Social media and Higher Education: FOMO (fear of missing out) or does digitally enabled learning have a place in Law Schools?

Abstract

Recently embraced by the legal profession to make justice more accessible, social media (SM) is fast becoming the primary tool of communication for the courts. In Australia today The Supreme Court of Victoria uses SM to share judgments, media releases, publications, speeches and other information. On the County Court of Victoria home page one can read the Court's Twitter feed. These innovations have led to the expectations for Australian law schools to adopt 21st century technology, and enhance student engagement in the classroom. While there are studies which have investigated the use of SM as an educational tool in general, research specifically addressing its application to Law curricula is scant. In this article we propose that introducing SM into curricula will create learning opportunities to develop the awareness of responsible usage of SM platforms, thereby ensuring successful communication outcomes for Law graduates. We discuss the challenge of online scholarly/academic identity, and also the social capital benefits. A brief account of SM and the legal industry is presented next. Because of the impact of policy imperatives, VU Blended Learning Strategy and Graduate Capabilities for 21st century have been included. Examples of SM applications in the Australian Law classroom, including the use of the meme, an image with a text phrase that is distributed via SM, are discussed.  The complex and contested nature of SM, leads the authors conclude that it is possible to successfully implement digitally enabled learning in the Australian Law classroom, but not without certain pedagogical caveats.