Challenges and opportunities of social media in higher education

In the 21st century, opportunities in education are available like never before. Use of social media in education has opened up many opportunities in education such as distance learning, blended learning, use of video and images in classrooms which was not possible using traditional classroom ways of education. Social media is playing a vital role in our everyday life. Social media is easy and quick in terms of accessing, reviewing, updating, and editing teaching and learning resources. The resources can be accessed at any time and from any place. Education has moved out of geographical boundaries of classroom teaching. Social media has made the world a smaller place. Educators and students have more information, more knowledge, and have better opportunities to use it. Social media helps to reduce stress and increase satisfaction among students. It allows each student (slow or quick) to study at their own pace and speed. We have reached more than 2 billion active social media users worldwide. The majority of the social media users globally range from age 14-29. This means a large proportion of social media users are either school students or University going students. Social media has improved our ability to absorb information. Teachers and students are pushing learning beyond the borders of classroom through social media. There are benefits such as flexibility, convenience, extra information, information when required, etc. for use of social media in education for both students and educators. However, there are many challenges facing the use of social media in education such as privacy, time wasting, incorrect communication, attention to detail, people skills to communicate, overloaded information, etc... We have done a study of how social media can be used in higher education and our paper discusses the challenges and opportunities of using social media in higher education.