Social Networking in Higher Education: Students in The Netherlands

Abstract

Social networking (SN) has the reputation to promote societal coherence and promote the spread of experience and competence awareness. The crucial question in the chapter is whether social networking is estimated to be proliferate to formal education and higher professional training as well? In order to make a fair evaluation of SN’s net added value for higher education it is inevitable to anchor the key dimensions of learning. In case, for instance, a certain study includes the skills to manage networks of experts, it will be clear that SN is easily legitimated. But also SN seems to be a necessary skill if the continuous life-long learning in a certain domain relies on “communities of practice” as defined by Wenger. This chapter describes the dominant opinions of higher education students on positive and negative aspects of SN on the essence of studying a certain curriculum.