UK pilot studies in the use of a novel social media platform across Post-16 Education
By: Professor Steve Molyneux
Tags: Higher Education, Social Media, Education Technology, Education

This article publishes the results of UK research on the use of a Social Media Application (Loopd.Life) as a tool to support the learning environment of students in Post-16 Education. Since the conclusion of this research Loopd is now in use across selected K-12 schools in the UK as well as Post-16 institutions.

Abstract

Previous studies of the use of social media in higher education indicate that there is a degree of ambivalence about their use. They are effective environments to build and encourage social and collaborative learning, and prove to be efficient at disseminating information. However, there is a reticence to use commercially owned software in an institutional setting amongst staff, and a resistance to mix personal and institutional identities amongst students. The development of a modern Social Learning Environment such as Loopd.life may overcome these previously identified barriers.

Literature Review

Use of social media platforms in higher education

The term ‘social media’ describes a wide range of internet-based communication platforms, from microblogging sites such as Twitter, to websites that focus on connections and sharing content in a professional capacity, such as LinkedIn and ResearchGate. The highest profile of the various social media platforms is Facebook; created in 2004, studies showed that by 2008, 94% of undergraduates were using the site. By 2011, this had dropped to 90% (Tess, 2013; A61) and figures have fluctuated in the low nineties since. Of the academics surveyed, it is suggested that a high percentage use Facebook, with one survey indicating that 73% of faculty members had Facebook accounts (Tess, 2013; A63).

The everyday use of social media is common due to a range of technical and psychological factors; in addition to mobile access, social media tools have simplicity in their function and fluidity around task performance and social interaction that is not replicated effectively in enterprise software. Theories such as Social Influence Theory and Social Presence Theory have been considered to understand the psychological factors that increase the usage of social media tools.

Social Influence Theory describes behaviour that drives participation in social media as due to three factors:

Compliance: the participant believes that if they participate they will be rewarded, and if not they will be punished, for example to be left out of social arrangements. Internalisation: the participant adopts shared goals with others, for example sharing social news, or discussing news events. Identification: the participant wants to maintain a “satisfying self-defining relationship with another group or person”. (Cheung et al, 2010; 1338)

Social Presence Theory explains the extent to which online social interactions can perform the same function that face-to-face contact can have in establishing relationships with others. Social presence is the ability to project oneself socially and emotionally in an online community (Caspi and Blau, 2008; 324) which requires the formation of a digital identity. For these forms of social interactions “evidence that the other is attending” is a critical factor (Rourke, et al, 1999, 56) as is the style of communication, and the use of rich media (Cheung et al, 2010; 1338).

Social media has been promoted as fulfilling three primary functions for educational provision:

Providing connections between students both before and during their studies. These connections provide a basis for collective working and creativity. Facilitating social learning and collective knowledge construction. This draws on the principle of social constructivism, i.e. that learning can arise from dialogue and collaboration. Enabling learner-driven approaches. Learning is less orientated around teacher-centred assimilative forms of teaching methods, and more based on learners making their own choices and creating meaning for themselves (Tess, 2013; A62).

Although there may be a theoretical justification for using social media, integrating them into a course of study requires time and effort to maintain their appropriateness for use as a learning resource. Since social media platforms were not developed for formal education, they may not necessarily be suitable to foster debate; and reservations exist around the ownership of, and boundaries within, sharing content via social media, which continues to challenge academics (Tess, 2013; A62).

Where higher education institutions have attempted to use social media in their teaching, the issues around ownership of information have led them to either use their in-house platforms, or tools such as Ning which have some facilities for social interaction, but in which access can be managed by the institution. In 2013, Tess conducted a review of the literature on the use of social media in higher education; the summaries of the findings from these studies are that:

Institutional platforms lack the intuitive format of commercial applications.

Teachers need specific guidance on how to best use the platforms.

Students resist using existing social platforms due to a desire to keep their university lives separate from their lives outside university, yet resisted adopting new social media because of the added time and cognitive overload of using additional technology. They also had concerns about identifying the original sources of content and thereby inadvertently copying others.

If Facebook itself was used, usefulness was limited by the inability to share content in the format of most learning materials, such as PowerPoint or Excel, but communication between students was high.

