ENGAGING STUDENTS THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA

Session: Engaging with Social Media

Beth McGough, ProQuest

elizabeth.mcgough@proquest.com

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Agenda

• Introduction• Use of social media• Social media for study and research• Training in the use of social media• Recommendations

#InternetLibrarian

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Introduction

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Overall findings

Students use social media to seek out, collaborate and obtain information from classmates and academic peers

Even if they are not interacting with the library they are open to doing so

Enabling and fostering the use of social media for organizing and sharing research is an ideal role for libraries

However, the study revealed students do not consider social media an appropriate information source for research

USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Among graduate and undergraduate students

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Use of social media

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Use of social media for specific tasks

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR STUDY AND RESEARCH

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Social media for study and research

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Training in the use of social media

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Interest in library services through social media

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR LIBRARIES

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Recommendations: Use of social media

1• Consider establishing a presence on

Facebook and Twitter if you have not already

2• Post regular library-related updates

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• “Follow” or “Like” prominent individuals and academic/student organizations, encourage them to share library posts with their networks

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Recommendations: Current and likely use of social media

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• Set up LinkedIn groups, specific to academic disciplines for access by graduate students in particular

• Secondarily, establish a page on Google+ and create groups specific to academic disciplines

2• Create community pages or sites for specific academic

disciplines, hosted by the library

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• Provide online tools for organizing research, managing citations, sharing and collaboration, such as RefWorks Flow or Mendeley

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Recommendations: Training in the use of social media

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• Expand information-literacy instruction to include social media for research

• Teach students about the social media features of online databases and research tools

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• Show students how to connect with librarians through Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn

• Teach students to connect with researchers in their discipline through social media, such as how to participate in a Twitter chat

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• Introduce and inform graduate students about other sites with discipline-specific communities, such as Quora and the editing side of Wikipedia

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• Consider including tools such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and school services such as an intranet or Blackboard/Moodle in information-literacy efforts

QUESTIONS

Whitepaper, Student Use of Social Media, http://prq.st/1ca9AcB

Infographic, Student Use of Social Media, http://prq.st/1b8pgYw

elizabeth.mcgough@proquest.com

@BethMcGough79