https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127485.t001. Resources & Support; Success Stories; Private Sector Education; Workforce Directors; College Resellers. School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America, Affiliation In the early 1970s, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching developed what has come to be the most commonly used classification system for institutions of higher education worldwide: the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The biggest advantage of social media is better communication. For example, principals or administrators can find a new way to integrate social media. Grandmothers and 12-years old alike are opening Facebook accounts, and there are Facebook pages even for people’s dogs and cats. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. NEW @UNESCO policy paper shows number of students has doubled to 207m & govts can't keep pace #MindTheStudentGap Bit.ly/tertiaryed. The Pew Internet & American Life Project is a leader in this area—conducting and making available a wide range of studies on the topic of social networking [10]. This data file was used as the starting point for this study, as the most complete list available of institutions of higher education in the United States. The existence of a separate social media policy may be an indication that an institution is still coming to grips with the functionality and affordances of this technology, and is in the process of figuring out how to integrate social media into its culture and practices. This content analysis was conducted between 22 May – 3 July 2013. The percentages in Fig 3 do not sum to 100%, because a single policy document may mention several social networking services by name. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127485.g004. Social media provides a unique stage for interaction amongst students and teachers and amongst students themselves. Also on the basis of the pilot, the questions on the questionnaire were simplified, reducing the content analysis to a series of mostly multiple-choice and yes/no questions (e.g., “Which specific websites or services are mentioned by name, if any? PLOS ONE promises fair, rigorous peer review, This analysis may inform the development and revision of social media policies across the field of higher education, taking into consideration the rapidly changing landscape of social media, issues of academic freedom, and notions of interoperability with policies at the unit and campus levels. As discussed above, the content analysis performed on social media policies was based on the results of analyses by Boudreaux [24] and the National Labor Relations Board [18]. Content analysis often involves more than multiple-choice and yes/no questions. As if this is not clear enough, the next sentence says that the “underlying principle will be that of a faceless and transparent regulatory intervention using … Institutions of higher education are not known for the rapidity of their policy development, but speed is a necessity in the world of social media. Research has shown that social media can serve important educational purposes. When it comes to social media and education, some parents and teachers view these platforms as distractions that negatively influence students. Is important that higher education responds with agreed upon language to guide the campus community on social media. Social Media Policy and Screening for Higher Education, oversee current employee’s public social data, Social Media Policy and Screening in K-12 Education. Job postings for staff positions with social media expertise, often in Offices of Communications. There are a lot of other benefits that can be extracted from the use of social networking at higher levels as well. Doctorate-granting universities were proportionally more likely to have social media policies than any other institution type. The fact that “very large” institutions did not have policies at the same rate is likely an artifact of the Carnegie Classification data file, as very large institutions are exclusively 2-year institutions – and as discussed above, 2-year institutions are less likely to have social media policies. Proactivity sets a precedent. Searches followed this pattern: (“social media” OR “social networking”) (policy OR guidelines OR handbook) site:unc.edu. Yes Fig 4 shows the communities that are addressed by name in social media policies. Krippendorff’s alpha [36] was therefore used as the measure of inter-coder reliability, as, unlike many agreement statistics, it may be used to calculate the agreement between more than two coders. Research has shown that social media can serve important educational purposes. After removing false positives, 822 institutions were found to have social media policies (17.7% of institutions in the Carnegie Classifications Data File, or 22.7% of the 3,620 unique institutions). As discussed above, Boudreaux [24] identified three distinct stages in the evolution of social media policies: Mitigation, Information, and Differentiation. When a school sets up any social mediaatforms pl for educational purposes, the account administrator must ensure that at least two members of staff, including an executive, have administration rights and regularly monitor the interactions, as pre recommendation in 2.4.5. Higher education, social media, social media policy, comparative analysis, policy analysis, Web 2.0 Abstract The creativity, collaboration, and advanced communication afforded by the use of social media also opens privacy and safety concerns for potential users inside and outside the realm of higher education. No other analyses of institutions that have individual units with their own social media policies showed any notable differences. Similarly, very large, large, and medium institutions are more likely to have social media policies than small and very small institutions. “People know we have to do it, but people still don’t look at it as professional,” says Barrows. The researchers cleaned this data manually, to eliminate false positives. Achetez neuf ou d'occasion Lay down a strong foundation for using social media in higher education. An extensive body of literature exists on various aspects of social media. Though often signed by all members of a college community, a community compact depends on a top-down approach, relying on faculty, staff, and administrators to embody these values and bring them into student life as vividly and rigorously as possible. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.”. Two studies have found a positive relationship between the use of social networking websites and student engagement in higher education. School of Information Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Knoxville, Tennessee, United States of America, Affiliation Content analysis of social media policies for all institutions listed in the Carnegie Classification Data File revealed that less than one-quarter of institutions had an accessible social media policy. Geoffrey Miller is hardly unique in this. While colleges often have many policies in place to prevent these various occurrences, what is often missing is a mechanism to handle digital spaces. Social media policies for institutions addressed 3 categories of topics more often than policies for units: the appropriateness of posts (e.g., appropriate content, appropriate tone), representing the institution (e.g., branding, public image, posting in the institution’s name), and ensuring that posts comply with the law. With these connected, digital technologies, our colleges and universities understand there are both opportunities and threats that social media affords. Looking for more resources on social media screening in education? The authors took into consideration the ethical concerns raised by others about Mechanical Turk, and attempted to ensure that