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This chapter focuses on how social media tools can be used to enhance collaboration in higher education and the benefits and challenges that this can bring. We investigate how two social media tools, social bookmarking, and microblogging, can be utilized to foster collaboration and determine why this is important in contemporary higher education. Case studies of social media use at Bournemouth University show how social bookmarking and microblogging have already yielded benefits.The case studies are grounded in the challenges facing higher education in 2010. We explore how social media has been used in the context of a need to enhance academic excellence and drive efficiencies in the face of funding constraints and changing demographics.

The case studies illustrate, first, how social bookmarking has been used to foster group cohesion, reflective practice, and evaluative skills in students, as well as being used at an institutional level to drive professional and administrative efficiencies; and second, how microblogging has made a difference in promoting reflective learning, group cohesion, and professional awareness in students and how this style of social networking has contributed to enhancing academic and professional networks.

Whilst the tools, uses, and stakeholders vary, the case studies show how social media has enabled collaboration between, students, academics, librarians, learning technologists, and even professional groups beyond the institution. We conclude that, when used appropriately, social media can facilitate the collaboration that will be essential to overcome the challenges facing higher education.

Social media have been a powerful source of social and cultural change in the past few years, reframing the ways in which we communicate, interact with information, and build knowledge. In a higher education context, they have had a significant impact in breaking down the walls of traditional classrooms and closed online environments (LMSs). By combining formal and informal contexts and interactions, and enabling the dialog with wider audiences, they bring affordances such as transparency, real-life communication, meaningful tasks, and conversations, which result in a stronger engagement on the part of the students and a better, more diversified learning experience.

In this chapter, I describe the ways in which social media were used in an online master's degree on e-Learning Pedagogy, at Universidade Aberta, Portugal, in an effort to move toward the networked class. Tools and services used include Twitter, Facebook, Delicious and Diigo, blogs, wikis, and Second Life, among many others that students have been using to perform their tasks and publish their work.

Corporate managers must find a way to communicate their CSR activities to stakeholders without creating a boomerang effect where the CSR messages create resentment of instead of support for the corporation. One alternative is to use social media channels because they are low cost and can use a soft sell approach, thereby reducing the likelihood of a boomerang effect. However, using social media messaging about CSR challenges managers to attract followers to those social media channels. This chapter explores the use of gamification, the use of gaming features in the CSR messaging, to present CSR messages. The case study of Kraft’s “Two-Minute Drill” is used to illustrate how gamification can be used to promote social media-based CSR messaging.

A case study method is used to illuminate how Kraft used gamification to increase the audience for its anti-hunger CSR efforts. Kraft used the “Two-Minute Drill” game to attract people to their effort to fight hunger.

The “2-Minute Trivia Drill” seemed to overcome the CSR promotional communication concerns of tone and cost. The dominant message and theme is feeding the hungry. The tone on the Facebook page and the game itself is subtle in relation to the Kraft brand because Kraft appears in the background through its logo, name, and the names of prominent Kraft products. The stakeholders are treated as the drivers of the CSR effort because the individuals playing the game are what create the donations from Kraft. Donations could even be personalized. None of the comments posted to the Kraft Fight Hunger Facebook page questioned the expense of the project. Overall the comments were very favorable suggesting there was no boomerang effect from the game.

The study offers only one case study of gamification in CSR communication. More cases are necessary to draw stronger conclusions about the utility of gamification for CSR communication presented via social media. Moreover, more direct measures are needed to assess how stakeholders feel about CSR messages using gamifications and if the strategy can consistently prevent a boomerang effect.

The implications from the case study are that gamification can be an effective way to attract stakeholders to social media-based CSR messages and to generate positive reactions to the CSR messaging.

This chapter is one of the first detailed explorations of gamification as a means to avoid the dangers of the CSR promotional communication dilemma (stakeholders wanting CSR information but reacting negatively to the promotion of CSR activities).

While personal learning networks (PLNs) are not new (Warlick, 2009), social media technologies are now enabling us “to fashion new kinds of networks that extend far beyond our immediate location and face-to-face connections, and to grow our networks based not on explicit decisions, but through the ideas of other nodes (people and resources), whose ideas intersect with ours” (Warlick, 2010, para. 5). What is new then, and what is changing the nature of PLNs, is the rapid growth of information and the emergence of new technologies capable of filtering that information and connecting us to others we can interact with and learn from (Siemens, 2008). In this chapter, we discuss the steps involved in building, growing, and maintaining online connections made possible entirely through new technologies. We argue that in the context of higher education, PLNs should be viewed as an informal alternative to the more formal professional development programs that are commonplace in K-12 education.

