructional Models & Strategies for Engaged Learning
Social media enables students tobuild a repertoire of effective strategies for learning in diverse
social contexts.
Learning Context of Engaged Learning
By its very nature, social learning encourages cooperation and collaboration rather than
competition and fragmentation among students.
Grouping for Engaged Learning
Social media mechanisms enable flexible groups to be configured and reconfigured according to
the purposes of instruction. This flexibility enables educators to make frequent use of
heterogeneous groups and to form groups, usually for short periods of time, based on common
interests or needs.
Teacher Roles for Engaged Learning
As a role model in the use of social media, the teacher serves as facilitator, guide, and co-learner
rather than as a mere “teacher” or instructor.
Student Roles for Engaged Learning
In addition to being an explorer and cognitive apprentice, students areproducers of
knowledge. Using social media tools, students generate products for themselves and their
community that synthesize and integrate knowledge and skills. Through the use of technology,
students increasingly are even able to make significant contributions to the world's knowledge.
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3. Presentation (delivery)
Clearly, social media mechanisms such as Slideshare, WordPress, Google Docs, YouTube,
Google Reader, Delicious, and even Twitter are ideally suited for delivering content because
these are common tools for everyday use.To present both instructor (and especially student)generated content, we promote social media aggregation to organize this wealth of mechanisms
for generating content.
Assessment (archiving)
Consequently, assessment is enhanced because the aggregate stream of social media activity
produces an artifact that exhibits what and how students are learning and discovering.
Tools
Social media
To generate content, numerous social media alternatives are available. Clearly, social media is a
high-performance technology for promoting active learning(Jones, B., Valdez, G., Nowakowski,
J., & Rasmussen, C., 1994), but often these tools are either utilized inappropriately or underutilized for promoting learning.
Blogging
Blogging has long been used as a means for students to express themselves in order to
demonstrate what they have learned or to reflect on their learning. It has been more common to
use blogging, but the availability and ascent of microblogging has encouraged this alternative,
even in learning.
Twitter
The Twitter microblogging service has been greatly misunderstood and especially in teaching
and learning, it has been subject to both scorn as well as praise.(Ingram, 2014)
How to not use Twitter
The use of Twitter in a classroom setting had been dubious because it can be easily used poorly
especially in not creating very useful artifacts which document learning(Young, 2009)
Why use Twitter:
A much more robust use of Twitter as a personal learning network (Webb, 2009) reveals why
students should be encouraged to venture beyond their strong preference for
Facebook.(Martinez, 2008)They would quickly realize that Facebook is not sufficient on its own
and because it lacks an ecosystem of third-party applications that is not as rich as that which
enriches Twitter. What Twitter lacks in “numbers” (due to its smaller user base), it easily makes
upwith third-party applications which enrich the user experience far beyond mere Facebook
status updates.(Berlin, 2009)
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4. Nevertheless, Twitter does have its shortcomings. (Richardson, 2008)In particular, Twitter is
particularly problematic because it generates a stream of disjointed tweets. This is why
aggregation is desirable and we will subsequently demonstrate Twitter aggregation mechanisms.
Blogs & comments
Although microblogging is easier, blogging (and commenting) create more useful artifacts for
assessment by enabling students to express themselves more fully and to reflect on their learning.
However, many (if not most!) students are reluctant to blog so commenting on one another’s as
well as other blogs represents reasonable “middle ground” between blogging and microblogging
for creating artifacts.
Social bookmarking
Social bookmarking also represents a less demanding way for students to document their
learning although they may be reluctant to blog. In order to mitigate that, the Diigo social
bookmarking service is especially useful because it enables either instructor (or student) to “add
value” via annotation of content on bookmarked Web pages.
Aggregation
Whether generated by blogging, bookmarking or other social media services, the resulting flood
of user-generated content demands organization! Fortunately, social media also offers organizing
mechanisms as robust as the content-generating services. For Twitter, two primary aggregation
mechanisms exist. Twitter hashtags index tweets and make it much easier to either search or to
view tweets in context. Hashtags offer ease of use (Parr, 2009) compared to the complexity of
the FriendFeed social media aggregation service which is a much more robust alternative.
Twitter hashtags
As a simpler and less capable alternative, Twitter hashtags have many shortcomingsthat are
plagued by inconsistent usage as well as inadequate mechanisms for viewing tweets. As part of
the rich Twitter ecosystem, the Twubs service (Van Grove, 2009) (Gutmacher, 2009) mitigates
some of these shortcomings.
FriendFeed
On the other hand, the FriendFeed service (Taylor, 2009) offers aggregation that is very
powerful, but is so complex that even this social media-savvy author had difficultytrying to
figure it out! FriendFeed can be used in conjunction with Twitter (and virtually any other social
media service) and it can even be used for microblogging instead of Twitter. Since the
acquisition of FriendFeed by Facebook, this author had considerably reduced his reliance on
FriendFeed until the implications of this acquisition become clearer. Unfortunately, Facebook
has allowed FriendFeed to languish so it is no longer a viable candidate for social media
aggregation.
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5. RebelMouse
Fortunately, alternatives for social media aggregation such as RebelMouse have emerged.
RebelMouse (Berry, 2013) has recognized how educators are using it.
Presentation
To present user-generated content in an organized way, this author had found the Netvibes
service to be especially flexible and easy to use. Examples of social media aggregation for
courses taught by the author can be found at http://LrnStrm.com which was also recognized as
the first college course on lifestreaming by one of the leading bloggers (Krynsky, 2009) on the
aggregation of social media content.
More recently, curation tools such as Storify have emerged. Educators have recognized its value
for social media aggregation. (Hariri, 2013)
Conclusion
Although there have been teaching and learning experiments with social networking, they have
rarely taken advantage of the full power of social media. Social media can easily overwhelm its
participants with a stream of activity that is both voluminous and disjointed. This is especially
true of the microblogging service Twitter which has grown considerably, but is largely
misunderstood especially for what it can do for teaching and learning.
This paper has described the role that aggregation of social media can contribute to teaching and
to learning. With respect to teaching, assessment is enhanced because the aggregate stream of
social media activity produces an artifact that exhibits what and how students are learning and
discovering. With respect to learning, engagement is enhanced because the aggregate stream of
social media activity encourages students to interact with each other by cooperating and by
commenting on others’ learning and discovery.
Especially promising is the prospect for the course (and subsequent learning) to “continue” even
after the semester ends and even for assessment data to be collected longitudinally.
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About the Author
THOMAS I. M. HO, Ph.D.
DrThomasHo.com
+1 317 288-1790
When he retired from academia, Dr. Ho was Professor of Computer and Information
Technology at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Previously, he was a
Senior Fellow inInformation Systems and Computer Science at the National University of
Singapore from 1993-1994. From 1990-1992, he was Director of the Information Networking
Institute atCarnegie Mellon University. From 1978 to 1988, he was Head of the Department of
Computer and Information Technology atPurdue University which was recognized by the Data
Processing Management Association for its Four-year Institution Award for undergraduate
computer information systems programs. From 1986-1988, he was on loan from Purdue to serve
as Executive Director of the INTELENET Commission which pioneered the INdiana
TELEcommunications NETwork. He received his BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees in computer
science from Purdue University.
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