McGraw-Hill Brings Together Social Media & Education Experts to Discuss the Future of Digital Innovation in Higher Education

Key Take-Aways from McGraw-Hill's Social Media Week Panel Discussion, Underscoring the Future of Digital Innovation in Higher Education

McGraw-Hill Education hosted a panel discussion as part of Social Media Week New York titled, The Future of Social Media in Higher Education.Students, academics and social media experts shared their thoughts on how social media is changing the way students learn, instructors teach and institutions adapt to innovation.

The following themes, issues and trends were discussed at length, indicating the role of social media today in the higher education classroom and its future potential:

> Geo-tagging will be a powerful tool for higher education as it can be used to target locations and get information about those locations, whether students are working on sociology, science, etc. Adam Ostrow, editor in chief of Mashable.com, cited FourSquares™ partnership with Harvard University as an example.

> The Apple iPad will have a significant impact in the education market by giving students the ability to have all their textbooks and notes on one device coupled with social media and collaborative capabilities.

> The smudging of technologies: Augmented reality, mobile computing and crowdsourcing. Collaboration will turn into a mix between online and offline environments through augmented reality, mobility and the ability to bring in the wisdom of crowdsourcing with physical environments. Vineet Madan of McGraw-Hill Education said, We need to develop the educational analog of these technologies to deepen engagement among college students.

> Social media can help solve the student engagement crisis. Of the more than 20 million higher education learners, more than half will not earn a degree within 6 years. The reason most cited for this is lack of engagement. Social media has an opportunity to engage students in a manner that not only compatible with the way students already communicate with their peers, but can foster more open, collaborative conversations between students and instructors.

> In order for both students and instructors to engage in social media, there needs to be a level of incentive. In terms of student incentives, McGraw-Hill is experimenting with status, reviews and rewards models, similar to those used by Amazon and eBay. GradeGuru.com is leading this charge with its Status Badges for top contributors to its site.

PANELIST INCLUDED:
Adam Ostrow, editor in chief of Mashable.com
Dr. Kathleen P King, Fordham University Professor & President of Transformation Education LLC
Vineet Madan, VP of strategy & business development, McGraw-Hill Education
Mary Casey, NYU student and founder of Jatched.com
Greg Verdino, VP of strategy at Powered & author of microMARKETING
Yianni Garcia (moderator), marketing specialist for GradeGuru.com, a McGraw-Hill Education startup

The event was held on Friday, February 5th as part of Social Media Week New York. 

Quotes

I always thought it was kind of ridiculous if you're in a classroom of 300 people for them to based 30% of your grade in class participation. They call on three people in a lecture and if you're not one of them you' re screwed.

-Adam Ostrow, editor in chief, Mashable.com

The number one reason contributing to student drop out rates is the lack of engagement. We want to develop social media tools to drive education to a new level of engagement.

-Vineet Madan, VP of Strategy & Business Development, McGraw-Hill Education

Non-traditional students are outnumbering traditional students. This is relevant to the growth of social media in education because the fastest growing demographic for popular social media tools are part of the non-traditional set.

-Dr. Kathleen King, Fordham University

Students are saying - you need to connect with us the way we are connected to one another or you're becoming irrelevant to me quickly and I'm going to find other ways to be educated.

-Greg Verdino, VP of strategy and solutions at Powered

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