Implementation of Social Media at Brunel Business School - Coursework Example

INTERNET MARKETING by Table of Contents Executive Summary Introduction Body Implementation of Social Media at Brunel Business School Advantages of Social Media to Brunel Business School Challenges in using Social Media at Brunel Business School Improving Social Media Use at Brunel Business School Conclusion Reference List Executive Summary The internet, also known as the worldwide web has become increasingly important in today’s world. Different sectors use the internet to do different kinds of things, among them education. Brunel Business School has implemented social media in its environment to better student, staff and alumni experience. It has also improved the chances of prospects admission to the School. Social media has become important for the School especially because of changes in education and people’s lives that require diversification. This paper will discuss the implementation of social media at Brunel Business School and the challenges experienced. It will then advice on the improvements that can be done to increase the effectiveness of social media for prospects, students and alumni engagement and support. Introduction The internet, also known as the worldwide web has become increasingly important in today’s world. Different sectors use the internet to do different kinds of things. The most important aspect about the internet is that it has made the world a global village where people in different parts of the world are joined together in real time (Mills, 2011:345). One of the sectors that has used internet in its different aspects is education. The education sector around the world uses the internet for research, administration, and learning and to promote social issues (Ractham & Firpo, 2011). One important aspect of the internet that has been used in education is social media. Brunel Business School has implemented social media in its studies to ensure that it attracts more students even as the world changes, for instance in terms of an increase in tuition fees among other aspects. There are several challenges that Brunel Business School is facing with its current social media adoption/use that must be addressed to achieve more efficiency. Body Implementation of Social Media at Brunel Business School As stated above, Brunel Business School has already implemented social media, for example, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, as aspects that improve student experiences in the school as well as improving the prospects of the school in attracting other students. Today social media is used to create engagement in classrooms and in online courses. Social media varies from a fully collaborative approach to learning to social activities so that the learner to actively participate in the learning process. Social media such as Facebook links social issues with active learning to allow students have an all round experience in the learning process. This has been an advantage for Brunel Business School in its use of social media (Hao Jiang, MingXi Tang, 2010:1). Brunel Business School has also used social media to achieve personal directed learning for students and tutors for example through the use of YouTube. Tutors post reading materials on YouTube from where students can read and do exams or term papers. Social media has provided a platform where students can organize and manage their own personal and professional learning. Social media has an advantage of giving a user a personal feel in terms of ensuring that a user has a wide spectrum of choices and decisions to make. For example, a user can decide when to log in and when to log out of their Facebook or Twitter account and post or read information from friends (Galusha, 1997:6). A user can also decide on the friends that he or she wants to have on either Facebook or Twitter platform from the school. One also has the advantage of deciding on the kinds of information he or she would like to share with others and the information that he or she considers to be private (Lords, 2014). The social media has also enabled group directed learning where students form teams or groups that compose several students. These teams or groups share information, resources and experiences with each other regarding schoolwork or social aspects in their Facebook and Twitter accounts. This enables individual students to understand ideas that they could not understand when studying alone. To do this, the groups use collaborative tools provided by the social media platform to work together on common school assignments or brainstorm on issues concerning both school activities and social issues (Veletsianos & Navarrete, 2012:144). Below are screenshots showing Brunel Business School’s use of social media. Screenshot 1. Different social media platforms used by Brunel Business School Screenshot 2. Brunel Business School Marketing Advantages of Social Media to Brunel Business School Social media has also been advantageous for Brunel Business School in the sense that it has helped the school to advertise the courses and programs that it offers to potential students. For example, the school has used Facebook and YouTube to post advertisements of its courses and programs to encourage prospects to apply to the school. Social media can reach different people in different regions of the world in real time. Posting the courses and programs in social media enables the school to meet more people than it could have met by using physical posters or advertisements in radio or television. In addition, the school has used Facebook and Twitter through its support administrators to answer any questions or concerns from students, prospects, alumni and any other member (Allen & Seaman, 2010). Challenges in using Social Media at Brunel Business School Despite the successes that Brunel Business School has experienced while using social media, there are other challenges that the school has met. First, the compulsive need for the school to interact with social media platforms even when doing other activities such as leisure activities reveals that the school has preferred safety of virtual interactions over the vulnerabilities regarding actual human interactions (King, Greidanus, Carbonaro, Drummond & Patterson, 2009:1). For example, the school has a Facebook page for its students and also another one that is the official Facebook page for the school. However, the main challenge that the school has from this concerns whether the social media promotes social aspects by a major margin compared to the learning aspects. When one opens the school’s website, he or she can see that he is being directed to the Facebook and Twitter accounts to read certain pieces of information. Potential students of Brunel Business School ask themselves whether the school is interested in the social aspects more than learning, which in an actual physical setting could be vice versa. This is a challenge that