Social media as a teaching innovation tool for the promotion of interest and motivation in higher education

Social media is part of the daily life of university students, so it can become a useful teaching innovation tool. This paper describes the teaching innovation project carried out in the Degree in Linguistics and Applied Languages of the University of Cadiz, in which two profiles have been used, one on Facebook and the other one on Twitter, to share the content (news, papers, videos, job offers ...) related to linguistics and languages, specifically targeting degree students, in such a way that their autonomous work will be promoted from the shared contents in networks; their motivation will be increased, providing them with resources to broaden their knowledge about topics that especially interest them, and at the same time, boost their English written and oral comprehension, considering that news, articles and videos have also been shared in this language. The project has been evaluated both quantitatively and qualitatively: the quantitative data of the scope of the profiles have been provided by the analytics of Facebook and Twitter and the qualitative ones have been extracted from an anonymous survey answered by the students of the degree. Conclusions support the usefulness of social networks as a tool for these purposes.