Abstract:

The paper presents experiences from developing and teaching a new course in social media for students with interests in both IT-applications and business development. Special features of this course are the dual basis in business development and practical use of social media, reflected in the approach to the course content, the field of expertise of the faculty developing and teaching the course, and the format of the teaching sessions and exercises.

This approach combines
• dual expertise: technology of social media and business development.
• dual teaching competence and experience: two experienced teachers/course authors, one from each of the above fields, creating common teaching sessions and exercises.
• dual student activities: traditional course activities and active use of social media (both general and business-wise).
• dual student exposure: through presentations from business people as part of the webinars and investigations of cooperating companies’ use of social media, students are exposed to real world business use in addition to faculty teaching material.

The paper describes the themes, type of teaching material developed and used, as well as the different student activities, and how they are enhanced relative to other courses, in order to best fulfill the requirements from industry and businesses.

The use of webinars as part of the course represents a form of blended learning, although the course is netbased.

This paper illustrates and emphasizes the differences between private use of social media and social media use for business purposes. It stresses the importance of maintaining company integrity on social media, while obtaining the possible business benefits from the use of social media. Focus is on ROI from social media use in diverse forms, and how to establish and measure relevant parameters, as well as students’ experiences with such measurements.

Pedagogical and student motivational consequences of the dual approach are discussed.

Result of investigations both among students and among businesses are reported. These investigations measured:
• Degree of satisfaction with the dual competence basis of the course.
• Degree of satisfaction with the execution of the dual-based teaching agenda.
• Businesses’ opinion of the suitability of the candidates from the course.

The paper presents results and conclusions from these investigations.

Keywords:

Social media, Business applications, Web 2.0, Business administration, Market communication, Innovation, Teaching material.