To be effective tutors have to be consistent in their usage of the platform.

However, students reported positively that the use of social media platforms was often more effective than face-to-face classes in enabling reflection and collaboration by commenting on others’ work and forming peer relationships. Analysis also indicates that learner engagement with the course content, projects and homework increases. (Tess, 2013; A62–63).

Neier and Zayer confirm this observation, noting “technology-mediated discussion is preferred versus face-to-face discussion in a conventional lecture setting” (2015; 141). Their findings were that:

“the most value of social media in the classroom is as a facilitator of conversation” and therefore “when used to enhance lectures, pedagogy rich in opportunities for discussion permits students to actively participate in their own learning process” (Neier and Zayer, 2015; 141)

“certain tools in particular…..are perceived as valuable in enhancing learning in the classroom by enabling the sharing and discovering of new content” for example including links to articles or media on websites where the conversations often originate. The ease and simplicity of incorporating these additional pieces of content encourage more engaging conversations.

“students expressed mostly positive views on educators and universities alike if social media was used in the educational environment, perceiving instructors as current and the university as displaying an exciting brand personality.”

Huppe surveyed the use of social media tools by university administrator and concluded that the adoption and regular use of these tools can help the educational community to feel more connected to their university as their communication is then via “an online environment that they have integrated into their daily lives” (2011, 14). Her findings were that:

Some students want their academic and social worlds to remain separate, particularly that their Facebook profiles do not become inundated with academically orientated information, reducing the sentiment of personal relevance (Huppe, 2011; 52), summarised by the statement “Some students see Facebook as their outlet away from academics” (Huppe, 2011; 55).

Students were also concerned that if administrative information was sent to their Facebook timelines, personal information could be made public (Huppe 2011; 53).

Preferences regarding the use of social media by institutions differed between the types of institution (Huppe, 2011; 54).

Student’s usage of Facebook and of the institutional platforms varied widely (Huppe, 2011; 54).

The relevance of these findings helped to shape the development of Loopd.life.

Why a bounded, institutionally owned system?

Social Influence Theory suggests that engagement within a platform is subject to a “underlying subjective norm (that) reflects the influence of expectations from significant others”. Users of highly interactive social media “are more exposed to other people’s influences as they interact in the social network” (Cheung et al, 2010; 1338). These underlying norms in the context of a socially relaxed peer group, such as often exists on Facebook, may not coincide with the behaviours and desired outcomes of an academic peer or project group. Social Presence Theory leads to a similar conflict, in that the digital identities created by participants in the wider social situation of Facebook, may not be appropriate for their representation in a university setting.

A bounded, institutionally focused environment has the potential to enable the more specific subjective norms of a smaller peer group (one’s university friends as opposed to all friends) to be more freely expressed, and for a digital identity specific to the university context to be created. The social influence of those university peers when communication is purely with those peers also strengthens that social influence. In other words, sharing exam stress, collaborating on projects or just general academic discussion can be done more freely when the rest of the world isn’t watching.

The literature also indicates that both students and staff are reticent to blur the boundaries of social and institutional spaces. Tied to this is the concern over ownership of material once it is posted to a commercial platform, in that the intellectual property of content is not protected, and confusions over privacy settings within the platform means that private correspondences can be exposed. Students also want their academic lives and social lives to be distinct. This holds true for institutions in that discussions about staff members, courses or academic content are preferably conducted within a closed environment, in which reputation can be managed more easily, and where intellectual property control (if that is still a concern of authors about course content) can be maintained. Also the use of materials not authored by teachers is permissible within a closed teaching environment, but if placed within a publicly accessible platform requires certain permissions. All these arguments support the idea of a bounded and institutionally owned system. On the other hand, users find the commercially available platforms more intuitive to adopt, both staff and students resist the idea of allocating time and effort to learning new systems.

The solution to these conflicting demands would appear to be to create a social platform that integrates social and academic aspects of university life, but also enables them to be separated. Creating an institutionally owned, and private space, would address the privacy concerns of students as well as enabling them to create distinct separate digital identities for their university lives and their outside lives. A social media platform that uses an intuitive interface (with rich media content) may also reduce the additional time and effort of acquiring familiarity with an additional platform, particularly if it could replace email and VLE/LMS usage, which students do not integrate into their daily practice.

