The Implementation of a Social Media Policy that defines acceptable use for employees in Education
Dissertation paper
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The Implementation of a Social Media Policy that defines acceptable use for employees in Education
DECLARATION
This research dissertation is my original work and has not been presented to any other examination body. No part of this research dissertation should be reproduced without my consent or that of the institution.
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Declaration by supervision
This research dissertation has been submitted by my approval as institution supervisor.
Lecturer Supervising
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DEDICATIONI dedicate this project to my dear parents Mr. and Mrs. ……..who, with their dedicated effort made me attain this level of hard achievement? My caring colleagues in this lovely institution whose concern cannot go unmentioned for their understanding lobe, support and strength throughout this noble course, they have been amazing enabling me to be where I am today.
I truly love you all.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTMy sincere thanks go to the Almighty God for giving me healthy and peace of mind throughout my studies. I am specially thanking my supervisor ………….for good advice, guidance, patience and dedication during this research dissertation. He offered me technical advice that I directly needed during this work.
To my parents for financial support and encouragement , my entire family for challenging me academically also to my former classmates …………..just to mention but a few for always telling me not to give up when the going was tough during this course.
Table of Contents
Research Topic ……………………………………….….2
Declaration…………………………………….………….3
Dedication…………………………………………………4
Acknowledgements…………………………….………….5
Abstract………………………………….…….………….6
1.0 Introduction………………………………….….…….8
2.0 Literature Review…………………………….……..…13
3.0 Research Methodology ……………………….….…..39
4.0 Data Analysis ……..……………………………….…42
5.0 Results and Discussion …………….………….….….49
6.0 Summary, Conclusion and Recommendations……. …62
References ……………………………………….….…….64
Appendices ………………………………………………..74
Abstract
The main purpose of this dissertation is to evaluate ways in which the human resources in education sector can effectively implement a social media policy that is workable and which can form a basis for acceptable use in social media sites in the respective workplaces to safeguard students and the education system at large.
In the 19th century, such an issue would be irrelevant, but revolution and evolution of the technologies of the 21st century have necessitated this as a way of adopting change and transforming our workplaces. Professional and personal utilization of social media in the education sector workplace should not compromise effectiveness at work, bring disrepute into the sector or imply education`s sector individual staff`s personal views as a representation of the entire staff. Further, disclosure of confidential information and breach of privacy are other major concerns.
Well-formulated and implemented social media policies encourage the staff members or the stakeholders to take responsibility in their activities, aims and objectives in the sector. The social media policy should seem to be in conjunction with the education sector`s overall corporate policies. This dissertation will also look into alternative educational sites that learners as well as educators can use to quench their need for use of social media in the workplace. Also it will outline the numerous ways in which social media has been beneficial to both teachers and students and various places of work and learning.
1.0 Introduction
A social media means and include any website used to publish information to larger group instantly. By the College Board and Art & Science Group (2009) the information shared may include personal information, views, ideas, opinions, commentaries, research or education information. Examples of such social media tools include the Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Linkedln. Blogs, special interest forums, users’ communities are also considered as social media in this internet world. Social media provides the education employees access to a vast amount of information across the globe for interaction and research. Education facilitators have a right to be secured in there accessibility of the internet information to abide with the legal requirements in their work (Hooghe, M. et al. 2010).
A Social Media Policy is a plan, a guideline or a regulation that the Human Resourses puts in place to control the social media users when posting and accessing any information from the website. Acceptable policies of social media in the education system provide employees with a clear guidance in its use (Jackson, 2012). The guidelines define where, how, when and by whom the internet services offered in the institution may be accessed. In the education sector, the human reassures team designs appropriate practices and usage policies that control content posted and accessed to safeguard the students especially those below the age of 18 years from abuse by teachers (Luis Ramos, 2009). The implementation of such social media policies that defines acceptable usage becomes more responsive to employee allowed for its use. It incorporates the employee feedback to the organization and safe the general look by the community it is operating. Social media tools may enhance education employees to engage in incitement very fast, organize boycotts, demonstration and spread illegal information that may taint the name of the institution concerned if there are no policies put to control such behavior from the employees (Jiang, 2010).
