Final Week: Use of Social Media as a learning tool

I am a strong proponent of social media as a learning tool, because it is easy and accessible. I liked that Prof. Lavian thought so as well and crafted this semester accordingly--it is great to see a professor who thinks with the time. 

How this is different than other type of learning: 

• Learn together: Traditionally, you are not supposed to "copy" eachother's work, which is how each work is supposed to be "unique". We have to pretend that we didn't take any help from our friends in any homeworks but in fact, all of us do. However, Prof. Lavian rightly noted that learning is not a stand-alone activity--we can learn together without copying from eachother. Each work was therefore unique but also inspired by other students at times. Each student had access to other student's work, and we were encouraged to look at eachother's ideas and understandings, which made it different as well as fun. 
• Consolidated, accessible information: I liked that the we could club all of our work through the hashtags #Berkeley190G and #IEOR190G so it was easy to access at all times. So whenever I wanted to see what other people wrote about, I could just look at these hashtags and go from there. 
• Double the information and different perspective: The fact that we were supposed to comment on other people's work was great as well because we learn about more cases than our own and even read the same case but from a different perspective. It was also great to get feedback from classmates. 

What I learnt from it:  Through social media, we can learn easily and from eachother. It is a two-way street, where you can put content out there and people can respond to it.  It makes learning more interesting and more of a conversation, instead of it being just turning something in and getting a grade from a teacher in return. I learnt that social media can be more than just a socializing tool, but also a learning tool-- much like how facebook now makes "trending" news more accessible.  

Other comments: It was useful and effective. I really enjoyed using social media as a learning tool. Prof may want to consider expanding to a facebook group later.