Furthermore, making such an environment available to students before their arrival at university provides an opportunity for students to both socialise with their peers before studies begin (helping with induction and maintaining well-being during their initial months) but also enables students to anticipate and plan for what their studies will entail. This early interaction with students is likely to support a higher retention prior to their arrival and would be especially beneficial to international recruitment.

These considerations and learning outcomes led to the development of Loopd.life Social Learning Environment, the details of which are described in the next section.

Background to Loopd.life

Summary

Loopd.life facilitates the communication and organisation of all social events, extracurricular activities and academic opportunities that take place at University every day; this simplifies the process of engagement and empowers students to take greater responsibility over their education. Loopd.life uses modern social media theories and advanced mobile communication to build self-confidence, strengthen relationships and form a more supportive and connected educational community.

Many platforms exist to support academic progress (such as VLE’s and other education technologies) and students with clear academic purposes may gravitate towards these technologies. Loopd.life targets the wider student community and focuses on all social, extracurricular and academic pursuits; this provides a highly engaging platform that supports a broader student experience and broader student lifestyle. (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Venn diagram to show the three core areas that make up the modern student experience. Loopd.life particularly supports the natural communication overlap between each of the three core areas, engaging a broader student audience and working to increase the cross pollination of interests, skills and breadth of experience.

Educational concepts: Levels 1 and 2

Loopd.life allows students to quickly and spontaneously flick between their social, extracurricular and academic lives (as in Figure 2) and this engages students in either a social-seeking or work-seeking path of information discovery (represented at Level 1, in Figure 3). This comfortable and flexible approach (compared with other education technologies) offers greater individual relevance, giving students a direct sense of community, belonging and reward for their time and effort invested in the platform. A free or spontaneous choice that results in a fun and rewarding experience increases the frequency and duration of interactions.

When a student decides (voluntarily) to enter an educational environment, motivation is stronger and learning becomes more productive, this leads to faster and more efficient progress (Level 2, in Figure 3).

Figure 2: A screenshot of Loopd.life on a desktop platform to demonstrate the engaging way for students to quickly and spontaneously flick between social, extracurricular and academic opportunities in both the newsfeed (to the right) and in the messaging channel (to the left). The homepage allows multi-tasking between the newsfeed and messaging channels.

Educational concepts: The Enterprise Triangle

Loopd.life becomes a self-documenting portfolio of community activities and achievements that provide a very natural way to stimulate and inspire greater participation in others. Loopd.life therefore cross-pollinates skills and interests, which empowers students to form new relationships and take a more enterprising approach to their education (see the Enterprise Triangle, in Figure 3).

“Universities are highly collaborative communities with so much to offer from social interactions and extracurricular pursuits to academic teaching and career development. The most difficult challenge that students face is to understand what is available to them and how to effectively act on this. Universities believe they have to keep growing (more facilities, more technologies etc.) to stay competitive, but in reality it comes down to better communication of what is already available; this simple narrative is often overlooked or misunderstood.

Loopd.life simplifies the communication and organisation of everything that already exists. This raises awareness, creates curiosity and then provides a structure to take advantage of this.” Jonny Driscoll, CEO Loopd.life.

Educational concepts: Level 3 and outputs

As a result of new relationships and more effective collaboration, Loopd.life offers a greater visibility of shared experiences and personal achievement. This creates a more intimate and stronger sense of belonging, value and worth that ultimately perceive a more tangible return on investment for the student (Level 3, in Figure 3). These feelings of confidence and inclusion are intended to drive personal and group motivation and to cultivate a more empowered and proactive student community with higher ambition, retention and success.

Figure 3: Flow diagram to map the product user journey (by way of cognitive decision-making) and psychological concepts of Loopd.life. Initially students are channelled down either a social seeking or academic seeking path and engage in areas they feel most comfortable [Level 1]. These students then progress and develop within their favourite areas and begin to collect and share experiences [Level 2]. Improved exposure and simplified collaboration of these experiences act to inspire other students by cross-pollination; this in turn empowers students to broaden their educational interests, developing new skills, relationships and curiosities [Enterprise Triangle]. Ultimately more effective collaboration among staff and students improves trust, and creates an intimate sense of belonging that reinforces personal value, self-worth and confidence. These outcomes provide the maximum return on investment to the student through satisfaction and results, and to the university through retention and success [Level 3].

