OnlineEducation.net came out with an infographic that shows some stats about social media and how it affects students. Usually when reports like this come out, I approach them with a grain of salt because too often it’s a media outlet trying to gain attention, sell something, or displaying their ignorance. The sources used to put this graphic together mostly seem to be people’s blog posts rather than legit neutral research, but it’s still interesting.

A lot of it makes sense and probably confirms what we already suspected, but one stat did jump out to me.

“Grades up half a gradepoint in classes that use Twitter.”

What’s the correlation between using Twitter in class and scoring higher grades? Is it just that the demographic of students who use Twitter are more likely to be more studious and responsible than students who use Facebook? Do student retain more of what’s being taught when they engage their social graph with the content that’s being presented? Is it a positive correlation that carries over to church in a way that we should encourage kids to engage in social media during services and youth group?

QUESTION: What’s your take on this?

Via: OnlineEducation.net

Posted on April 27, 2011