This document discusses how students use social media to support academic group work. It notes that while group work provides benefits, it can also be challenging to coordinate in person meetings for diverse students with different responsibilities. The research shares student perspectives on how social media and technology helped support group cohesion, trust, and productivity by providing an online space for communication, collaboration, and coordination between in person meetings. Insights from final year students and recent graduates illustrate how technology helped them develop effective group work skills and how they now apply those skills in the workplace.

1. Students' use of social media for academic
studies: The connecting bridge between
in-person and online groupwork
Sue Beckingham NTF | @suebecks | Principal Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University
Future Direction of Social Media in Education: Web 4.0 Approaches Worksop
The British Academy Early Career Researcher Network

3. Benefits of groupwork
Open opportunities for students to build
friendships, engage in reciprocal peer learning
(Boud et al. 1999),
Develop social skills and overcome shyness
(Johnson and Johnson, 1989a)
Develop workplace skills such as negotiation,
communication and collaboration
(Gibbs, 1995).
Social integration and wellbeing
(Jaques and Salmon, 2006),

4. The reality
Teamwork is high on graduate recruiters’ wish list, but...
Graduates lacking soft skills, employers warn...
Employers lament lack of soft skills in graduates...
Soft skills such as communication, leadership and teamwork found
lacking in graduates...

5. social loafing and free
riders
(Latané et al, 1979; Brooks
and Ammon, 2003).
group think
(Janis, 1971:84)
inadequate
communication
(Slavin, 1995)
group size: the
Ringelmann effect
(Forsyth, 2019)
group dynamics
(Mahenthiran and Rouse,
2000)
Groupwork challenges

6. A diverse student body includes students with caring
responsibilities, commuter students, part-time workers.

7. “Teaching students interpersonal and small-
group skills produces both short-term and long-
term outcomes. Short term outcomes include
greater learning, retention and critical thinking.
Long-term outcomes include greater
employability and career success.”
Johnson and Johnson (1989b:32)

8. Learning to work cooperatively

9. Forman and Cazden (1986:333) refer to three types of working together or
procedural interactions: parallel, associative, and cooperative.
1. Parallel - materials are shared and comments exchanged, but group
members do not monitor each other or discuss their thinking or
actions.
2. Associative - group members share information with some
monitoring of others' contributions and discussion of ideas, but
they do not coordinate roles resulting in the final product being a
cumulation of individual contributions.
3. Cooperative - this is where group members constantly monitor
each other's work and discuss ideas, resulting in a jointly created
final product.

10. Perceptions from final
year students and recent
graduates

11. low motivation, poor attendance, non contribution, taking over,
disorganised, unbalanced skills set, siloed working
Factors inhibiting
successful
groupwork

12. The apps on their mobile phone created a connecting bridge
between in person and online groupwork

13. Effective Group
Communication
Scheduling
meetings
Mix of in-
person and
online
meetings
Chat space
Ideation
Open and
collaborative
workspace
Responding to
feedback on
work
Reviewing
work
How the students used social media in groupwork

14. Groupchat
“Being able to share content easily
and being able to send links and
ideas that you see on the fly led to
conversations and sparked new
ideas”

15. “Sometimes it's easier to maybe just respond with an
emoji reaction to some idea that you have, so asking a
question like a poll sort of thing where you can say
react in this way if you agree react in this way. If you
disagree, so it gives clear like yes or no. Answers at the
click of a button rather than having to have a long
discussion around that idea so you can make decisions
quickly”.

16. Meeting online
FaceTime where the group all used
iPhones
Current students: Zoom
Graduates: Now use Teams daily in
the workplace but realised this and
Zoom were not available when they
were at university!

17. Collaborative workspace
The guided use of Google Drive has
changed the way the students worked.

18. “I think to me it's just having
everyone on the same page
everyone happy everyone
confident in what they're doing.”
“Setting milestones and then
meeting those milestones to ensure
that you obviously have enough
time to obviously complete the
project”.”

19. “Trying to work coherently and meeting people's
standards and at the same time also respecting people
and their time. I think that's a massive one and some
people like to work in mornings, some people like to
work late in the evenings. People have different things
and different commitments that are going on.”
Taking time to get to know members of their group

20. Transitioning from a group to an interdependent team

21. Peer learning through peer support
“I'd say probably empathy as well to sort of
understand people, behaviours and how you
know being understanding in different situations
that can come up at university and understanding
that sometimes people can't always be at every
meeting 'cause they've got their own
commitments, their own personal stuff going on.”
“I learned how to empathise with
different people and how to lead different
types of people and also just help me
understand that you have to give yourself
a certain amount of time to be able to get
the work done. It definitely helped me to
respect deadlines at work”.

22. “How can we use group work as an opportunity for
the assessment for learning and to help students
develop a range of transversal skills that enable
them to create and use their own participatory
spaces for the sharing of knowledge?“
Hooks (1994:15) raised this question:

23. Student’s use of social media for academic studies: The connecting
bridge between in person and online group work
Engaging in groupwork can have many benefits, but in practice can become fraught with challenges.
Students participating in groupwork projects and activities are more likely to succeed if they can
meet regularly, feel they are included and belong, and know how they can contribute. The diverse
student body include those that commute to university, juggle work and have caring responsibilities.
They may have a learning contract or as international students are listening, learning, and speaking
in a second language. All of these can impact on the logistics and success of in-person meetings. My
research will share from the student’s perspective how social media and digital technology can
support group cohesion, trust, and productivity. Insights from final year students will provide
feedback on their experience of how technology has helped them develop effective groupwork
skills; and from recent graduates how they now apply these skills in the workplace.

24. Student’s use of social media for academic
studies: The connecting bridge between in
person and online groupwork
Sue Beckingham, National Teaching Fellow and Principal Lecturer
The British Academy Early Career Researcher Network Symposium
@suebecks