the school has to address (Conole, 2010). Secondly, evaluating the learning outcomes because of an emphasis on Facebook and Twitter is a difficult process because it is difficult to ascertain whether students take their education seriously and understand the concepts or they just copy notes and only apply it when they need to do exams. Furthermore, there is no known evaluation tool that has been specifically developed to measure the learning outcomes from the use of social media. This is a difficult aspect to deal with (Tung, 2013:236). In addition, Brunel Business School faces challenges in the sense that the use of social media as a platform to attract new students does not automatically leads to positive results. Social media can increase the popularity of a school among potential students. However, popularity and actual admission numbers are two different issues. The use of social media has helped Brunel Business School gain popularity in different parts of the world because anyone who is registered on Facebook or Twitter can access the accounts of the School. However, the main challenge for the school has been to translate the popularity into actual admission numbers for the school because it does not mean that the large numbers of students visiting the Facebook and Twitter account will register with the School (Alvarez & Olivera-Smith, 2013:314). Another challenge that Brunel Business School has had to deal with is the issue of privacy. Today, social media sites are open for all persons to use. Researchers have studied the relationship between online behaviour and keeping personal information private (Zaidieh, 2012:19). The Users have become comfortable to share a lot of personal information, for instance through Facebook where any piece of information can be posted or accessed. However, Brunel Business School, just like other organizations, has challenges dealing with issues of personal privacy because students leave their accounts open negligibly or accidentally. They also share this information with other students who they consider being their friends but may turn on them anytime they please. Therefore, dealing with this problem has become a challenge for the school. Some important questions regarding privacy is who has the role of ensuring that an individual/ student understands his or her right to privacy and implement it? Is it the parent, school, tutors or the student? (Dwyer, Hiltz & Passerini, 2007:12). Another challenge that Brunel Business School faces in its use of current social media adoption is miscommunication. Social media or e-learning does not give students and educators a chance to ask and answer questions and clarifications compared to physical education platforms (Hameed, Badii & Cullen, 2008:1). For example, students cannot ask tutors questions regarding coursework on Facebook or Twitter. Therefore, learners are limited in terms of their chances of expressing their views and ideas. Written content does not give room for wide coverage of content compared to oral conversations. As such, students are bound to face problems in cases where they are given complex assignments that need several clarifications. This is because the use of social media for learning requires students to acquire specific writing skills but normal classroom learning provides students with a chance to speak freely (Hordemann & Chao, 2012:93). Improving Social Media Use at Brunel Business School There are several issues that Brunel Business School can do to ensure that the school’s social media is used more effectively to improve prospects, students and alumni. First, the school should balance between the social aspects and learning activities that can be included in its social media platforms. The school has to decide which platform among Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is the best for education and which ones are good for advertisements and social issues. It would be senseless not to have social aspects when social media is about socializing. However, social media cannot only be used for social purposes because Brunel Business School should have an educative aspect in it. Therefore, developing a platform that balances both will be advantageous in the sense that prospects will understand the advantages of the school in terms of promoting, educative, cultural and social aspects. Secondly, it is difficult to completely solve privacy issues. However, the school should print rules for use in Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to advice students, alumni, and prospects on how they should keep their information private, for instance passwords and login names. The YouTube can be a good platform to post such rules because of ease of access and the streaming aspect. Ensuring privacy is an important aspect but is deeply dependent on individual’s carefulness and responsibility. Therefore, by providing readily available rules of advice on privacy matters, the concerned will be knowledgeable on what they should do to keep their information private. With respect to issues of miscommunication, the school should ensure that educators and website support are ready and willing to help students, alumni and prospects whenever they need clarifications irrespective of how many times they need the help. Finally, the school should also create a user friendly, easy to use and beautiful social media pages, for instance in Facebook and Twitter to attract people be it student, prospects and alumni among other people. People are attracted with aesthetics first then followed by content. Therefore, if the school provides beautiful social media pages, easy to use profiles and interesting content, the usability of the social media will increase. Conclusion In conclusion, social media as an aspect of e-learning today has become essential for schools that want to compete and attract high achievers while at the same time maintain a good culture. Because of work-related difficulties and distance, social media helps schools to advertise and attract students and staff. The Brunel Business School has implemented social media, for instance Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in its institution to attract and retain students and staff. However, it has certain challenges discussed above that can be resolved using the proposed recommendations to make it more effective. Reference List Allen, E, & Seaman, J 2010, Learning on demand. Online education in the United States, 2009. Needham: Sloan Centre for Online Education. Retrieved from http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/survey/pdf/learningondemand.pdf Alvarez, I M, & Olivera-Smith, M 2013, Learning in Social Networks: Rationale and Ideas for Its Implementation in Higher Education. 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Zaidieh, A J Y 2012, The use of social networking in education: Challenges and opportunities. World of Computer Science and Information Technology Journal (WCSIT), 2(1), 18-21. Read More