Social Media Tools Used for Teaching and Learning in the Higher Education System

The growing popularity and use of social media tools have determined teachers to integrate them in the educational process. Many students are incorporating social media tool, such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, blogs, forums, newsgroups, chats and others, into their daily activities and are using them to interact and communicate with their friends. On this basis, social media can be an efficient way to connect teachers and students since it offers new, diverse and socially engaged educational experiences for students in the higher education system. Social media can be used to stimulate active learning for students and it can support multidirectional communication and debates among students and teachers. Also, the flow of information transmitted through social media can be significantly larger than in the traditional environment. Social media has the potential to encourage participation, engagement, reflective thinking and collaborative learning in different learning contexts. Also, given the extended communication capacity of social media tools, teachers can address a large number of students in an interactive manner. The integration of social media as an educational tool in the higher education system offers an alternative for teachers since the current generation of youth becomes less receptive to traditional methods of teaching and learning. It is important for teachers to understand the advantages, but also the disadvantages of using social media in the classroom. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to examine the role of social media in the higher education system and to analyse how these online tools can be used to enhance teaching and learning nowadays.