SOCIAL MEDIA, BLENDED LEARNING AND CONSTRUCTIVISM: A JIGSAW COMPLETED BY THE USES AND GRATIFICATIONS THEORY?

Blended learning as an approach originated in 1990s pursues the most reasonable mix of face-to-face and online methods to maximize teaching-learning outcomes, while constructivism as an educational approach focuses on meaningful learning in collaboration. Social media (Web 2.0) provides a perfect complement to both, as it is based on the idea of interaction and participation which lacked for long in traditional educational settings. Furthermore, social media allows students to learn out of the classroom settings (ubiquitous learning). It allows vertical learning as well, whereby peers learn from each other rather than learning from teachers. The cases on social media are usually more realistic than those presented in classrooms. Thus, it supports authentic learning. Social media provides an excellent platform for problem-based and project-based learning. It extends class time that may not be sufficient for some of the problem-based and project-based sessions. All these show the positive side of the coin, and more need to be discussed about the other sides. And on the top of all, more elaborate depictions of social media in terms of its communication capabilities are relatively rare in the literature. For example, why people (and students in particular) are attracted to social media is understudied. Social media use is usually considered as a given rather than a reflection of needs and motivations of the users (students) in educational research. Additionally, the practical guidelines have dominated over theoretical discussions that might have provided fruitful innovations in educational media research. They are mostly understudied. Thus, this paper relates social media, blended learning and constructivism with a theory of communication, which is the uses and gratifications theory.