Collective Learning Paradigm for Rapidly Evolving Curriculum: Facilitating Student and Content Engagement via Social Media

Curriculum in the information systems discipline has been rapidly evolving. This is not only challenging for the instructors to cope with the velocity of change in the curriculum, but also for the students. This paper illustrates a model that leverages the integrated use of social media technologies to facilitate collective learning in a university teaching/learning environment. However, the model could be adapted to other organizational environments. The model demonstrates how various challenges encountered in collective learning can be addressed with the help of social media technologies. A case study is presented to demonstrate the model’s applicability, feasibility, utility, and success in a senior-level social computing course at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. An evolving, non-linear, and self-sustaining wiki portal is developed to encourage engagement between the content, students, and instructor. We further outline the student-centric, content-centric, and learning-centric advantages of the proposed model for the next generation learning environment.