Social media and college student engagement

First, my colleagues at the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) included some questions specifically about technology and social media in their 2009 survey. They discuss the results briefly in their National Report: http://www.ccsse.org/publications/national_repo…. From what I recall it's the same story as the other research in this area but it's been a while since I read it.

Second, I think that many of us who work in this area need a much better understanding of SNSes and social media in general. I don't think that many of us have a very good understanding of it. In fact, it seems to me that many of the higher ed researchers who poke at this have a very shallow understanding of it. In particular, I don't even think we have a good definition or understanding of even the vocabulary or definitions.

Finally, I think you'd agree that the findings above are neither surprising nor terribly interesting. It's the same thing we see every time we look at technology and student engagement: there is a positive correlation. The real question is: What is causing that correlation? One likely answer – the answer on which I would place my money if forced to pick only one answer – is that use of technology changes how faculty teach and interact in positive ways. I don't necessarily mean that in a straight-forward deterministic way; I also think that the type of faculty who use technology are often more interested in teaching, communicating, experimenting, etc. And, of course, this argument can easily be extended to administrators who use technology effectively and creatively.

I agree that professionals working in higher education need a better understanding of social media, especially how these media impact student psychosocial development and learning. The reason that the state of the research isn't where you'd like for it to be is because that's the state of the research right now. Anytime we investigate something new, we move through the same stages: first we define and explain, then we relate, then we come up with models that show cause and effect. I think there are plenty of social media scholars who have done a great job of defining and explaining how youth use social media. Then, we have studies like the two I cited in this post where researchers have uncovered correlations. Now, we have to take the important next steps and come up with research designs that allow us to make causal interpretations. With time, we’ll extract common themes that will help us get a better understanding of the mechanisms behind the effects. One perfect example of this process is the literature on how technology use influences psychological health—we now know, after years of research, that how people use technology is better predictive of psychological health than frequency of use.

I highly recommend Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to help get a better sense of how the scientific process progresses and evolves through stages. My own scientific epistemology draws heavily from Kuhn’s work and the philosophy of empiricism.

Hey Rey,

Fascinating stuff. Keep em coming.

I wonder how we can mitigate for selection bias here…. Are more extroverted people more engaged on campus AND on social media because they're more extroverted? Not because the two have a causal relationship? Any thoughts on how to mitigate this and look for causal relationships?

Thanks Michael.

You have an excellent point. My colleague and I are currently thinking of ways we can examine and elucidate personality type variables in social media use. The paper, Psychological Predictors of Young Adults' Use of Social Networking Sites by Wilson, Fornasier, & White has recently been released : http://bit.ly/aeStxY and speaks to these issues.

Thanks for your work here.

How is “student engagement” defined?

Dr. J.

Another fascinating study, I can see the correlation between student engagement and social media use in terms of high versus low users.  I too am conducting research on engagement and social media.  In particular my foci are in the areas of: academic impact (whether positive, negative or n/a) and the non-traditional students (e.g. community college students) as well. 

Very useful, keep it coming there is an audience for stuff!