Turk workers were reasonably well paid for completing our tasks. Twitter was a close second at 82.6% and 86.1%, respectively. By utilizing social media screening, universities have the potential to better support an optimal learning environment as well as protect their stellar academic reputation. They can use such platforms via their smartphone, tablet or computer, and learners can exchange questions, make phone calls or video calls. Indeed, instead of addressing Miller's original tweet, both universities focused on Miller's later claim that the tweet was research. Nursing Departments were consistently the most likely to have policies, with 26% of all social media policies at the unit level referring to these departments. Since then, the Carnegie Classification has undergone several revisions; the most recent and most sweeping of which was released in 2005 [25]. Social media is about collaborating, networking, sharing and generating knowledge and content, and all of these features are of great value in the context of higher education. what constitutes a post? The importance of teachers, students and parents engaging, collaborating, learning, and sharing in these digital environments is a part of 21st century learning. The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education has developed the “Basic Classification,” which divides institutions into 6 categories, each of which has several subcategories, except for Tribal Colleges, which has no subcategories. 1. The Social Media Toolkit from the Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association is a terrific resource for the higher education community.. Social networks refer to the groups that form through the use of social media. Krippendorff’s alpha was calculated for each question on the content analysis questionnaire; due perhaps to the simplicity of the questions, values for alpha were quite high, ranging from 0.96 for the question, “Which specific websites or services are mentioned by name, if any?” to 0.78 for the question “Does the policy discuss how to post about events at the institution?”. However, academic institutions are not alone in this endeavor. However, whether an institution has a standalone or integrated policy, the openness and transparency of the communication space, and the changes wrought by this transformation, must be taken into account [39]. Stoessel's dissertation "Social media policy implications in higher education: Do faculty, administration, and staff have a place in the ‘social network'?" Indeed the most common use of social media in higher education is as a means of amplifying existing events, publications, and websites. Future research – both in the academy and outside of it – is needed to investigate characteristics of organizations with social media policies in Boudreaux’s [24] three stages, and to investigate how an organization might progress more rapidly through those stages. Social media policies for units addressed 2 categories of topics more often than policies for institutions: communication between coworkers, and contact with external agencies (e.g., the media, state and local government). Social media use has risen in higher education, as campus stakeholders frequently access these technologies for teaching, learning, research, communication, and information sharing. Yes For example, if your social media policy website is titled "Acceptable use of Social Media Policy" that might just raise an eyebrow or two. Most of the social media policies that Boudreaux analyzed were from corporations, though some were from county- and state-level governments, and branches of the US military. Educational policy initiatives may thus be viewed as responses to the struggle over particular constructions of social political, economic and cultural changes. Institutions of higher education like their policies. For the purposes of our analyses – and with apologies to our readers at Tribal Colleges – we collapsed Special Focus Institutions and Tribal Colleges into one category, since there are only 31 Tribal Colleges out of 4,635 institutions listed in the Carnegie Classifications Data File, and only 4 that we found to have social media policies. Yes Despite the fact that memorandum OM 12–59 [18] was written to address “employers’ policies… unlawful under the National Labor Relations Act,” only one institution’s social media policy even mentions the NLRA; that one institution was Harvard University. The issue with perhaps the greatest degree of complexity in drafting social media policies is finding language that simultaneously protects the reputation of the institution while respecting academic freedom and First Amendment rights. A conti… Noté /5. For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click It says that the apex regulatory body in higher education will “use technology to reduce human interface to ensure efficiency and transparency”. 2.4.5. Thus Google was used to provide consistency across searches. #truth”. Through social media, students find it easy as well as convenient to communicate, access information, and to provide information. We did not find any policies from campus units that were obviously in conflict with policies for the institution as a whole (at those institutions that had both), but this is clearly a risk that should be considered in the development of macro- and micro-level policies. In order to prevent duplicating information, over or under posting, and posting inaccurate information, it is best practice to work together with your university leaders, student council, social media managers, and your university’s marketing team. In Tony McNeill’s journal article “Don’t Affect the Share Price”: Social Media Policy in Higher Education as Reputation Management,” McNeill argues that the creation and implementation of social media policies are playing a role in helping universities manage both the risks and the benefits of social media in the context of an increasingly “marketised” higher education environment in which protecting institutional … This makes sense, as large institutions are often divided up into units that operate semi-independently, such as colleges, schools, or medical facilities. Results of the study led researchers to conclude that teachers should use social networks as communication tools for purely academic-related issues, such as addressing aspects related to class organization and coursework. Spread the love. There is also an active research community addressing the role of social media in such diverse areas as the lives of teenagers [11], personal privacy [12], and political movements [13]. Based on the results of those two analyses, we developed a questionnaire to enable Turkers to conduct content analysis of institutions' social media policies. Informational policies start to diverge, as organizations learn to use social media to communicate their unique values, goals, and culture; these policies contain information about, for example, the types of personal data that the organization collects and maintains, and links to other relevant organizational policies. As a CRA, Social Intelligence helps colleges and universities institute the necessary protocols such as permissible purpose, disclosures and authorization, plans for adverse action, and a dispute resolution process as mandated under the FCRA. A social media policy is your business code of conduct, letting people in your organization know how to act on social media. The social media has brought education and learning to our doorsteps. An example of the pedagogical use of social media is in personalized learning environments (PLEs). A social media policy is your business code of conduct, letting people in your organization know how to act on social media. Master's Colleges and Universities: 32.1%. Lindsey is an HR content writer and lifestyle blogger. 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