Abstract:

Social media is a computer-based technology that facilitates the sharing of ideas, thoughts, and information through the building of virtual networks and communities. Over the past decade, the number of social media users has grown exponentially. Today, there are more than 4.2 billion active users (which is 53,6% of the population) globally, which made its relevance unquestionable. According to researches, more than 57% of the users are young people, between 16-34 (presumably a high proportion of students) so it is understandable that even higher education institutions have started utilizing these platforms to serve educational purposes. From a teaching point of view, social media platforms could be highly effective tools in the process of teaching and learning: have increasingly improved the quality of student’s learning outcomes in higher education.

During times of uncertainty (COVID-19) all educational institutions in the world had to switch to online. This unpredictable paradigm shift accelerated the digitalization that resulted in even more social media users, between January 2020 and January 2021 it increased by 13,2% (which means +490 million users).

Educational professionals are constantly seeking new ways to convey knowledge, therefore incorporating unorthodox tools (such as social media platforms & content) into their work could be valuable. The authors believe that there is a tremendous amount of links between education and social media, thus in this paper, they analyze how major social media platforms can contribute to effective education. To give you an example: how Facebook Messenger chatbots could be utilized in expanding vocabulary.

Keywords:

Social media, education, e-learning, educational social media content, social media platforms.