Different Approaches To Experimenting WithH Social Media In Higher Education

This paper will introduce findings done in my Ph.D. entitled “Learning potentials integrating Social Media or Web 2.0 in a Problem Based Learning Approach”.

My empirical data emerged from a learning design workshop based on the CoED method; further described in (Buus, 2012; Georgsen & Nyvang, 2007). Emerged from the learning design workshop, three scenarios with teachers were willing to try out integrating social media and web 2.0 mediated learning activities into their teaching. In the scenarios the use of e.g Eitherpad as a shared place for questions; next semester followed by the use of Facebook with same purpose, or the use of Facebook for unlimited supervision (two different iterations), and the final one based on the use of a forum as a blog-function in Moodle. The research is taking place at Aalborg University and the pedagogical approach here is based on Problem Based Learning - The Aalborg Model (Kolmos, Fink, & Krogh, 2004), which also do influence the approach teachers have to teaching and learning.
My focus in this paper will be on the preliminary common findings related to the scenarios based on two of the learning activities integrating the use of Facebook in an educational setting.

I would like to present the different scenarios in the perspective of “how can social media be integrated, and to what extend do this make a difference in the learning activities?" I would like to discuss how social media like Facebook – often used in private circumstances - could be integrated in an educational setting at Higher Education and thereby discus if teachers are able to change the 'private' behaviour in educational relations or something else actually happens?