Youth today is our driving force of tomorrow. We as educationists, influencers , social leaders have the huge responsibility to prepare the youth, channelize this generation of young adults who are far ahead of times in Technology, creativity and expression. Apart from knowledge and skillsets, we have to arm them with courage, humility, discipline, wisdom and values. We have to handhold them to take the lead of a movement that stands for a meaningful positive change, that stands for productive activities and prepare them to contribute to the social and economic value of our country.

A person who chooses to enter the path of being an educator becomes a student at that instant. Learning every day to keep up with the world and impart that to their students. Through my engagements with teachers , I see that most of them are puzzled if they should get into the meta world, explore, and use it in their classrooms. There is no doubt that certain forms of digital innovations have already started making their mark on our classrooms.

Today I present you with a question. Are we ready to go that extra step and explore the wilderness of social media just yet?

Our thoughts are the most powerful, what we envision we become , our moods and behaviors are always a reflection of how we think. Teachers have to nurture the right frame of mind to engage students successfully — and it starts with imagining possibilities instead of focusing on roadblocks .

Building and being a part of a teaching community would help us understand and learn various new teaching methods that are meant to target and develop a particular skill. On the other side, sharing the strategies that we use in our classrooms could help teachers around the globe. Building a collaborative learning experience between peers and teachers is one of the key things that we can achieve through social media. Apart from taking the classroom knowledge public, students and teachers can acquire more digital skills and improve knowledge retention and understanding as learning doesn’t stop after coming out of classrooms.

The central aspect of this idea is to capitalize the maximum engagement with students that these platforms offer. When course content is shared on said platforms, studies have found that 78.9% of the time, it has a positive impact on faculty-student communication. It opens up the possibility for endless multi-lateral collaborations and co-creation between faculties across the globe.

Blogging and using Twitter/Tiktok, youtube are good places for faculty to start exploring social media. A small summary of the class that is going to be taught or interesting short snaps of the things that happened in class in the form of tweets/posts could engage students. Leading by example, sharing the content, and things you expect from students on your daily blog is also an effective way to get the attention of students. Exploring study material uploaded on YouTube is another interactive and fun way to make students understand difficult concepts. Trusted pages such as the NPTEL make several videos on a diverse list of topics.

Most students after their graduation, aim to purse their higher studies abroad. Information about various study destinations, course combinations, potential career options could be created as interactive Instagram “reels”, YouTube “Shorts” or in fact of YouTube videos, will go on to create a lasting impression on your students, since it’s coming from a face they trust and know.

Having said this, there is a huge proportion of professors and teachers who are hesitant to use the tools of social media due to safety and security concerns, antisocial behaviour, unproductive behaviour, and misuse of tools during instructional sessions. These valid concerns cannot be dismissed without providing a pathway to navigate through these tough waters. There are several strict actions that can be taken to maintain the decorum of these platforms. Training and sensitizing students is the key .Properly designed assessment and activities matching with the course plan, having a discussion with the students about their personal boundaries and understanding what they feel about the social media space. This can also be made into a task for the students to use their critical skills to come up with solutions for such problems.

Universities need to draft an extensive policy laying out the details and measures to be taken for faculty to follow when they intend to integrate social media into their classrooms. The core principle is however very simple:

Make sure where the boundaries lie, especially when the lines dividing the professional and personal usage of social media are very blurry.