Social Networking in Higher Education: A Knowledge Convergence Platform

Abstract

With the increasing infiltration of online social networking into the everyday life of the younger generation, higher education appears to be a lucrative platform for deploying social networks in an academic context. This paper suggests research questions and opens a discussion in relation to managing knowledge on online social networking in academic settings and beyond. Extant research provides a useful lens into the applications of social networking sites in learning and teaching or at the stages of employability and career management in student life. A limited consideration in current research has been given to exploring capabilities of social networking for lifelong learning and its role in the entire student lifecycle. The potential opened by online social networking in the area of knowledge accumulation and knowledge sharing is yet to be properly addressed by researchers. Therefore more attention is needed to identify the overarching issues of social networking applications in Higher Education (HE) settings. Based on a broad literature review this paper draws attention to some implications for HE institutions of exploiting knowledge resources with online social networks. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.