Achievements

Loopd.life began as a student enterprise winning a number of competitions and awards; some of these include, Technological Enterprise and Innovation (University of Birmingham, 2013) Santander Universities Student Enterprise (Santander Universities, 2014) Bseen Midlands Enterprise and Innovation (European Regional Development, 2014). Since incorporating in 2013 Loopd.life has raised private investment and worked with dozens of institutions on product development. In 2016, Loopd.life has replaced existing communication technologies in 19 of its pilot institutions.

Pre-pilot studies

Northampton University

In 2014, Loopd.life (then operating under the previous name of Unipin) was demonstrated at Northampton University as staff and students were invited to interact on the platform. Loopd.life was established as a good way to engage with students visually (and therefore emotionally) rather than via traditional text-based methods. A summary of opportunities were drawn up by the following disciplines:

Head of Learning and Development, Director of Institute of Learning and Teaching, Director of Student and Academic Services, Head of Learning Technology, Business Intelligence Manager, Executive Dean Schools of Education, Deputy Dean School of Arts, Director of Enterprise Development and Social Impact, Head of Academic Practice, Head of Employability and Enterprise, Strategic Bidding and Other Executive Officers.

Unipin offers something for everyone in the University

Unipin is suited for mobile technologies

Aesthetically, Unipin is a clean and fluid-looking software

A visual tool, such as Unipin, may engage memory, cognition and emotion in new ways (versus text-based methods)

The appearance of Unipin is a good way to communicate with students about various activities across the University

Unipin appears to be a speedy tool for student engagement and could give students a sense of belonging into their student experience very quickly

Student Union staff members were asked specifically to provide qualitative feedback to the question:

“What do you think is the most powerful impact of implementing Unipin at Northampton University?”

Responses to this question fell into one of two categories, those of organisation and engagement.

1. Organisation - The support for students to organise their various social, extracurricular and academic commitments in one place, was seen as a useful function.

i. “Communication of events and having a joint calendar so students can plan and engage.”-Vice President of Engagement and Participation

ii. “Students making the most of opportunities and tailoring an experience that best suits them.”-Memberships Service Manager

iii. “The ability to see what you can do, and what you can join, that fits in with your existing commitments at Uni.”-Marketing and Communications Manager

2. Engagement -The potential to discover new information and co-ordinate a range of activities helped with community engagement, but also the functionality and design of the platform matched what staff believed students struggled with using their existing VLE.

i. “Engagement with students and better, more realistic, communication. Solving a problem they struggle with from ….. NILE, Blackboard and too many social media outlets. Unipin is really engaging!”-Student Voice Coordinator

ii. “Students having access to events and opportunities easily in one place. Building a sense of community”-Student Groups Coordinator

3. Indirect effects -There are also a number of indirect effects such as obtaining data analytics from the different demographics of learners to improve both student and academic services, and the indirect benefits of student engagement to improve retention, progression and attainment.

i. “Unipin will allow the evaluation of relevant data around student engagement.”-Vice President of Engagement and Participation

ii. “Improving retention, progression and good degree attainment”-Membership Service Manager

Acknowledging the importance of community, and that organisation and engagement are common challenges that students face, could have a resultant effect on retention and achievement. “At the heart of student retention and success is a strong sense of belonging in higher education for all students. This is most effectively nurtured through mainstream activities that all students participate in.” (Thomas, 2013). This statement is particularly important since the four most influential reasons why students leave university (Table 1) relate to student engagement and the perception that the university does not care about them, their organisation or progress. These factors contribute to 84% of all student dropouts, and since (in most cases) support and opportunities for engagement are available, this perception of students must be due to a lack of communication.

Table 1. Most common reasons for student dropouts (Thomas, 2013)

A common misconception is that by focusing on motives such as teaching quality or personal and financial support, students will engage more and retention rates increase. Looking at Table 3 these factors are not key motivators for students and help to explain why new learning technologies often receive very low student engagement; this approach may also be counterproductive as it gives a detrimental impression that the university fails to recognise the true needs of students, and most likely encourages the common responses of poor service, treatment and the feeling that the university does not care. Table 3 indicates that learning technologies should focus on providing relationship intimacy, care and a stronger perhaps more emotional sense of reward in order to be effective and engaging.

