With the growing economic and developmental challenges in the Arab region, innovative approaches are critically needed by governments, the private sector and civil society organizations in order to adapt to pressing social, economic and political transformations. Technology has always been as a key enabler for better development, governance and, more recently, with the growth of social media usage in the Arab region, for inclusive policy formulation. The exponential penetration rates and the creative adoption of social media in the Arab region have opened new horizons for ultifaceted innovations by individuals, developmental uses by government entities and unleashed new social trends by different forces in Arab societies. Social media technologies today are increasingly being acknowledged by different Arab government organizations as core enablers for inclusive policy formulation and better service delivery on an institutional level. The Arab Social Media report Series has explored the growth and usage trends of social media in the Arab region in depth since 2011. The series has become the key source of quantitative research on social media’s growth and usage trends in the Arab world. Additionally, we conducted numerous exploratory qualitative surveys to get an in-depth assessment of regional perceptions and actual usage and impact of social media in Arab societies. The findings of the series revealed new transformations in areas varying from impact on social and cultural changes, youth and women’s empowerment, government adoption, entrepreneurship and employment, freedom of expression, media consumption behaviors and the role in popular civic movements. In this fifth issue of the report, we focus on impact of social media use on education in the Arab region.
The Arab region suffers from extensive educational challenges in terms of quality, access and relevance. Education is a core area where social networking technologies have become largely institutionalized with an established critical mass of users. With the emergence of concepts such as ‘social learning’, intelligent decision making networks’ and ‘massive open online courses’, educators, students and educational institutions are increasingly relying on social media tools to create innovative approaches to education, capacity building and knowledge transfer. Social media technologies are already playing a growing role in formal and informal education, on-demand training and capacity building.
For this report, we conducted a large regional survey to explore the multifaceted impact of social media use in education in the Arab region. For schooling, social media is increasingly viewed as a key enabler for innovation and collaboration with unprecedented capabilities for mass knowledge transfer and peer-to-peer learning, as well as an empowering educational facilitator for students with special needs and a channel for reaching remote and rural groups. At higher education levels, social media is creatively being used as a channel for transfer of innovations, an enabler for massive research networks, a remote learning tool, and a facilitator for communities of expertise and practice with abilities to break down informational silos and hierarchies. Even at the level of fresh graduates, social media is playing a critical role in enabling new employment opportunities, entrepreneurship potential and more importantly, aligning vocational training with skills needed in the market.
The report also concludes with a series of mini case studies on social media utilization in education at the different levels. In addition to the regional survey, this edition of the report continues to provide regional statistics on social networking platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube and Google+. The findings of the regional survey provided here aim to measure impact of social media users in the Arab World on education; a topic that is closely linked with several critical policy and developmental questions in the region