On the other hand, social-media facilities enhance creation of awareness of the kind of education offered or provided by the institution. It helps the employee to develop information and communication skills which are necessary in education environment. For effective and efficient learning, social media policies need to protect the employee from getting into the wrong hand of the law apart from the obvious school rules and regulation. Such policies vary from one institution to the other depending of the level on learning, student maturity and legal requirements concerning internet use. Kennedy, & Macko, (2007) denotes that for responsible use of the internet and social media sites, human resources team of educational institutions considers the following factors when drawing the social media policy that is acceptable in education set up:
Content
In the education system, most acceptable policies limit users from accessing sites that in their opinion contain adult materials, incitement speech, violence, phonographic contents and many more that is not consistent with the education offered. Other policies restrict employees from social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter which may serve as a distraction to its management and general running of education. As the social media publishes legitimate educational and personal content, it also contains inappropriate content at the place of work including nudity, sex, violent attacks, drug abuse and even gambling. This same inappropriate information found to the wider Web is also available within the social media accessible to employees in education sector. Therefore, these inappropriate content needs not to be accessed or exposed to education employees while they are on duty or when they are using the school resources. Such employees should be kind and considerate enough to students and working mates in the same environment when deciding the content that is acceptable and appropriate at the school. Above all, the education sector ought to employ human resources staff to control, remind, audit, edit and enforce the policies employed to govern the use of social media.
Accessibility
Social medial policy defines individuals authorized to use school internet resources. Many education systems ban employees, students, parents to the student and the public from using the internet. Sometimes the education system recognizes that their employees need to use social media in educating while they are at work or using the school resources. Therefore the human resources in schools need to allow the employees controlled access to non-education social media content for instance to access personal accounts communications applications like emails. It should be up to the employee’s responsibility to ensure that the personal business does not in affect the quality of work in education at all. This policy must be consistent with education guidelines provided in the wider perspective and should be monitored by the technical control staff charged with the responsibility of implementing this policy and regulating the behavior of these education employees.
Privacy and confidentiality
This forms the basis of social media policies to ensure compliance with acceptable use in educational policy. The main purpose is to safeguard the education and control the kind of information student gets from the staff. Individuals authorized to use the internet resources provided by the education system providers are informed that the activities in the internet are monitored. Only those authorized by the school on employee sponsored social media are designated to use the internet. Anything an employee develops writes or creates while at the workplace or using the work resources belongs to the school and therefore they are not required to look into their personal files. The employer is entitled to read employment documents and see what is related to work. An employee is not supposed to publish or disclose the email addresses of another staff member or student without that person’s consent (Meier & Patrick., Nov 2011). It is not acceptable for one to reveal personal information including names, photographs, and even telephone numbers.
Transparency
When publishing information at the web sites education employees are expected to indicate that the views shared belong to themselves alone and not the opinion of the school they are working for. However, when using the education sites or resources, their larger population may assume that the employee is speaking on behalf of the school.
Professionalism.
When an employee is on the educational or school blog every person is watching what he or she writes. What may look fun to one may offend the other party and therefore one is required to remain polite and respectful enough when using the social media.
Linking
When linking the education to employee’s blog it should indicate that they are their employers and not a client. Employee should be careful from misleading the readers.In case an employee goes beyond the procedures laid, the school has the prerogative of freezing that employee’s account and remove any offensive materials from social web site (Zupek, 2009).
Acceptable Social media policies are meant to fit the following best practices in education workplace:
Benefits the social being of other employees, colleagues and the students.
Suit the social environment upon which the employees are working in.
Develops the employee behavior that gives the clear picture of the kind of education offered in the system.
Be able to measure the results of education by the end of the course by influencing the right behavior patterns among the employee and the students who are the prime beneficially.
Exhibit valuable ways in the use of social media that could not negatively impact the education system and the students at large.
Characteristics of Social Media
Social media provides an access to a wider range of information, resources, opinions, facts and issues. The access is instantaneous in the internet and thus saves time in exchange of information and ideas. Through the social media several issues can be uncovered which would have been impossible through the traditional means of gauging the public opinion.
