‘What do you meme?’: Exploring students’ engagement with the use of emojis, memes and GIFs in higher education teaching
Abstract
Emojis, memes and gifs are digital tools that are becoming increasingly incorporated within higher education (HE) learning. Whether it be through online communication (e.g, emails) or via learning resources (e.g., PowerPoint slides), emojis, memes and GIFs are used by HE teaching staff to convey meaning. Our understanding of how effective emojis, memes and gifs are in engaging students remains limited. To explore this, we conducted an online survey with undergraduate students (N= 115, Mage= 19.10 years) exploring student engagement scores when presented with emojis, memes and gifs via either private online communication environments (e.g., emails) or public online learning content (e.g., PowerPoint slides). Following a two-way repeated measures ANOVA , our findings highlight that, combined, emojis and memes are perceived as the most engaging digital tool overall. Our findings also highlight that these digital tools are viewed as more engaging when presented within private online communication environments. Our study presents important pedagogic findings that will benefit HE teaching staff in utilising digital tools appropriately within their communication with students and learning resources.
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