Using social media networks to support your learning

This course is itself a social network.

What do you think the benefits of using social media tools to support your learning on this course might be?

Try putting your theories into action and let us know at the end of the week in step 1.25 ‘Reflection’ how you’ve got on and what difference its made to your learning.

Don’t forget, the course hashtag is #FLsocialmedia

The Web Science collection of free online courses also have their own blog, Twitter and YouTube channel where you can see and comment on new videos that we post during the course. You can subscribe to this channel too.

One of our Web Science course learners, Simon Fogg, set up a Google + community that you might like to join and participate in. You can sign up here. Simon recently won a FutureLearn Inspiration Award for his work in developing and managing this social network on Google +.

Try out a new social media tool

Whilst you may be very familiar with some social media tools, how about trying out something new?

Facebook Groups and Google + communities

These are great if you want to share images and other media with smaller numbers of fellow learners or for forming groups with other people about a very specific subject.

You could start a Facebook group, or join one that someone else has started. Details of Facebook groups can be shared in the comments on the discussion pages within the course. Facebook also supports the course hashtags. Find out more about how to create a Facebook group. Google + allows you to use a nickname if you’d prefer to keep your real name private. Find out more about how to create a Google+ community.

Twitter

If you’d like to try Twitter out, try viewing what’s been shared using the #FLsocialmedia hashtag so far. You might find it motivating to follow other learners there too and help encourage others through the course.

LinkedIn

For those of you that use LinkedIn, you might like to create or join a LinkedIn group to discuss your experiences and network with other professionals – people within your field and beyond. To join a group, search for its title from the search bar, or create your own by selecting ‘Interests’ and then ‘Groups’ from the top navigation.

Enterprise social networks

Your employer may have an internal social network that is used for collaboration and discussion, such as Yammer or Slack. This is a great way for you to discuss course topics with other learners within your organisation – particularly if you’re in a large company across multiple sites.