ABSTRACT
The mainstream use of social technologies such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram has transformed learning outside the college classroom into a rich community-based experience. As Cathy Davidson and David Goldberg noted in The Future of Thinking: Since the current generation of college students has no memory of the historical moment before the advent of the Internet, people are suggesting that participatory learning as a practice is no longer exotic or new but a commonplace way of socializing and learning. Emerging technologies provide many options for professors and institutions to increase a student's readiness for the start of a new term. However, many college instructors today are less than thrilled with the tools commonly included in the learning management system (LMS) toolkit for delivering awe-inspiring learning and, therefore, experiment with the wealth of web-based, social technologies that allow for easy content creation and sharing.
