The role of social media as a learning environment in the fully functioning university: preparing for Generation Z
Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: What is the role of social media in the fully functioning university?Asking questions about the role of social media is of interest for at least three reasons: social media has rapidly become ubiquitous, with a significant proportion of humanity making use of it.Considered as an innovation using Roger's stage model, social media is now being adopted by laggards (Rogers, 1962).This widespread adoption is especially marked among those who go to university: both as a student and as Faculty.Secondly, as an innovation, attitudes towards Social media have matured as a technology innovation has moved through the Gartner Hype Cycle; at least as far as the slough of despond (the lowest point on their non-circular cycle).Many commentators have moved from the optimistic early hopes about the enabling power of Twitter and Facebook, for example in the so called "Arab Spring".Instead recent analysis are more likely to draw on the revelations of Edward Snowden and scandalous misuse of personal data by Cambridge Analytica to characterise the impact of social media in terms of harvesting users' attention (Wu, 2017), or even of imposing the shackles of surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, 2015).A third reason to ask questions of social media now is the changing attitude and use by many of those entering higher education as students.There is a growing body of evidence that among those born since the late nineties, often characterised as Generation Z, are different in their use of social media to the millennials who preceded them.There is an ambivalence towards the normative pressures of publicly sharing information, and a recognition of the related increasing likelihood of mental health problems, depression and negative body image (Dhir, Yossatorn, Kaur, & Chen, 2018).There is also anxiety about the prospects for future wellbeing: among Generation Z students this may be related to concern with grades and degree categories, and how these relate to life chances such as well paid, stable employment (Iqbal, 2018).These anxieties show in the increased number of Generation Z who will not share information publically on social media.The popularity of ephemeral Snapchat and Whatapp groups is indicative of a greater caution.How do these changes to the widespread, yet ambivalent adoption of social media among those just starting their higher education, relate to the roles of social media in a fully functioning university?To address this question we need to clarify what characterises a fully functioning university.In a series of papers with colleagues, I have looked at the long patterns of the role of the university in western society (Bourner, Heath, & Rospigliosi, 2013).While not denying the important place of higher education in the ancient Islamic world, these studies have considered the university in the form it took as a tool of the Christian Church in the middle ages, when the institutions that are still known today, such as Bologna, Salamanca, Oxford, Cambridge and Heidelberg were founded.We found three distinct functions for the university in the ensuing millennium.The first function, which characterised the period or the foundation of the early universities, was in the service of society.Europe was dominated by the Christian church and the role of the early universities was to develop clerics trained in Latin, scriptural analysis and with the administrative
Author: Pericles asher Rospigliosi
Institution: University of Brighton
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2928839693