These days, a lot of learning can occur via social media, including platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. For sure, I’m no stranger to having used YouTube tutorials for various things (primarily for the things you can fix yourself at home). Having said that, I do appreciate all of the amazingly useful knowledge/information that is out there, particularly on YouTube. As for TikTok, I’m not a user myself, but I’m sure that the platform also has a good share of useful content.
Actually, I’ve been told about the power of TikTok. I was once told by one of my students in an online class that “they” could/had learned more by being on TikTok than by taking my class (the class being something like Introduction to Psychology). That is a statement that could be tested, so I’m not sure if that is the case or not.
I think that having access to so many great learning resources–with some of them being actually free–is great. At the same time, a lot of the content/material is not curated or even filtered. It is haphazard and unverified, at the very least. At the same time, given how many people use these social media platforms, I think it makes sense that if quality content can be created and delivered, lets say via Tiktok, there should be ways so that something such as an introductory course to be delivered via those channels. I know what you might be thinking, but no, I’m not joking here. If that were the case, universities and/or educational boards would need to be involved to see if something like this could happen. Currently, I believe there are some courses/certifications provided by Google and Microsoft (with some of them free, but don’t quote me on that), so that’s sort of a start.
This might be relevant given the current state of college education in the United States, where a lot of students finish their degrees with tremendous amounts of student loan debt, while at the same time being unable to land a well-paying and secure job.
Now, for sure there is a lot of crazy stuff on TikTok, but let’s focus on the positive here.