Social media has a very strong connectivity between the users. With this characteristic, it has become very easier than ever to share breaking news, incite a social discussion and exchange views in real-time to a massive audience regardless of the distance between the internet users. Twitter and Facebook social media tools for instance, have only four degrees of separation between the users (Yang, 2009).
Social media has reduced online anonymity. People need to become more careful of what they post on the site as the real life is moving to the online world. Internet anonymity are now more careful in expressing there opinions to avoid posting any content that they will held responsible.
2.0) Literature review
Literature review
Social media is making a considerable impact on education systems resulting to change on the delivery of information in academics. Social media provides an avenue to reach out to other academicians and build collaborative relationships. However, it may turn out to be an avenue of students abuse especially those under 18 years by the education employees especially teachers and administrators. Hence, the lack of social media policy and usage guidelines is set to emerge as a critical problem (Armstrong, 2008). This is due to the insurmountable barriers and driving forces in the external environment. It is also evident that rigid education administrations and conservative employees only compound the problems. However, some academic librarians are creating programs for their users, social media being a catalyst for innovation.
According to O’Connor and Au (2009) for the education employees to survive the strong waves of social media and prosper, the continuous alignment of its strategic direction with the demands of the environment is vital, especially when the speed of changes is rapid, and the scope, extensive.” The adverse use of social media qualifies as rapid and extensive change. The challenge to education employees especially teachers is weighing the brunt of social media tools on the improvement of information behaviors. Gordhamer, (2009) Academic research does not simply involve searching the internet and interacting with other scholars. Social media has substantial potential to affect how educators and scholars relate and communicate. More so it influences both negatively and positively education systems hence the need for the human resource to implement policies which will govern the education employees in the usage of social media to protect the students against abuse.
According to Stein (2009) any student enrolled or receiving educational services currently or formerly enrolled or a student need to disclose his her current status when publishing any content in regard to the institution. The legal parent, guardian or relative caregiver of a student under the age of majority need also to know the kind of information the student is accessing. The above measures are provided by human resource to protect the students from exploitation by the employees in education set up.
Another policy that human resources implements to control the behavior of the teachers and the subordinate staff employees in the educational system is that employees shall not allow any student to have accesses to his or her personal account and shall not contact with student maintained personal account unless the student is a member of the employee’s immediate family. Any employee shall not publish or distribute any personal account (Paglia, 2010).
Companies are working hard to understand and develop ways of how to monetize social media (Dan Gratin, 2009). This is the key for any educational system or school to sail successfully with the treats of social marketing. The social media guidelines enables the school to achieve it vision and mission in building an upright society with a respectful social behavior. A ‘water stones’ employee was dismissed when he blogged the companies web site and mocked his “sandal wearing” manager whom he nicknamed “Evil Boss” (Waterhouse, 2011). The same way the education employees’ who uses the social media network to abuse their bosses forgetting that their bosses use the same social media can be penalized. Human resources shall monitor employees who use social media to defame the schools by implementing policies that discourage such behaviors. Waterhouse (2011) wrote that many employees use the media to impart wrong or unacceptable information to students for example in regard tosses, violence, and cyber crime among others. He further argued that those employees react in such a manner because they have no policy to govern their behavior. This has led to many institutions failing to achieve its goals. Students are mobilized to act as perpetrators of violent acts in schools leading to destruction of property, boycotts and student strikes. Human recourses must thus intervene to help solve the problem by implementing policies that are acceptable for use among education employees to safeguard education.
Research done by Landa (2010) denotes that Social networking tools are widely used by many organizations where education sector is inclusive to increase collaboration and brand organization that also reduces the production costs. He further states that it is only the acceptable use of social network policy that has not been widely embraced in the work to nurture social behavior and the end results of the media users. There is a vague interest in many companies concerning social media policy to control the social behavior of the employees. Human resources in Schools have to implement social media policy for the same reason they implement acceptable use policy for school equipments. From the corporate point of view, the schools will be protected from any possible lawsuits, from inappropriate or damaging information dissemination.