At Northampton, it was calculated that increasing retention by just 2% would represent an annual income of £1.7m. Clearly to access this significant financial benefit, universities would need to shift their focus from teaching and learning, to engagement and participation; improving the internal communication and perception of existing activities and support, may bring about a higher financial return than implementing new strategies.

Chesterfield College

In 2015, an experiment with a class of business studies students at Chesterfield College showed how much faster students were able to retrieve homework using Loopd.life (<15 seconds) over Moodle (>45 seconds). In a school of 1000x students, over the duration of one year, an additional 30 seconds to locate each piece of homework (assuming that every student locates 2x homeworks per school day) equates to half a year of lost time. This frustrated the students and lowered their motivation to do work; it was also reported that during this extra 30 seconds, faster more engaging platforms (like Facebook, Youtube and Snapchat) distracted them from their initial good intentions. During the experiments, responses from staff at Chesterfield College were:

“Unipin is the perfect tool to engage, inspire and grow, and keep in contact with students”-Martin Cope, Business Enterprise Manager, Chesterfield College

“Unipin is definitely the future of Further Education”-Ben Owen, Head of Student Services, Chesterfield College

Since this initial study in 2015, information retrieval on Loopd.life is faster, with most data now being accessible within three screen taps (or 4–6 seconds) via the iOS and Android mobile apps; and in addition to faster access, files can be stored offline so as not to require the Internet. This approach to facilitate learning is focused on reducing common (and often habitual) motivational barriers that students create when considering to do work, especially outside of the classroom.

Quantitative study at University of Birmingham

During 2016, a survey of 361 students at the University of Birmingham was undertaken to identify their current software engagement using existing communication tools, and to assess the extent to which Loopd.life could support their needs. Students were asked to give feedback over Facebook, Canvas and Loopd.life. (Canvas is the institution’s VLE/LMS). The responses are listed in tables 2,3 and 4.

Table 2. Survey of students’ usage of Facebook

Table 3. Survey of students’ usage of Canvas

Table 4. Survey of students’ feedback of Loopd.life

*26% of these students said they’d check Loopd.life more than Facebook

The responses from the students indicate a clear preference towards social platforms and a mismatch between the institution’s expectation of its students’ interactions with their VLE/LMS and the actual preferences of those students. Only 34% of students said that they log into Canvas weekly, compared with 98% on Facebook and a projected 94% on Loopd.life. This is not specifically due to limited accessibility, time constraints, or failure to integrate the VLE/LMS into their working patterns, as 30% of students don’t value it and 9% said they have never logged in. Facebook usage is consistently higher with 83% of students using it on a daily basis and 31% of those accessing the platform >10x per day. Facebook use has been embedded into their daily habits.

The responses of the users who tested Loopd.life indicate that having a platform that also fulfils the function of a VLE could become habitually accessed like social media and would increase awareness of institutional communications. For approximately one in six students, this combination of social interactions and university activities would be used more than Facebook.

Qualitative study at University of Birmingham

In parallel with the quantitative survey, small ad hoc focus groups were invited to use the Loopd.life app and provide feedback. Responses were transcribed and categorised for consistency. Due to the small scale of the data collected, the analysis is not robust, however, as a pre-pilot experiment this does indicate some of the factors that students noted about the platform.

Responses fell into the following categories:

1. Integrates pedagogies of a VLE and Facebook -the students identified the strengths of the platform having similarities with Facebook in its ease of use and its visual nature, but with the added value of educational content: “Its basically just Canvas and Facebook put together” Loopd.life therefore supports many of the facilities of social media as reported in the literature, but also combines these with elements of pedagogical support that VLEs/LMSes provide. Comments included:

i. “It would be good especially for the stuff we’ve been doing like immunology stuff. We get given a lot of pre-lecture-content and it’s kind of hard to track down on Canvas so that would actually be really good.”

ii. “It would be good for group work.”

