Abstract:

Social media forms of communication have become mainstream both in education and in professional careers. The experience of and competence in use of social media students may acquire in school may be of great importance to them later in their professional communications with peers, and for contributing professionally. In professional work, as well as in learning activities, social media are well suited as tools for communication, reflection, activity in professional networks, computer supported collaborative work, work sharing and content based peer assessment and reflection, to name a few.

Different social media have various characteristics regarding each of the factors above, and preferences for use will vary among users, and will vary depending of types of tasks.

An interesting question is how student’s use of social media in learning activities may be influenced by including instruction in use of some social media in courses at college.Will students use social media different in their course work and learning activities with such instruction, and will this also lead to different patterns in the use of social media in work after finishing school, and in their lifelong learning activities?.

In this paper we discuss how instruction in social media results in different use patterns for one medium,i.e. the use of blogs. Differences in the use of blogs in school and later between students who received formal instruction in the use of social media in at least one of their courses at school, and those who did not take any such course are investigated. We study how social media in college courses influences their use in personal networks both at school an later in working life. Results from surveys involving both students and former students with and without social media instruction and practice from college are presented and discussed.

Keywords:

Social media, learning activites, new learning methods, lifelong learning, blogging, student cooperation.