Intercollegiate Social Media Education Ecosystem

The popularity of social media among students and practitioners has encouraged marketing educators to find ways to incorporate social media into their classrooms. We offer results from an intercollegiate collaboration that provides an innovative learning environment through a social media education ecosystem. Participating students discuss current marketing topics with peers, marketing practitioners, and faculty to reinforce course concepts, improve learning perceptions, and increase professional communication skills and networking opportunities. An initial exploratory study provides a snapshot of Twitter analytics, illustrating the reach of students' marketing-related discussions. Next, survey data collected from students show increased learning satisfaction and favorable behavioral intentions. Finally, tweets from the 12-week project were analyzed using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. Results suggest that participants improved their professional communication skills while using language that provokes greater cognitive processes. Implications for marketing educators and future directions for the project are also provided.