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Social media as a teaching innovation tool for the
promotion of interest and motivation in higher
education
Marta Sánchez-Saus Laserna
Instituto Universitario de Investigación en Lingüística Aplicada
Universidad de Cádiz
Cádiz, Spain
marta.sanchezsaus@uca.es
Mario Crespo Miguel
Instituto Universitario de Investigación en Lingüística Aplicada
Universidad de Cádiz
Cádiz, Spain
mario.crespo@uca.es
Summary— Social media is part of the daily life of university
students, so it can become a useful teaching innovation tool. This
paper describes the teaching innovation project carried out in the
Degree in Linguistics and Applied Languages of the University of
Cádiz, in which two profiles have been used, one on Facebook
and the other one on Twitter, to share the content (news, papers,
videos, job offers ...) related to linguistics and languages,
specifically targeting degree students, in such a way that their
autonomous work will be promoted from the shared contents in
networks; their motivation will be increased, providing them with
resources to broaden their knowledge about topics that especially
interest them, and at the same time, boost their English written
and oral comprehension, considering that news, articles and
videos have also been shared in this language. The project has
been evaluated both quantitatively and qualitatively: the
quantitative data of the scope of the profiles have been provided
by the analytics of Facebook and Twitter and the qualitative ones
have been extracted from an anonymous survey answered by the
students of the degree. Conclusions support the usefulness of
social networks as a tool for these purposes.
Keywords— teaching innovation, higher education, social
media, interest, motivation, linguistics.
I. INTRODUCTION
The use of social media has become a daily activity in
recent years for the vast majority of university students.
These increasingly specialized social spaces allow
individuals who share the same interests to be connected [1].
On the other hand, as pointed out in [2], in recent years the
way of communicating and interacting with others in these
networks has been revolutionized, mainly due to its
integration with the use of smartphones and mobile devices.
In this sense, in [3], a work carried out with university
students is emphasize that the success of these technologies
will depend on the degree of knowledge that, of these ones,
students know how to do and their attitude (positive or
negative) towards them. The use of social networks, blogs,
video applications would involve bringing information and
education to the places that students associate with
entertainment and therefore approach them with less
prejudice [4]. These new means of relationship not only
allow the extension of the class to other contexts outside the
classroom [5], but also they make possible to include new
contents that would have a difficult place in the
development of the subject in the classroom [6], how to
connect such content with the real demands of society.
Therefore, many teachers and institutions have
incorporated social media as part of their strategies for
teaching and disseminating content. In [7] an interesting
analysis is carried out on the penetration of social media
platforms such as Tuenti and Facebook in university
students and [8] highlights the implementation of different
educational projects in the Spanish context based on the use
of social media for teaching practice. Likewise, in [9],
focusing on Twitter, the uses and perceptions of students
and teachers in relation to this social network are examined,
comparing results from Spain and the United States. There
are already numerous studies, in this context, that seek to
improve the university teaching-learning process through
social media: [6], [8], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16],
[17], [18].
In this regard, in this paper we present an observational
case study derived from the results of the teaching
innovation project developed in the Degree in Linguistics
and Applied Languages of the University of Cádiz during
the 2016-2017 academic year, whose purpose was the use of
Facebook and Twitter to promote the interest and motivation
of the students of the whole grade and, secondarily, for the
scientific spreading of Linguistics. This action began the
previous year, 2015-2016, but focused on a single subject of
the degree, and also continues during the current course,
2017-2018, not finished yet. We present here the results of
the 2016-2017 course, since they are already analyzed and
evaluated in their entirety and applicable to a full grade.
The results provided by the statistics of the profiles and
by the survey carried out to the students at the end of the
second semester show that effectively managed profiles and
with periodical publications is revealed, indeed, as a very
useful tool for communication and dissemination of contents
that do not fit during the class hours but that can be useful
for us, as teachers, to broaden topics, share information on
applied issues, disseminate useful information and,
therefore, increase the interest and motivation of the student
towards the contents of the grade.
This project has been financed thanks to the granting of an action of
teaching innovation by the Vicerrectorado of Transfer and Technological
Innovation of the University of Cádiz in 2016-2017 (code sol-
201600065174-tra). The research is part of the R&D Project
“Comunicación especializada y terminografía: usos terminológicos
relacionados con los contenidos y perspectivas actuales de la semántica
léxica” (FFI2014-54609-P) and the R&D Project “Evaluación y
monitorización de la Comunicación para el Desarrollo y el Cambio Social
en España: diseño de indicadores para la medición de su impacto social»
(CSO2014-52005-R), both funded by the Programa Estatal de Fomento de
la Investigación Científica y Técnica de Excelencia of the Spanish
Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. Both authors belong to the
Excellence Research Group “Semaínein” (HUM 147).
II. METHODOLOGY
A. Objectives and benefits for teaching
The problems that this project was proposed to address
are the following:
• Improve the active participation of students in those
groups with a high number of enrolled students, in
these contexts the interventions in class are very
scarce and the sessions are reduced, in many
occasions, to master classes in which only the teacher
intervenes. Social networks can serve as a parallel
channel in which the teacher and students interact in a
more fluent way.
