JRN 200 @ MSU is fun!: Out-Of-Class #2 Rewrite: A Great Example

JRN 200

11/4/14

Slug: Social Media Benefits

In a era of #YOLO and #tbt, members of the Michigan State University community say virtual communication has positive uses beyond trending hashtags and meaningless texting.

MSU students, professors and researchers said social media sites and other online communities aid education and information-sharing.

According to Christine Greenhow, an assistant professor in the College of Education at MSU, online communities can be beneficial to student learning.

“Now, with low barriers to online participation and widespread adoption of mobile internet-connected devices students can seek and solicit help from their online social networks as well as readily share ideas and information,” said Greenhow via email.

In a study published in the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, four sections of the same class used Twitter for class purposes and three sections did not. The Twitter using sections reported higher engagement levels and had a higher average GPA, beating the non-Tweeting group by about 0.5 points on a 0-4.0 scale.

MSU senior Mitchell Alpiner said he likes using Twitter for class activities because he hates “watching a talking head reading off a PowerPoint slide that's posted online. Reading and interacting and making snarky comments keeps me engaged in the material, and helps me feel like I have a voice in the class.”

Karl Gude, Graphics Editor-in-Residence in The College of Communication Arts and Sciences at MSU, said he uses social media in his classes as a way for students to collaborate and ask questions.

“It’s dynamite for online classes. Student can communicate when you’re not around and it even allows students around the world to collaborate with students on campus,” said Gude.

Beyond class use, students said they utilized social media to gather information about friends, celebrities and various businesses.

“I just like to check to see what’s going on with people that I know” along with “musicians, and actors that I like and companies that I would like to find stuff out about,” said MSU freshman Nicholas Russo.

Russo said he checks Twitter every couple of hours throughout the day and discovers new information posted about events and business promotions.

According to Brandon Van Der Heide, an assistant professor and researcher of communication at MSU, the presence of businesses on social media and online customer reviews has increased customer knowledge and awareness.

Research from the Harvard Business Review Analytics Services said 50 percent of businesses that use social media claim their target customers have an “increased awareness of our organization, products or services” due to social media accounts.

Van Der Heide said the availability of information on social media “is certainly different from the way we used to find out about a good restaurant. It used to be the case that you would either hear about it from a friend primarily, or advertisements or a mass media source.”

According to Van Der Heide, online communication is not replacing in-person interactions but is just a different way to give and receive information.

Van der Heide said, “Often people will tend to assume face to face communication is this gold standard where in really true interpersonal messages can be transmitted,” but online communication is an effective way to quickly share information.

MSU freshman Grace Hough said she prefers to meet up with people in-person but she relies on texting for a convenient way to arrange meeting times and places.

“It’s fun to meet up with people places instead of just texting them because you can do things like meet in a cafeteria and have coffee with someone, and it’s just fun to interact and be around people,” said Hough.

Alpiner said he also prefers to meet up with people in-person because “being in-person lets me react quicker and hear the inflection, as well as see the body language of the people I'm interacting with.”

Alpiner said though in-person communication has benefits, he also enjoys online communication because “being online gives me a few more seconds and minutes to think about what I'm going to say next.”

According to Van Der Heide, people use social media and other online communities to carefully craft messages and express their best qualities, but this is not a new concept.

“We’ve always had the hand written letter so we have always had the opportunity to carefully present ourselves, but I think the ubiquity and the ease of access to computer mediated communication has led to a more regular use of that kind of thing,” said Van Der Heide.

Van Der Heide said the availability of social media also helps people communicate with friends and family who are far away.

According to a Common Sense Media research study, 88 percent of teens with social media accounts said it helped them keep in touch with friends they cannot see regularly.

Hough said she uses social media and texting to communicate with her sisters who are in high school because she cannot see them in-person very often.

“It’s a nice way to keep in touch,” said Hough.

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Christine Greenhow

Assistant Professor

Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology and Special Education

Ed.D., Harvard University

greenhow@msu.edu

http://www.cgreenhow.org/

513F Erickson

517-432-0425

Brandon Van Der Heide