2. Replaces technologies that students struggle with -Students described having difficulty with locating information, organising their studies and scheduling activities, partly due to information needing to be sourced from different platforms. Most students referred to ‘giving up’ looking for information and instead asking their friends for answers. They particularly welcomed the calendar feature that drew together all activities and event notifications with class timetabling so that everything was accessible from one place.

i. “If I knew more about what was going on, then I’d be able to go to a lot more, rather than relying on people making Facebook events and stuff, and you find out too late. If you could click ‘Add to Calendar’ and move straight on to something else, I think that’s pretty good. I really like it.”

ii. “Yeah its good, you don’t have to do the research yourself. I find that hard currently with so many small things going on and so many different places to look, if it was all there for you in one place that would be really good.”

Another aspect that students reported having difficulty with is accessing email, to a point that it precludes them contacting their tutors. Since Loopd.life has a private messaging platform (using familiar social media technology) that integrates all social, extracurricular and academic conversations into one channel, it makes collaboration much easier.

iii. “Yeah I have to email them (lecturers), through an email address …. I don’t because its too much effort, but if it was on Loopd, I’d just drop them a message and it would go straight to them.”

Although a frequent barrier to the uptake of additional technologies is the extra time and effort in learning to use and implement them, replacing a pre-existing technology students currently dislike (such as email) with a familiar technology (such as mobile messaging) should reduce this barrier.

iv. “I think it would probably make things a lot easier, because everyone is always on the phone and if it was just on the app then it fits together. I think it’s all easier to find, it’s cool.”

v. “If it’s just on an app, everyone’s comfortable with social media as it is, so it wouldn’t take much adapting to, I don’t think. I think it’s really good.”

3. Provides user-controlled separation of identities and interactions -Finally, the main issue with using social media reported in the literature is the ability to have clear distinction between personal lifestyle content and university work. Loopd.life allows users to take control over their newsfeed and so what is usually a major barrier to engagement was not an issue for learners (Figure 4) Loopd.life supports the ‘everything in one place’ requirement to make student life easier, while maintaining personal and social preferences. Students also appreciated that the app was only for their institution, keeping their student lifestyle distinct from their family lives and the rest of the Internet.

i. Student One: “And is that like only academic stuff, (tap) only social stuff (tap).”

Student Two: “Ha you’ve got that.”

Student One: “Well its kind of obvious, its cool, I really like it.”

ii. “I think it’s a good idea, I think it’s a really good idea, having it just for University of Birmingham type thing.

Figure 4: The public newsfeed is a core feature of Loopd.life that supports both targeted information and serendipitous discoveries. It allows the user flexibility to filter between social, extracurricular and academic content.

Pilot study

Newcastle College

In September 2015 Newcastle College launched a twelve-month pilot with over 100 staff and 3000 students, the intention was to resolve a previous issue with students not reading emails. Table 5 shows the level of engagement (from both staff and students) over the past twelve months. Feedback from staff at Newcastle College emphasise the positive and transformational impact Loopd.life has had on communication.

“Loopd has transformed how we communicate with students and how they communicate with each other. I cannot recommend it more highly. Move over boring VLE, this is the future of modern education.”Deni Chambers, Director of School, Newcastle College

Table 5. Pilot activity summary at Newcastle College

Six months into the Loopd.life pilot a survey was conducted with 60 staff and 60 students to determine which type of content (documents, web links, media, text or other) users valued most (Figure 5). Both staff and students preferred a multi-media environment, focusing on the inclusion of user-generated video and the ability to link to external media and documents. The perceived value of text content users was noticeably lower than other forms of information sharing; although the results may be influenced by the novelty or excitement over Loopd.life since traditionally education technologies have been particularly limited in sharing multi-media content. Nevertheless, for the highest level of user engagement, a visually intensive and media rich platform is ideal.

Figure 5. Survey of 60 staff and 60 students at Newcastle College to determine the highest valued content by users. Each participant was limited to one answer.

A sample size of 1000 user-generated posts and events were analysed and categorised to determine the educational benefit of the platform (Figure 6). The largest individual benefit relates to community enrichment (20%) indicating that the platform is most valuable to improve social collaboration. This category is closely followed by academic enrichment (15%). There are however a number of smaller benefits such as employability opportunities, cross pollination of skills and support, information dissemination, achievement recognition and enterprise skill development, all of which individually range between 6–9%, but when combined in a more generalised categorisation (Table 7) demonstrate that almost half of the user-generated content is enriching with academic benefit.

