Social Media and Higher Education

Abstract

Recently embraced by the legal profession to make justice more accessible, social media (SM) is fast becoming the primary tool of communication for the courts. In Australia today the Supreme Court of Victoria uses SM to share judgments, media releases, publications, speeches and other information. On the County Court of Victoria home page, one can read the Court’s Twitter feed. These innovations have led to the expectations for Australian law schools to adopt twentyfirst century technology and enhance student engagement in the classroom. Studies investigating the use of SM as an educational tool in general exist, however, research specifically addressing its application to law curricula is scant. In this article we propose that SM is a useful pedagogical tool, with the potential for creating valuable learning opportunities, such as awareness of responsible usage of SM platforms, thereby ensuring successful communication outcomes for Australian law graduates. Other affordances and drawbacks of SM as a pedagogical tool for legal education are discussed. The complex and contested nature of SM in education leads the authors conclude that implementing digitally enabled learning in the Australian Law classroom is possible, but not without certain pedagogical caveats, in particular, the creation of university policy framework on SM usage