Social media policies should be developed to provide protection of the school, agree with the experts and stakeholders. Such policies should also encourage the education employees to use school internet resources for participating in the social network to educate them but doing it safe and in appropriate ways acceptable in education (Meraz, 2007).
According to the research, conducted by Frost and Sullivan on organizations’ social networking policies, depicted that many companies promote, encourage and motivate some employees to use social media (Wengroff, 2011). Through this, the companies expand the network to reach their customers through their employees. However, the employees are not provided with ethical policies on how they should relate with each other by using social media. This leads to many disputes witnessed in workplaces among the administration and employees. Likewise, in the school setting, the employees advertise the name of the school and share with other employee’s matters concerning the school through social media. Often social media sites bring controversy between administrators, teachers and student when there is no proper implementation of legal perspective to guide the social network sites. This calls for human resources in the education set up to formulate and implement social media policy that is acceptable for use. When properly designed social media policy will highlight what should and what should not be done to protect the school’s form of education imparted to the students. Internet use guideline balances between the progressiveness of the education and protections in the learning institution. Social media policy should be focused on protecting the interests of educational employees and safeguard students especially those in elementary level against abuse from teachers and other education administrators.
2.01) Designing Social media policy guidelines
In designing an institution’s social media policy, the human resource must focus its role in the education sectors’ relevance and impacts to social development. McKee (2011) provides that human resources in education sector, when designing a Social media Policy that is acceptable for use may use the following guidelines;
The human resources in education system should identify the purpose of the school social media policy. They should write this in the policy document and display it to all employees intended to use the social media. The main focus is teachers and the protection intended from the policy to students.
They should identify who will read the social media policy document for instance, does apply to full time or part time staff.
The social media policy should integrate with the overall policy manual in education to avoid developing a document in isolation. Work with the human resources and legal departments to ensure that it is part of the employee process.
The social media should be practical for the employee to know what they can do and cannot do when accessing the internet resource.
The employees should be reminded that whatever they publish in the social media is permanent and there is no way they can delete the content from the site.
The guideline should include the glossary of terms and links to other educational sites that highlight social media policy development.
The education system should establish goals define its objectives in both short term and long term for engaging employees in the social media. It should promote awareness the use of the sites in increasing searching ability of educational materials, encourage the use of word of mouth, or spread good news and information that could help in the education system. Anything that could impact negatively the reputation of education must be discouraged.
Developing the social media policy should start by accessing the employees, their communities, their departments, their use on internet in social media and their level of involvement with education competitors.
Making postings personal relevant to education, timely and meaningful in the content intended to be accessed by the employees. Meaning information that could enhance the positive learning, employees can be encouraged to network it to their colleagues.
Education should involve the employees through engaging them in polls and contents by posting them in the social media. Employee participation attracts conversation among themselves as well as the educational followers.
Reward education employees for participating in the school based sites through contests, and promotions for their involvements for sharing with others in social sites. It promotes exchange of material, enhances research in education, share valuable ideas and development in the wider perspective.
Education system should create timeframe for its employees to use the social media in a more relevant, meaningful and respectful manners.
Protect the educational brand by creating the URL and become smart in the privacy and the school’s confidential information (Steve, 2009)
The above policy guidelines in the education system govern what one ought to or not to do when accessing the social media content. They may apply to publishing information in the social media whether the information published is personal or school- sponsored. Education employees should be responsible for any content they publish in the social media and they can be held fully personally liable for it even if even it did not originate from them. These employees also can be subjected to disciplinary actions by the education system for publishing inappropriate information or confidential information that can prejudice the image of the education system (McKee, 2011). However, these policy guidelines only cover a section of the possible content publishing scenarios and can be used when structuring the best one depending on the educational objectives.
2.02) what an education employee is supposed to know when using the social media
Every education employee should know and adhere to privacy and confidentiality regulations as stipulated in the education system or school employee handbook involved. All rules and regulations in the handbook, including laws as fair use, copyrighting and financial disclosure rules are applicable in the social media (Lauby 2010). Again all employees should not disclose or use confidential or proprietary content or that of any person in the school. For example, before posting someone’s picture in the social network one must seek permission from the person involved or even publishing in the blog the conversation that is meant for privacy. In addition, employee should not give any commentary on confidential financial information, educational performance or future education plans when not authorized. Further, employee should not cite or refer to any staff, student or parent in relation to school operations without their permission. When communicating through the social media employee should identify themselves and shun from using anonymous or false screen identifications in the education to safeguard education system and students.
