In higher education, I often imagine learning as something that happens in courses, workshops, or advising meetings. However, students also learn as they try to solve immediate problems. Social media tools can support people by helping them complete tasks when they need help. A social media post on learning can be designed as a small performance-support tool for international students. The goal was to make useful resources easier to find, save, and revisit.
Pinterest is interesting for this purpose because it excels at visual curation. Hu et al. (2018) show that Pinterest can serve as a socialized knowledge community in which educators share and organize professional resources. In my previous project, I used Pinterest similarly, but for international students rather than teachers. This also made me think about the difference between “information” and “support.” A university webpage may contain helpful information, but students still need to find it, understand why it matters, and know when to use it. Curation can help with that. By selecting resources and grouping them around a single purpose, a curator can turn scattered webpages into a more usable learning resource.
Performance support is not the same as community. If I wanted my Pinterest board to become part of a larger support community, I would need more than pins. I might need a discussion space, peer feedback, moderation, and ongoing updates.
Social media can support higher education in small but meaningful ways. Not every learning experience needs to be a complete course. Sometimes students need quick, practical, trustworthy support when they are trying to do something. Good performance support helps people act with more confidence.
References
Hu, S., Torphy, K. T., Opperman, A., Jansen, K., & Lo, Y. J. (2018). What do teachers share within socialized knowledge communities: A case of PinterestLinks to an external site. Journal of Professional Capital and Community.
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