• Improve the knowledge of the actual work exits of the
degree, given the disconnection of the students from
the communication channels in which they share
information about postgraduate courses, scholarships,
work opportunities, etc., of all students, preferably
those in the last year of the degree.
• Guide students towards complementary contents that
may interest them from what they have seen in class.
This individualized work is difficult to do in class and
even when tutoring.
The benefits for teaching that we have foreseen in this
project are:
• The improvement of teacher-student communication
and among the students themselves. This is limited in
the classroom due to the numerous groups with which
they have some subjects; in others with a smaller
number of students, this project has sought to help
overcome the traditional distance between student and
teacher, which prevents communication between
them from being fluent.
• The promotion of students' autonomous work on
linguistic contents, based on the contents shared in
networks, which is useful as a starting point for the
search of other related materials.
• The improvement of students' motivation, since they
have the resources to broaden knowledge about topics
that interest them, to investigate in the networks and
share it with teachers and students.
• In addition, going beyond the benefits that our
students can extract, these profiles in social networks
have the intention of becoming a speaker for the
scientific dissemination of language and languages.
The shared contents have been previously filtered by
the professors who are responsible for the project, so
we have ensured the scientific quality.
B. Materials
There have been different types of shared contents, so
that we could attend to the different objectives that we have
set:
• News about phenomena related to linguistics and
languages, especially with applied linguistics, which
is, how the theoretical contents about linguistics are
applied to solve problems in society and day to day.
• Web pages and tools about concepts related to
languages and Linguistics.
• Links to interviews and talks by specialists in
linguistics and its subdisciplines.
• Videos about subjects related to the discipline (type
TED).
• Links to download bibliography on linguistics.
• Notices about events, seminars and conferences held
at the University of Cádiz related to content seen in
class or, in general, with linguistics.
• • Announcements of scholarships, external training
courses and job offers related to the profile of the
students of the degree.
The profile on Facebook is
https://www.facebook.com/linguisticayllaauca/ and on
Twitter, https://twitter.com/linguistica_uca. The frequency
with which the profiles have been updated has oscillated
between the twice a week in non-teaching periods (holidays,
exam period) and daily in the last month of school (mid-
April-mid-May), when the the involvement of the students
with the project has been greater, since they have had time
throughout the course to familiarize with it and with the
objectives that have been pursued. It has been fundamental
for the good development of this project to have a trainee
who is responsible for the direct management of the
networks, thanks to the funding received. She has been
responsible for managing the publication of content on
Twitter and Facebook on a daily basis, with the supervision
of the project coordinator. For the automation of the
publications, there have been used both the programming
tool provided by Facebook and Hootsuite which is a web
and mobile application for managing profiles on social
networks, which has been used to schedule publications on
Twitter, have been used. Likewise, the face-to-face contact
with the students has been very important: visits to the
classes have been organized to explain the project, the
objectives that were pursued and encourage them to
participate.
C. Evaluation methods
We started with a population of 72 students enrolled in
the Degree in Linguistics and Applied Languages, who in
the 2016-2017 academic year were enrolled in one of the
four courses and usually attended classes. The scope,
diffusion and acceptance evaluation method has been
double. On the one hand, we have analyzed the "medium
range" of Facebook posts and impressions and retweets
from Twitter, using the evaluation tools that social networks
place within the reach of their users.
The other evaluation method was an anonymous survey
that was sent to the students by email. This method of
evaluation has been chosen due to its low cost, how easy it
is to be created and the rapid quantification of data. In
addition, with this method the anonymity of the informer is
maintained at all times and there is the possibility that they
reject the completion of the survey. This survey was
designed in Google Drive, so that it was available online
and compatible with mobile devices.
After a short pretest of elimination of biases that could
have been unnoticed, a census of the students was carried
out and the survey was sent by email and through instant
messaging (WhatsApp). Of the 72 students enrolled, 52
completed the survey. Given that we have a sample of the
initial population, we need to estimate the possible derived
error. Previous studies estimate that the use of social
networks among young students is over 90% ([19], [20] and
[21]), so we start with a confidence level of 95% of a
margin of error expected maximum of 4.5%.
III. R
ESULTS
To describe the results of the project, firstly we will
summarize the most interesting statistics provided by the
Twitter and Facebook analysis tools. These first data will
give us an idea of the actual scope of the profiles. Below we
describe the assessments made by the students of the degree
in the anonymous survey and we will evaluate whether the
expected benefits in teaching have been fulfilled.
If we firstly focus on the number of followers, in the
period from October 1, 2016 to May 28, 2017 the Facebook
page has been from having 198 followers to 317; the profile
of Twitter had 287 at the beginning of the course and now
has 377. The analytics of the social networks themselves
provide us with the following statistics: the average reach of
the publications on Facebook has been 170 people per
publication, with concrete peaks of more than 800 people.
On average, each publication has been shared 4 times. In
addition, only during these months from October 2016 to
May 2017 have more than 2,000 "likes" or “loves" have
been registered as a reaction to the publications. The
publications made on Twitter had a total of 58,100
impressions (times that the publications have been seen by
someone), received 577 clicks, 270 retweets, 317 likes and
72 responses.