Another social media policy that education employees should embrace is that they should be professional. Once they are connected in the social media as education employees, their published information is shared to their colleagues, school administration, students and as well as parents. The content published by such internet user should be consistent with their work at the education sector. Kolowich (2011) denotes that when publishing any report on conversation that is private, internal or confidential, education employee should seek permission from the department concerned and even when there is any doubt before the content is posted in the website. When engaging in the social media communication an education employee should speak in the first person. This puts it clear that the employee is speaking on him/herself and not on behalf of the education system or school, which is providing the internet site. When publishing personal information through social media, an education employee should use a disclaimer. If it has anything related with the work the he/she does or any subject associated with the kind of education offered, should use a disclaimer such as: “ The postings published on this site remains to be the work of my own and do not in any way represent those of the education or school where I am employed”. The human resource in education should ensure that when education employees are indicating any reference to the school, administration, colleague, student or parent they do it by linking back to the source if permitted to do so.
Another policy measure that the employees in education should consider is that when communicating or publishing any content in school-based website they should be aware of their association with the education. Furthermore, when identifying themselves as education employees, they should ensure that their profile and any related content are consistent with how they could wish to present them with education colleagues and students.
One should use the best judgment and analyze in mind the consequences of what is published in the social media communications. When one is about to publish something that make the slightest bit of uncomfort, he/she should review the suggestions made above and think about it in the wider perspective. If still unsure whether the publication is related to education or not, he/she should feel free to discuss with the administration first or do away with publishing it. One has the sole responsibility for anything on the blog or publishes in any form of social media and more especially when related to the kind of education offered.
Acceptable social media policy should warn Education employees to avoid using ethnic slurs, personal insults, hate speech, obscenity or engage in any conduct that would not be acceptable in the education workplace. Each employee should not conduct confidential school businesses with a student, stakeholder, parent or any other person whatsoever using personal or other social media.
Finally One should not use the school names in registering any account in the social media or use other unregistered or registered school names.
Education system should employ a technical control staff to monitor social medial publication with his employees, provide reminders and enforce guidelines in its use before getting out to the larger population.
Online Crime Malware Prevention policies
Online criminal community commonly used the social media communication applications to deliver malware design schemes that damage the education or steal confidential information. Criminals also use the media to spread rumors, false allegation about the kind of education offered by the school for their joy to see the collapse of the education system to minimize such related risks and threats, the education policy can adhere to the following guidelines that may help to reduce all the possible threats and may not help to make a comprehensive educational judgment to the employees (Kolowich, 2011).
According to Bruns, Axel, Jean Burgess et. al. (2011) Employees in education should not use similar passwords for social networking when accessing education-computing resources. They should not follow social media link pages posted by individuals or organizations not known by the user and should not download any material or software posted or advised by a group or organization not known by the user. This is intended to safeguard the employees profession in case one uses the site to publish false information.
Finally, education Employee should use security application to protect their personal publications and school social media sites. In case an employee finds any content on any social media networking that appears to be suspicious in any kind should close the page and not to go back to such pages. The technical control may think that the said employee may be the publisher of such information and stiff decision made against the employee who may be the wrong person. It would be very difficult to isolate the employee if the employee stays long on the pages that may contain the prohibited information. The above discussed policies form a basis for the acceptable use of social media tools in education set up.
In the human nature, gossiping is part of the lifestyle. When writing, publishing and sharing any information one should make sure that the information do not in any undermine the education system. For instance, a photograph may look funny to one person if taken at the office party and use it in the social media, but to others the same may be offensive if in the photograph they look dumb (Bruns, Axel, Jean Burgess et. al. 2011). Implementation of social media policy that best defines the limits of social media usage in education set up will help solve many complicatio
