Educational institutions around the world are challenged to reconsider their current pedagogical approaches in the light of an increasing popularity of social and networked Internet technologies. Although we are witnessing a shift in the notions of learning and teaching as shaped by social and cultural practices of social media and emerging technologies, traditional teacher-directed pedagogies still dominate learning environments. For instance, educational philosophy that undergirds the traditional course management platforms restricts teachers to think and act within the defined traditional teaching paradigms lacking the flexibility for creativity in different learning contexts. To open up this to conversation, this paper intends to present a case study that investigated the educational affordances and potentials of social media tools for creating a blended “social media in education” course within a research university in the Midwestern U.S.

This session will first present a review on the current theories and concepts related to social media in education that guided the design decisions behind the course:  Connectivism (e.g. Siemens, 2005; Downes, 2008), personal learning environments and social networking (e.g. Boyd & Ellison, 2007; Greenhow, & Robelia, 2009), new media literacies and participatory culture (e.g. Jenkins et al., 2006; Richardson, 2008), creative commons, cloud applications, educational mobile apps (Purcell, Entner, Henderson, 2010), learning Space Mashups, Dj culture, edupunks, open educational resources and open access (e.g. Yuan, MacNeil & Kraan, 2008; Wiley & Hilton, 2009), learning analytics (Buckingham & Ferguson, 2011), the issues of privacy and security of social media, and future of social media in education.

Second, the course design will be presented with the design decisions made regarding the affordances of course platforms for specific learning tasks and contexts. Rather than examining each social media tool in isolation, this case intends to present a course context that followed an integrated approach where the interrelationships among different social tools and online community cultures that grow upon around them were investigated. Moreover, this course was designed to provide educators an extensive resource on social media pedagogies which were also shared under the Creative Commons license. The purpose was to minimize the social, technical, and legal barriers to distribution and reuse of the “Social Media in Education” content created by the teacher and the students, and opening the content to the use of other educators around the world.

Finally, the analysis of formative and summative evaluation data gathered from the students as well as the instructor reflections will be presented with the decisions regarding the second iteration of the course design and implementation. Finally, the session will conclude with a discussion around the issues of privacy, proper use, security, sustainability, and support regarding the integration of social media tools into educational environments as well as transferability of the findings and design decisions across continents and organizations.

• Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age, International Journal of Instructional Technology & Distance Learning, 2(1) • Downes, S. (2008). Seven Habits of Highly Connected People. Retrieved on January 30, 2012 from http://www.downes.ca/post/44261 • Boyd. D. M. & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1). • Greenhow, C. & Robelia, E. (2009). Old communication, new literacies: Social network sites as social learning resources. Journal of Computer-mediated Communication, 14(4). 1130-1161. • Jenkins, H., Clinton, K., Purushotma, R., Robison, A. J. & Weigel, M. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education For the 21st Century. Chicago: The MacArthur Foundation. • Richardson, W. (2008). Footprints in the Digital Age. Educational Leadership, 66(3), pp. 16-19. • Yuan, L., MacNeil, S., & Kraan, W. (2008) Open Educational Resources- Opportunities and Challengers for Higher Education. • Wiley, D., & Hilton III, J. (2009). Openness, Dynamic Specialization, and the Disaggregated Future of Higher Education. The International Review Of Research In Open And Distance Learning, 10(5). • Buckingham S. & Ferguson, R. (2011). Social Learning Analytics. Available as: Technical Report KMI-11-01. Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, UK. • Purcell, K., Entner, R., Henderson, N. (2010). The rise of apps culture. Report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, September 15, 2010.