EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION’S USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA: A CASE STUDY FROM EDUTOPIA

Authors

  • Muhtar Ahmad IKIP Mataram, Indonesia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.33394/jtp.v2i2.594

Abstract

This is a case study that elaborates how George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF), an educational institution that is broadly known as Edutopia, employes social media to advocate their learning strategies. Social media usage decision is determined by the strategic goals that organizations want to accomplish. Organizations should decide, whether they need to pick from existing social media platforms, to establish their own applications, or to use both. In this regards, Edutopia uses both its own-developed and existing social media platforms. Therefore, this study is aimed to: 1) elaborate the relevant advantages of each type of those platforms to its mission, 2) to study opportunities that Edutopia has to build relationship with its users though its forum and blogs, and 3) to analyze the functions of social media to understand the appropriateness of using different social media platforms. The data were collected using interview, observation, and documenting from April until June, 2014 and were analyzed using pattern matching logic. The results showes that both own-developed and existing platforms are beneficial for Edutopia as they seem to have different characteristics, target users, as well as different level of engagement. The study also showes that Edutopia’s user engagement level was significantly high which meant Edutopia has been using their various social media channel to effectively build its community. Finally, Edutopia has functionally utilizes its social media to bring its mission to: 1) document , 2) disseminate, and 3) advocate its learning solutions to teachers, parents, administrators, education leaders, and other stakeholders.

Keywords: social media, community building.

Author Biography

Muhtar Ahmad, IKIP Mataram

IKIP Mataram

References

Creswell, J. W. (1998). Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Tradition. (London: SAGE Publications, 1998), hlm. 37-38

Duggan, M., & Smith, A. (2014). Social Media Update 2013. Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/12/30/social-media-update-2013/

Durant, J. (1999). Participatory technology assessment and the democratic model of the public understanding of science.Science and Public Policy, 26(5), 313-319.

Edelstein, M. (2010). How to: Evaluate Your Social Media Plan. Mashable. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2010/06/25/evaluate-social-media-plan/

Edutopia. (2014, May 30). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Edutopia&oldid=581360447

Edutopia. (n.d.). Edutopia. Retrieved June 2, 2014, from http://www.edutopia.org/

Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite!: The challenges and opportunities of social media. ScienceDirect, 53, 59-68. doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2009.09.003

Kent, M. L. (2008). Critical analysis of blogging in public relations. Public Relations Review, 34(1), 32-40.

Kent, M. L., & Taylor, M. (1998). Building dialogic relationships through the world wide web. Public Relations Review, 24(3), 321-334. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0363-8111(99)80143-X

Lovejoy, K., & Saxton, G. D. (2012). Information, community, and action: How nonprofit organizations use social media.

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 17, 337-353. doi: doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2012.01576.x

Mergel, I., & Bretschneider, S. I. (2013). A Three-Stage Adoption Process for Social Media Use in Government. Public Administration Review, 73(3), 390-400. doi: 10.1111/puar.12021

Michaelidou, N., Siamagka, N. T., & Christodoulides, G. (2011). Usage, barriers and measurement of social media marketing: An exploratory investigation of small and medium B2B brands. Industrial Marketing Management, 40(7), 1153-1159. doi: 10.1016/j.indmarman.2011.09.009

Vaughan, P. (2012). 8 Questions to Evaluate if That New Social Network is Worth Your Company’s Time. Inbound Marketing. Retrieved June 18, 2014, from http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33213/8-Questions-to-Evaluate-if-That-New-Social-Network-is-Worth-Your-Company-s-Time.aspx

Waters, R. D., Burnett, E., Lamm, A., & Lucas, J. (2009). Engaging stakeholders through social networking: How nonprofit organizations are using Facebook. Public Relations Review, 35, 102–106.

Yin, R. K. (1989). Case Study Research Design and Methods. Washington: COSMOS Corporation

Downloads

Published

2017-10-10

How to Cite

Ahmad, M. (2017). EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION’S USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA: A CASE STUDY FROM EDUTOPIA. Jurnal Teknologi Pendidikan : Jurnal Penelitian Dan Pengembangan Pembelajaran, 2(2), 54–67. https://doi.org/10.33394/jtp.v2i2.594

Issue

Volume 2 Nomor 2 Oktober Tahun 2017

Section

Articles

Citation Check

License

License and Publishing Agreement
In submitting the manuscript to the journal, the authors certify that:

  • They are authorized by their co-authors to enter into these arrangements.
  • The work described has not been formally published before, except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review, thesis, or overlay journal.
  • That it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere,
  • That its publication has been approved by all the author(s) and by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – of the institutes where the work has been carried out.
  • They secure the right to reproduce any material that has already been published or copyrighted elsewhere.
  • They agree to the following license and publishing agreement.

Copyright

  1. Authors who publish with JTP agree to the following terms:
  2. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-SA 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
  4. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
  5. Licensing for Data Publication

Licensing for Data Publication

JTP use a variety of waivers and licenses, that are specifically designed for and appropriate for the treatment of data:
Open Data Commons Attribution License, http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/ (default)