Let's look at the results of the last anonymous survey of
the students of the degree. The students surveyed are 80.8%
women, compared to 19.2% men. Their ages range between
18 and 25 years, with an average of 20.4 years. They are
distributed in the different courses of the degree with this
distribution: 25% is in 1st, 26.9% in 2nd, 26.9% in 3rd and
21.2% in 4th.
Among the students who answered the survey, 86.5%
follow at least one of the two profiles of the Degree: 50%
follow the two profiles, 28.8% follow only the Facebook
page and the 7, 7% only the Twitter profile. 13.5% does not
follow any.
Fig. 1. Percentage of students of the Degree in Linguistics and Applied
Languages that follows the social media profiles of the Degree.
Next, we asked them to assess different aspects of the
project. We consider that these are the fundamental
questions to evaluate the success of the project. With the
intention of determining the internal consistency of this part
of the survey, the Cronbach's Alpha reliability test was
applied, obtaining an alpha value of 0.7, enough value to
guarantee its reliability. First of all, we asked them to rate
the interest (in general) shared content on social networks
have for them: on a Likert scale from 1 to 5: the average
rating is 4.02 (with a ± 0.24 error) standard at a 95%
confidence interval).
Fig. 2. Answers to the question about the interest of the students for the
shared content in the social networks of the Degree.
Secondly, we asked them to what extent the social
networks of the degree have been useful to expand
knowledge of issues seen in class: in a rating on a Likert
scale from 1 to 5 the average response has been 3.02 (with a
± 0.34 standard error at a 95% confidence interval).
Fig. 3. Answers to the question about the degree of usefulness of social
media to expand knowledge of issues seen in class.
We also asked to what extent the social networks of the
degree have increased their interest and motivation for the
contents they have seen in the grade: on a Likert scale from
1 to 5, the average has been 3.48 (with a ± 0, 35 from
standard error to 95% confidence interval).
Fig. 4. Answers to the question about the influence of the social media
profiles of the Degree in their interest and motivation for the contents seen
in class.
The subjects that have seemed most interesting are those
related to the applications of linguistics (88.9% of
respondents); 65%-70% are also interested in the contents
on internal and theoretical linguistics, news about
scholarships and grants and about training activities.
As we discussed earlier, we have made an effort to look
for content in English that will help students improve their
written and oral comprehension skills in this language. In
the survey we consulted their opinion on this issue and the
average rating of this initiative has been very high, 4.27
(with a ± 0.3 standard error at a 95% confidence interval) on
a Likert-type scale From 1 to 5. In addition, 62.2% consider
that the level of English of the shared contents is accessible
and they have understood them without problems, compared
to 24.4% who say that it has cost them a bit but they have
been able to understand it and 13.3% who acknowledge not
having paid attention to what has been shared in English.
Fig. 5. Answers to the question about the evaluation of the selection of
content in English.
Finally, of the 13.5% that state not to follow the profiles
of the degrees, 57% does not do it for ignoring them, 28.6%
because they do not use social networks and 14.3% because
they do not care.
IV. C
ONCLUSIONS
Social media have been revealed as one of the most
powerful communication tools that exist today, and,
specifically, can be very useful in pedagogical innovation in
higher education. In this article we have presented an
observational case study derived from the results of the
action supported by teaching innovation developed in the
Degree in Linguistics and Applied Languages of the
University of Cádiz during the academic year 2016-2017,
whose main objective has been the use of social networks
Facebook and Twitter for the promotion of interest and
motivation of students of the entire grade.
The results of this initiative have been very positive. On
the one hand, the follow-up of the profiles has been very
high (86.5% of the students follow at least one of them) and
the growth of the followers has been constant throughout the
months in which the project has been developed. The
students rated very positively (above 4 on a scale of 1 to 5)
the general interest of the content shared on the networks
and positively (above 3 on a scale of 1 to 5) both their
influence on their interest and motivation for the content of
the degree as its utility to expand content seen in the degree.
In addition, they have welcomed very positively (above 4 on
a scale of 1 to 5) that the content chosen has not been only
in Spanish, but alternate with others in English at an
appropriate level. On the other hand, although this is a
secondary objective, the scope of publications on both
Facebook and Twitter show that actions of this type are
useful for scientific dissemination in this field to reach a
much larger number of interested parties, a quick way and
with the endorsement that has been evaluated by specialists
before being shared.
Finally, it is essential to bear in mind that for a project
like this to be successful, the dedication of the person
responsible for managing the profiles must be done on a
daily basis. Therefore, in the results of the project we have
presented, it has been crucial to have an assistant in practice
to help in its management, as well as the involvement of
teachers in the selection and evaluation of content.
Thus, the results provided by the statistics of the profiles
and by the survey carried out to the students show that
profiles managed efficiently and with periodic publications
are a very useful tool for the communication and
dissemination of contents that have no place during the
hours of class but that can be useful to broaden topics, share
information on applied issues, disseminate useful
information and, therefore, increase the interest and
motivation of the student.
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