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Education IT

Injecting education into social media

By Xinghui Guo | 10 December 2010

With the nation’s fastest internet speed (70 mbps) within a campus, De La Salle University in Manila has been pulling out all the stops to add an element of education to social media.

By “talking their talk” and opening communication channels to the school and faculty on social media and the internet, Allen Surla, Director of Information Technology Services Office in DLSU, said he hopes to increase the educational value in internet media.

“We jumped on the bandwagon because they [the students] are already spending so much time on the internet—it is hard to pull them away,” he said. “Everyone has Facebook, Friendster or Twitter. This is how they talk now.

“We have to ride on that medium before we lose them. We need to talk to them in a language that they understand and see eye to eye with them.”

Hence the school has actively leveraged on the internet for announcements, online classes and assignment submission.

But would setting camp on youngsters’ domains backfire? Not according to Surla.

“It is their world,” Allen Surla, explained. “We are not imposing on them; we enter it [social media] and try to inject educational content.

“They might think they are in it just to play Farmville, Mafia Wars or update their photos and statuses. But if you go in there and optimise your chances by posting your questions in that medium, they are bound to answer. And they are learning already.”

A maximum of 40 per cent of all lessons can be held online at the discretion of the lecturer.

At the lecturer’s disposal are approved media like Yahoo Groups, Instant Messaging clients, and the school’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

Lessons can be conducted in real-time via chat or video functions, or students can be tasked to work on research and post their findings online.

Work is submitted online, syllabus is posted online, and students are also graded online.

With essays posted onto a shared community, the faculty can easily check for plagiarism and students can share essays and files without having to photocopy, supplying them with the views of all 20 students in the class, said Surla.

Along with online classroom initiatives, evaluation of lecturers has also moved to the world wide web and the school’s Facebook and Twitter pages are used to announce changes to the school schedule and news updates.

“We are a paperless community,” Surla said. “With the internet, learning becomes easier.”

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