Design and Implementation Challenges to an Interactive Social Media Based Learning Environment

Introduction The advent of social media has dramatically altered the way many people interact with their peers, the public, and the world at large. Twitter gives users instantly updated windows into the lives of those they follow. Sites like Fitocracy have attempted to make activities that are as tiring as exercising into game-oriented and socially-driven events. The challenge for educators is to adapt to these technologies correctly: taking advantages of their strengths and avoiding their weaknesses. This paper describes the final developments of an interactive social media based learning environment and the challenges it faces as it transitions through the beta-test environment to become a completed production system. The web-based tool embraces the social media environment and is designed to encourage student interaction and foster a new, socially-driven, learning experience. The tool allows students to view and navigate lecture slide shows, participate in quizzes, take notes, ask questions, participate in a classroom chat room, and receive awards for their activities. The challenges that confront the development and deployment of the tool are both technical and interpersonal. One of the technical challenges is the load posed on the underlying infrastructure by serving lecturer-created content to the students. Another challenge is the load posed on the underlying infrastructure by student generated information, such as chat, that needs to be served to all other users. On an interpersonal level, additional features and options pose the risk of distracting students from the primary goal of learning. Social media has come to dominate the interpersonal networking landscape. It has revolutionized the way people interact, the way they communicate, and even the way they think (Weisgerber & Butler, 2010). The rise of social software provides new avenues and new opportunities for increased participation and collaboration and an opportunity to change the way people learn (Parker & Chao, 2008; Prensky 2011). The participatory web, including social networking sites such as Facebook and content-sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr, allows individuals to establish or maintain connections with others, establish their social networks, and share information in the form of wikis, blogs, tweets, podcasts, video, RSS feeds, and more (McCarthy, 2010). Facebook currently claims over 800 million active users sharing more than 30 billion pieces of content each month in the form of web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc. (Facebook Statistics, 2011). Twitter, a social networking and micro-blogging service, is averaging 140 million tweets per day, up from 50 million the previous year, and gets 460,000 new accounts every day (Twitter Statistics, 2011). People are flocking to the Internet in order to upload pictures, share videos, tell stories, and simply interact with others (Weisgerber & Butler, 2010). One aspect of social media that has gained tremendous attention and growth is gaming. These are not the traditional video games of years past, but simple, socially-leveraged games that play to the strengths of social media. These games are often simplistic and repetitive, but they engage the users to a tremendous degree. They amply demonstrate the ability to "hook" a user with simple game-play and a reward mechanism that has no intrinsic value. The quest for awards and rewards drives usage of these applications, though some argue there is a strong element of social obligation (Liszkiewicz, 2010). In a 2010 PopCap Games research paper, 35% of respondents said they played for the opportunity to win prizes, and "Incentives/Prizes/Rewards" was the second most common suggestion for how developers could enhance game-play experiences (Information Solutions Group, 2010). This paradigm has been brought outside of simple gaming activities to utilize award-driven motivation in other arenas. …