Abstract
Information technology has deeply modified the way people access and produce educational contents. Social media, more particularly, have enabled new possibilities by making it easy to create and share text, image, and video, possibly from a mobile equipment such as a Smartphone. Younger generation is especially fond of these new services. This paper thus aims at proposing a new approach to take advantage of this worldwide phenomenon for educational purpose. The idea is to rely on Social Media to support distant collaborative learning. After browsing a panorama of social media and e-Learning concepts, to explicit their respective mechanisms, a case study based on two islands of the Indian Ocean, Mauritius and Reunion Islands, is presented. This research also includes a data collection process to assess the readiness of these two islands to set up of an international collaborative e-Learning platform relying on social media. It can be said for sure that though these islands are geographically distant, they are ready to embark on distant collaborative initiatives that can be helpful in a number of areas and disciplines. Respondents have stressed on the fact that Social Media can enhance collaborative work, can facilitate collective decision-making, can allow expressing the learner’s expression or state of mind, and can allow further enrolment of international students, just to name a few advantages. Social media thereby bridges the geographical distance between these two islands and acts as a catalyst for remote collaborative learning.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson, T. (2007). Many students loosely joined: social software to support learning. EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative Web Seminar. Available at: net.educause.edu/ir/library/powerpoint/ELIWEB083.pps [Accessed on 15 October 2018].
Arcep. (2015). Les services de communications électroniques dans les départements et collectivités d’outre-mer - année 2015. Available at http://www.arcep.fr/fileadmin/reprise/observatoire/march-an2015/obs-annuel-2015-OUTREMER-provisoire-260516.pdf [Accessed on 15 October 2018].
Buchem, I. (2012). Icollaborate. Available at https://prof.beuth-hochschule.de/buchem/projekte/icollaborate/ [Accessed on 15 October 2018].
Connolly, M. (2011). Benefits and drawbacks of social media in education. Retrieved from http://wcer.wisc.edu/news/detail/benefits-and-drawbacks-of-social-media-in-education. Accessed 15 May 2019.
Downes, S. (2005). E-learning 2.0. eLearn magazine: education and technology in perspective. Available at: http://www.elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articles& article=29-1 [Accessed on 8 October 2018].
Downes S. (2006). Learning networks and connective knowledge. Available at: http://it.coe.uga.edu/itforum/paper92/paper92.html [Accessed on 20 October 2018].
Friesen, N., & Lowe, S. (2011). The questionable promise of social media for education: connective learning and the commercial imperative. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 28(3), 183–194. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2011.00426.x.
Galagan, P. A. (2000). The e-learning revolution. Training and Development, page 24–30.
Job, N. (2015). Social media challenges in Mauritius. Analysis Institute of Management.
Joosten, T. (2012). Social media for educators: Strategies and best practices. Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass.
Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media. Business Horizons, 53(1), 59–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2009.09.003.
Lederer, K. (2012). Pros and cons of social media in the classroom. Available at https://campustechnology.com/articles/2012/01/19/pros-and-cons-of-social-media-in-the-classroom.aspx [Accessed on 20 October 2018].
Lellouche-Filliau, I. (2015). Observatoire des Usages Internet à la Réunion - vague 2015, Médiamétrie.
Maurice-Info. (2016). Le comportement digital du consommateur mauricien. Available at http://www.maurice-info.mu/le-comportement-digital-du-consommateur-mauricien.html [Accessed on 20 October 2018].
Murray, K., & Ward, K. (2019). Attitudes to social media use as a platform for continuing professional development (CPD) within occupational therapy. Journal of Further and Higher Education., 43(4), 545–559. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2017.1378313.
Pantazis, C. (2002). Maximizing E-Learning to train the 21st century workforce. Public Personnel Management, 31(1), 21–26. https://doi.org/10.1177/009102600203100103.
Rangarajan, K., Begg, K., & Somani, B. (2019). Online digital media: the uptake of YouTube-based digital clinical education (DCE). American Journal of Distance Education., 33(2), 142–150. https://doi.org/10.1080/08923647.2019.1582308.
Selwyn, N., ed. (2008) Education 2.0? Designing the web for teaching and learning. ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme commentary. Available at: http://www.tlrp.org/pub/documents/TELcomm.pdf [accessed 15 December 2018].
Shah, S., & Topf, J. (2019). Mentorship in the digital age nephrology social media collective internship. Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, 14, 294–296. https://doi.org/10.2215/CJN.09970818.
Tess, P. A. (2013). The role of social media in higher education classes (real and virtual) – a literature review. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(5), A60–A68.
UCSIS. (2005). University Consortium of Small Island States (UCSIS). Retrieved 11 September 2016 from http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/priority-areas/sids/education-capacity-building/university-consortium-of-small-island-states-ucsis/.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sungkur, R.K., Sebastien, O. & Singh, U.G. Social Media as a Catalyst for Distant Collaborative Learning: Trends and Concerns for Small Island States. J Knowl Econ 11, 1454–1469 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-019-00613-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13132-019-00613-4