Abstract
This chapter examines the role of new technology in higher education, by focusing on the opportunities to incorporate new online sources on social media for general learning and promoting global competencies. Special attention is given to the COVID-19 pandemic and its recent effects on higher education. While the pandemic posed many new challenges for education institutions, it also has opened doors for the continued use of technologies to overcome educational challenges. Finally, this chapter presents a qualitative case study of how a contemporary cohort of Japanese university students uses social media and how they view it as an educational tool. This research demonstrates how students perceive such information and incorporate it into their identity creation, and how it advances global skills and knowledge. Subsequent analysis examines how online media can be beneficial and detrimental in these regards.
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31 March 2023
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Acknowledgements
I greatly appreciate all 28 students who shared their responses for this project from 2021 to 2022. I want to give special thanks for their responses during this challenging time. Since their generation is highly engaged with online sources, they provided diverse viewpoints to study social media as an educational tool.
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Yamada, A. (2023). Internationalization of Higher Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study of the Japanese Digital Native Generation and Social Media Use. In: Zajda, J., Hallam, P., Whitehouse, J. (eds) Globalisation, Values Education and Teaching Democracy . Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research, vol 35. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15896-4_5
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