Teaching Converged Media to Arab Students: University/external partnerships in social media campaigns

摘要

Although many students are proficient in using social media among friends, they are not necessarily proficient in using it professionally. On the other hand, organizations are struggling with using social media to get important information to younger people. They lack the resources and sometimes the experience to produce content for the social media sites. The solution for organizations is to rely on graduates of today’s communication programs. Educators face the task of merging professional communication skills and new media applications to extend students beyond what they already know from personal use of social media. This paper describes a model to teach social media content skills to Arab students in the United Arab Emirates. The model relies on the educational theory of scaffolding and meets the needs of Arab learners working within a collectivistic and high-context culture as outlined by Ahmad Al-Issa.