Social Media in Higher Education the (in)Complete Story

How are students, faculty, and administration using social media in education?
Should they be using these new social tools?
How can they students, faculty, and administrators best leverage these tools?

I’ve tried to answer these questions about teaching and learning in a web 2.0 university setting….and here are some of the answers:

University 2.0: The ManifestoThe Use of Social Media by Universities

College 2.0 with Wiki Collaboration. Education 2.0 with collaborative Wikis

Critical Reflections on Higher Education 2.0 and Life 2.0 advantages and disadvantages of social media

For more on this go to Nicholas Carr author of the Big Switch and Andrew Keen, also an author but seemingly more negative and fatalistic than Carr. Christian author, mennonite (?), and former advertising executive, Shane Hipps makes a slightly different argument that applies Marshall Mcluhan’s theory of media and technology in context of faith in Flickering Pixels

Video and Classroom 2.0: The Rise of Video in the Social Media Classroom of Tomorrow

Software as Service and Social Media will Raaaawk You! Basecamp, Salesforce, wikia, RSS readers, and Facebook will be like the Microsoft word, Micro soft excel, and Power point of yesteryear in terms of the need for the university to keep up. Print journalism is dying and the aftershocks of disruption are being felt everywhere.

Between Hulu, Netflix, and DVR do we really need movie theatres. The big screen and the blockbuster release are apparently the lifeblood thats keeping the local theatre off life support. But many are content to forgo those for options 1/10th or even better….free. Can our other institutions sustain what clearly is cook’n in technology innovation in 2010 and beyond?

The enterprise 2.0 genie can’t be coerced back in the bottle given the mass adoption of social networking and social platforms Will universities adopt to the changing environment of enterprise 2.0 (social media, software as service, platforms of participation, and cloud computing)? What will become of the next generation? What will become of our image driven + 140 character attention spans as they try to engage great works of literature past and present? What will happen to the bonds of family and community? Will the rise of video over the next 3 to 5 years be enough to save us from our experience with and in relationships from shriveling up?

Forward thinking schools like Stanford, Ohio University, and MIT see the writing on the wall, will others be able to adopt a more open and collaborative culture over the next 2 to 3 years? Or will universities miss the mark by using social media merely for admissions process snooping and a Facebook/Bebo/Twitter cul de sac.

(The original social media manifesto: Le cluetrain. For your reading pleasure, the full text is available by clicking the link. You’re welcome…)

If you are interested, I have a total of six posts on social media innovation at the university level

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