Social media in higher ed: Friend or foe?

One social media researcher was critical of the OnlineEducation.net stats.

Facebook and studying can be an academically toxic combination, lowering grades by up to 20 percent. This is just part of an infographic that has gone viral on the web and grabbed the attention of educators and their students this spring.

The inforgraphic, “Is Social Media Ruining Students?” published in April by OnlineEducation.net, distills reams of social media research and lists the pros and cons of how social sites, especially Twitter and Facebook, are used on campuses.

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College students use social media to cheat

Student use of cheat sites has decreased.

Social media and content sharing websites account for one-third of plagiarism among college students, and paper mills are far less popular than once thought, according to a report detailing the most common cheating methods in higher education.

iParadigms, creator of anti-plagiarism site Turnitin.com, released a report April 28 documenting where students are turning for research material. Educators submit their students’ research papers and assignments to Turnitin, which then compares the content to three information repositories filled with more than 14 billion current and archived web pages.

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Feeling down? Update your Facebook status, students say

Selecting what others know about a person on Facebook can boost self esteem.

Cornell University students who spent a few minutes on Facebook updating their profile pages reported self-esteem boosts, according to one of the first published studies to show social media’s psychological benefit.

The research, conducted by two Cornell faculty members from the university’s Social Media Lab, was published this month in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

Sixty-three Cornell students participated in the study, with some students placed at computers with access to Facebook and others assigned to computers that were turned off. Some of those blank-screened computers had mirrors placed in front of them.…Read More

Feds settle case of woman fired over Facebook site

One expert said the case will have employers around the country re-examining their internet policies.

School and other employers should think twice before trying to restrict workers from talking about their jobs on Facebook or other social media.

That’s the message the government sent on Monday as it settled a closely watched lawsuit against a Connecticut ambulance company that fired an employee after she went on Facebook to criticize her boss.

The National Labor Relations Board sued the company last year, arguing the worker’s negative comments were protected speech under federal labor laws. The company claimed it fired the emergency medical technician because of complaints about her work.…Read More

Med students’ cadaver photos under scrutiny after images show up online

In recent months, medical schools around the nation have begun re-examining their ethics codes after a string of disturbing cases in which students photographed or videotaped cadavers and posted the images on Facebook and YouTube, reports the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. Last month, Stony Brook University Medical Center on Long Island announced it was developing a revised ethics policy after a student posted a photo on Facebook of a classmate posing with a “thumbs up” next to a cadaver. The State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse also is updating its ethics curriculum after a former resident posted a snapshot of an exposed brain on Facebook. Students’ use of social media sites is becoming an increasing concern, according to an anonymous survey of 78 U.S. medical schools published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Nearly 60 percent of schools reported catching students posting unprofessional online content, including several blatant violations of patient confidentiality. “It’s Facebook, Twitter, blogging, MySpace,” said Lauren Hughes, president of the American Medical Student Association, a Virginia-based advocacy group. “Right now, institutions are dealing with this on an individual basis.”

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