In this article, Sun describes creativity as the tendency of a student to generate novel ideas, through interaction and knowledge sharing with others, that are useful in product or service. Sun goes on to define social media as a set of interactive technology tools designed to encourage networking and dialogue in virtual communities. Sun suggests that because social media is a form of information and communication technology (ICT), and because access to new and different media and technologies has been shown to stimulate creativity, social media use will be positively related to creativity (Sun, 2020, p. 2). Sun then defines engagement as time and energy invested in learning, and proposes that because social media promotes interaction and communication between students, it has the potential to increase student engagement as well. The author cites sources that indicate increased engagement in technology and learning tasks also increases critical thinking and creativity, and the author proposes that engagement is a mediator for creativity in social media spaces. The authors confirmed a positive correlation between social media use and creativity, thus as one way to enhance creativity, instructors should build more engagement with social media in order to bring changes to learning and the curriculum.

The study design included a large sample of 685 students across three university campuses. Paper surveys were distributed by the instructors and 652 were collected, which resulted in a response rate of 95%. The survey included a 3 point scale for social media use in the school setting, and a 15 question scale for engagement which was further broken down according to behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement parameters. Creativity was rated based on answers to an established five-question scale. Both hypotheses were supported.

I have long believed that banning phones from the classroom automatically results in increased levels of stress and misbehaviors in the classroom. Students are attached and addicted to their phones–taking them away is like taking away a baby’s pacifier. (I have much better luck simply asking students to put their phones away during instruction. While compliance is not perfect, it is pretty close. Students who are distracted by their phones will simply find other ways to be distracted. So instead of being a phone Nazi, I tend to use their phones for classroom purposes. Phones are great–they are portable, and multifunctional. Phones can take pictures and record both video and audio, any time, any where. Many students have data plans for their phones, and can access all sort of applications. So I utilize those capacities–from original, structured still life photos to represent concepts, to stop-motion videos, to audio recordings, their phones become tools in my classroom.  Subsequent sharing of their artifacts on school-mediated social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, create an immediacy and urgency to doing challenging work well. 

Sun, X. (2020). Social media use and student creativity: The mediating role of student engagement. Social Behavior and Personality, 48(10), 1–8.