Figure 6. An approximate categorisation of user-generated content uploaded to Loopd.life at Newcastle College during a twelve-month period involving 100 members of staff and 4000 students.

Table 7. Category analysis of posts and events

Conclusions

Although limited in their scope, responses from the pre-pilots (Chesterfield College, Northampton University and University of Birmingham) and pilot at Newcastle College, suggest that it is possible to use commercially owned software that integrates the pedagogical value of a VLE with the fast and efficient performance of a social media platform. This modern education technology is described by Loopd.life as a Social Learning Environment and integrates into students’ habitual behaviours, whilst effectively disseminating educational content. The pilot at Newcastle College has proven to be appropriately controlled to ensure the productivity and safety of the institution, yet sufficiently empowering to be flexible and engaging for the students.

“I really believe that Loopd.life is an amazing platform and I think could not only transform this college but be upheld as National/International good practice and an educational revolution.” — Tom Bradley, Head of Academic Curriculum, Newcastle College

User feedback during the development of Loopd.life and supporting literature suggest that the main issues with internal university communications are that:

Students are not accessing emails, and do not value their institutional VLE/LMS or use it regularly.

Students can access information more quickly (and therefore with less effort) in social media platforms than they can via a VLE/LMS.

Staff and students value an aesthetically pleasing and visually dynamic platform that supports multi-media content to enhance both social and academic engagement.

To address concerns regarding privacy and intimacy, a platform needs to be a closed and accessible only by students of their university.

The speed, accessibility and more intuitive navigability of social media platforms allow communication to flow continuously and hence engagement can become habitual. Academic respondents viewed this as having a beneficial impact on retention and progression.

Multiple communication platforms fragment the dissemination of information and cause organisation difficulties for students.

Students feel that Loopd.life empowers them to choose freely between academic and personal content creating an engaging medium that sufficiently drives academic benefit, importantly without intruding upon their social life. Due to the spontaneous nature of the pre-pilot studies and partly-subjective categorisation of data from the pilot study, further work is needed to determine the exact benefits of using the platform and to identify more precisely what factors encourage or discourage students to adopt a social learning environment. In addition, a longer-term experiment will help indicate if there is a measurable impact on achievement, retention and progression.

Further Work

Another interesting use to explore is the idea of admitting new students onto Loopd.life before their official start date. This allows an earlier, smoother and more personal induction process, perhaps leading to higher retention rates in the initial stages of university. These experiments have already begun at Newcastle College although it is too early to draw conclusions. A similar concept would be to give alumni access to Loopd.life after graduation and see whether this has a beneficial academic or career-related impact on current students when they leave higher education. Exploring the different ways in which Loopd.life meets the needs of students, staff and institutions will be the focus of additional research over the coming years.

References

1. Caspi, A, and Blau, I (2008) “Social presence in online discussion groups: testing three conceptions and their relations to perceived learning”, Social Psychology of Education, 11:323-346

2. Cheung, C.M.K., Chiu, P-.Y. and Lee, M.K.O. (2010) “Online social networks: Why do students use facebook?” Computers in Human Behavior 27 (2011) 1337-1343

3. Huppe, A. (2011) An exploratory study of students’ use of Facebook and other communication modalities in order to receive student affairs information, MSc thesis, University of North Texas, May 2011

4. Neier, S. and Zayer, L.T. (2015) “Students’ Perceptions and Experiences of Social Media in Higher Education Journal of Marketing Education 2015, Vol. 37(3) 133-143

5. Rourke, L, Anderson, T, Garrison, D R & Archer, W. (1999) “Assessing social presence in asynchronous text-based computer conferencing”. Journal of Distance Education 14 (2) pp. 50-71

6. Tess, P.A. (2013) “The role of social media in higher education classes (real and virtual) — A literature review”, Computers in Human Behaviour 29 (2013) A60-A68

7. Thomas, L. (2013) “Building student engagement and belonging in Higher Education at a time of change.”

Authors