TAMK Participatory
Learning & Teaching - Assignment: Networking with LinkedIn
With over 300 million users (40% of whom check in
daily) in over 200 countries, LinkedIn is one of the social networking success
stories. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, however, LinkedIn sets its stall out as a venue
for career-related networking, rather than socializing in general.
In the digital age, educators are keen to
harness the powers of this phenomenon for their own ends. But before doing so,
they must ask themselves two questions: What is it good for? And, what are the
drawbacks? Let’s first have a look at the upsides:
The value of networking is clear for all to see,
especially in education at a vocational level and higher where students will be
searching for work practice placements and potential future employment. Knowing
the right people helps.
The old models of networking are not only
disappearing but can feel painfully cumbersome to maintain. At its most basic
level, LinkedIn allows students and educators to connect and keep in touch. It’s
a tool with a purpose and it is able to perform its purpose well when used
correctly.
Using LinkedIn can help educators to bridge
otherwise significant distance problems with foreign partners. Whilst there’s
little excuse for not visiting your colleagues or counterparts in your own town,
the financial limitations of doing so internationally, as well as time and
energy costs, mean that LinkedIn is a useful tool in meeting that challenge.
One of the truly useful aspects of LinkedIn for
students is that they can gain knowledge of career paths that they may never
have thought of before. Through linking with new people in different sectors
and putting themselves out there, they can find unexpected opportunities.
The most basic use of LinkedIn is as an online
CV. Users are able to include information in their profiles about skills, competences,
work experience, education, projects and aspirations for the future. Importantly
for a CV, it’s simple to keep up to date. Creating a portfolio is a necessity
for most students and LinkedIn not only helps you do this, but also provides
eyeballs for looking at it.
What are the downsides
of using LinkedIn?
Despite the impressive growth of the site,
there exists polarizing opinions about its worth. Let’s have a look at some of
the key drawbacks in using LinkedIn for education.
A survey conducted by Salary.com found that for
all the reasons people waste time at work (let’s annex study onto this, too),
by far the biggest culprit was social networking, including LinkedIn. This
raises the question of why people are time wasting in the first place. That can
be due to many factors, though lack of motivation would seem to cover a lot of
those.
Arguably, social networks may be a symptom
rather than a cause of time wasting, but one thing is for sure, they don’t help.
People are generally at best unmoved by
mass-produced online profiles and at worst mistrustful of them. For students looking
to make an impression on prospective study or workplaces, being able to point
to a LinkedIn profile is unlikely to get anyone’s pulse racing. Never
underestimate the worth of standing out.
Putting your personal information into the
hands of a business means you lose control of it. The Terms of Service for
LinkedIn state that they have unlimited license to sell user information to
anyone. Below is a quote from their website:
…you grant LinkedIn a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual, unlimited, assignable, sublicenseable, fully paid up and royalty-free right to … use and commercialize, in any way now known or in the future discovered, any information you provide, directly or indirectly to LinkedIn … without any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or to any third parties.
The old adage comes to mind, ‘If you are using
something for free on the internet, you are the product.’
Would we suggest other educational tools if they could potentially endanger the privacy rights of the students?
Whilst it may seem that the level of participation
in online networking among young people is reaching saturation point, it will
simply never be the case that every student or educator will be happy to sign up.
This results in an imbalanced playing field,
where most people are happy to go along with the service and some, for better
or worse reasons, are not. Those students left behind are potentially disadvantaged
for it.
Summary
LinkedIn, and any similar online networking
tool, is optimally used as a supplement for real world networking and certainly
not as a complete substitute.
The world of education has not yet entirely shifted
into the cyberspace and it’s not going to any time soon. People value meeting in
person and the danger is that if there is a backlash against social networking,
some people entering the workforce will lack the social skills needed for real
world interactions.
To lean on the internet as the key medium for
education is to employ a rather wobbly crutch.
Of course, students themselves mostly opt into
studies through their own volition and if it’s clear from the start that the
course involves participation in a social networking site, then that’s all fair
and well. If, however, it isn’t presented front and centre then a certain
amount of flexibility has to be in place to accommodate those students unwilling
to sign up.
Sources
ColourMyLearning.com
Forbes
Salary.com
The Tech
Republic
LinkedIn statistics
LinkedIn
Terms of Service
