With a Little Help From My Friends: The Value of Social Media for Distributed Learners

Many mid-career learners are unable or unwilling to take a large chunk of time off from work in order to attend a postsecondary institution. Though these students (and often their bosses and colleagues) see great value in educational upgrading, they don’t want to put their careers on hold in order to achieve their educational goals. As such, they often opt for distributed or online learning options as a way to achieve needed professional development in their free time while remaining in their careers.

Of course, going back to school is difficult enough for mature learners, even when they have the structure of a classroom and regular contact with an educator. When the program is mostly online, this situation can be even more challenging. Small problems escalate quickly, questions may not get asked or answered and students can easily fall off the radar, losing regular contact with their peers and instructors.

Over the past five years, however, the growth of social media has begun to offer a support network for distributed learners, particularly when combined with a cohort model of online learning.

Informally, in my work teaching online, I have noticed a large difference in completion rates between students who establish a Facebook page or other online (outside of the classroom) communities with their peers compared to students who do not have a similar social support system.

Importantly, I have not seen or participated in these student spaces myself. The ones that seem to work best are those that are student created and moderated, away from the view of instructors. These communities allow students to have social interactions common outside of the traditional face-to-face classroom, but that are missing from the day-to-day of online learning. While a private student-led online community may create concerns about academic honesty, many of these issues can be mitigated through thoughtful course design.

Distributed learning can be an isolating experience when one is alone in front of a computer, reading and completing assignments. A social media community gives students a place to compare notes, complain about instructors, work through challenges and celebrate successes. In short, it humanizes what is otherwise an often sterile and transactional online class process.