I believe that one of the key aspect of social-media overlaps perfectly with a critical point of research based higher education: to create discussion. Social-media is the perfect medium for allowing those who have opinions and knowledge on a topic to discuss it with others who are also interested.

By creating and partaking in discussions, academics, and students alike, can expand their research and arguments in ways that may not have been possible in the past. With the help of social-media (facebook groups, twitter, forums and blogs) activists in Zimbabwe can now be in continuous discussion with an ICwS fellow who is writing a paper about them.

Check out a very interesting blog on this topic and a video by Alan J Cann, who is Internet Consulting Editor for Annals of Botany, based out of the University of Leicester Department of Biology:

The possibilities of ‘discussion-creation’ given to us by social-media must be fully utilised, and hopefully the benchmarking of SAS social-media is the first step to making that happen.