Social bookmarking is an online tool that can enable students to develop their skills in finding, sharing and (re)organising online information. Research has demonstrated that it has the potential to impact positively on students’ digital literacies – their ability to use the Internet critically to support their learning – and particularly on the kinds of online research skills that are vital to supporting inquiry-based approaches to learning and teaching in history. This chapter provides a detailed overview of how online social bookmarking tools have been used to support the development of students’ digital literacies in history in a number of UK higher education institutions. The general approach which has been adopted is based on constructivist principles and requires students to develop their skills and appreciation of the Internet as a venue for scholarly research in order to strengthen their inquiry skills in preparation for more independent work at higher levels of study. The chapter presents evaluative data that has been collected from students who have used social bookmarking to support inquiry activities within modules and as part of their independent learning activities. We also report staff reflections on the usefulness of social bookmarking to support student learning in history and make some recommendations for the practical application of such tools elsewhere. These include the potential significant impact of social bookmarking on students’ ability to interact productively and creatively with online resources in the course of their learning; the usefulness of the tool in supporting collaborative working and sharing materials; the need to ensure that students receive adequate training in using social bookmarking and that their work receives adequate credit (which will, in turn, increase motivation).

This chapter addresses the needs of ongoing educational reform and presents the merits of social bookmarking as a technology integration option for pre-service teachers. Delicious, a social bookmarking tool, was introduced as a Web 2.0 tool that assists in tracking websites that hold the potential to contribute toward the meaningful learning of students. Delicious and other social bookmarking tools give 24/7 access to tagged websites from any computer anywhere in the world as long as Internet access is available. Numerous emerging technologies are making their way into the classrooms. As such, K-12 schools and post-secondary institutions of higher learning bear the responsibility for preparing all students to successfully use them to compete in this global economy. During fall 2009 and spring 2010 semesters, the authors piloted use of Delicious in seven mandatory teacher education technology-based courses. Specific instructions were provided for selecting interactive, user-friendly websites with content that would complement lesson plan content and thereby contribute toward greater learning potential. A total of 106 graduate and undergraduate pre-service teachers located, standardized, and began sharing their tagged Delicious bookmarks as part of a major course project for integrating technology into a classroom. The websites were documented within full and abbreviated lesson plans that detailed the rationale for use of each technology resource/tool. Approximately 300 websites that met specifically defined criteria were located by the pre-service teachers who also benefited from the merits of collaboration and sharing through social bookmarking with Delicious. They simultaneously experienced how ready-access to quality technology resources/tools could positively impact the learning opportunities of their K-12 students. Access to the Delicious database collection is available by contacting the authors.

This study examined teachers’ cognitive development when interacting with video ethnography. It used grounded theory to discover embedded meanings and relationships that emerge from descriptive data collected from six teachers. Findings revealed (a) the categories of cognitive activities when using video ethnography, (b) the influence of experience and beliefs on these activities, (c) the scaffold that video ethnography provides, and (d) teachers’ progression in a cognitive development process through interaction with video ethnography. The study has implications in improving technology use in teacher development, production of multimedia cases, and research on case-based pedagogy and other related areas.

Media considerations are pedagogical rather than technological in nature. In online courses, we use technology to enable learner interaction. In this chapter, we focus on a process through which we identify media that will help bring our course to life. Technology tools come and go, quickly. While some specific tools are suggested, it is the process by which to identify and select media that is enduring. We begin with a discussion of media-enabled course activities that are used to guide the selection process. The 10 activities are organized by type of interaction they represent and the media characteristics they require. Media have affordances or functions that can be matched with identified course activities to meet learner interaction needs. These needs help to narrow the scope of our selection decisions. After exploring a variety of functions and tools, we exemplify the media selection process. We extend the work started in previous chapters by identifying media needs in light of design and interaction decisions under the playground and symphony metaphors. In so doing, we demonstrate how the phases of the redesign process inform our technology choices.

In recent years, we have seen a paradox. No matter how much the government strives to incorporate technology into classrooms as a learning resource for students, both national and international reports prove that this is a difficult aim to achieve purpose. Training both preservice and in-service teachers is vitally important for technology to become part of everyday school life. But to achieve this, we must move away from the techno-centric focus of technology. This chapter analyzes the importance of focusing on implementing technologies in the learning activities that teacher-trainers design to prepare preservice teachers. We describe seven types of activities: assimilative, informative management, applicative, communicative, productive, experiential, and evaluation. All of these technology-based learning activities, organized in learning sequences, potentially help teachers to come to terms with technological knowledge in their pedagogical content area.