Understanding the constraints to using social media platform as a tool for design learning in higher education from students' perspectives

This paper explores how social media could be harnessed to enhance design students' learning experience in higher education and address the competency gap between academia and the creative industry. By analyzing the constraints to the use of social media in higher education, findings from this paper may assist instructors to overcome the challenges when using the technology for design learning purposes. This paper presents case studies of six diploma design students who have used a social media platform (SMP) that are specifically built for the community of designers - Behance, to facilitate their design learning process. The findings are drawn upon an in-depth investigation into their uses of the SMP over a period of 14 weeks in a higher education institution in Malaysia. In general, the constraints the students mentioned referred to the technical constraints of the SMP, such as the interface design of the SMP, limited file formats, and the function of the tools provided by the platform. However, the findings also revealed that there are also other factors identified by the participants that affected their choice of using such platforms in their design learning process in the future. The major constraints are: (a) social factors, (b) conflict of learning styles, (c) time to learn and use, (d) use of languages, (e) lack of resources, and (f) security and privacy. This paper describes and discusses each of the constraints.