Exploring the Advantages of Open Walled Gardens in Higher Education

This essay examines the concept of 'walled gardens' in educational settings, advocating for their opening to allow students access to social media and networking sites. The author argues that restricting access limits students' ability to engage in global interactions and develop crucial skills needed for future careers, emphasizing the importance of digital literacy and global awareness. The essay highlights how social media can extend classroom learning, encourage creativity through sharing, and promote student interaction and inquiry. It also acknowledges potential disadvantages like time wasting, but suggests that these can be mitigated by focusing on education-related interactions. The author concludes that allowing access to social media and networking sites is essential for preparing students for the future.

Running head: WALLED GARDENS
Walled Gardens
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1WALLED GARDENS
Rationale
A walled garden is defined as a browsing environment that is controlled by the
organizations or institutions to access the websites and information. A walled garden is a popular
term in universities and institutions where teachers restrict students from accessing any harmful
sites or areas on Internet.
The walled garden in institutions and universities should be opened up to make children
access the contents of the social media and social networking sites. The opening of walled
garden will open up the opportunities for the students to use the social networking sites such as
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The future of students depends on their ability to use Internet
and especially social media and social networking sites. This is because; in future there will be
several jobs that will require creativity of an individual on a global platform. Nowadays, students
need to be more enthusiastic towards the global changes occurring around the world. Today’s
global scenario shows that there are major requirement of ability to access social media and
social networking sites which helps to connect globally. The global connection will result in
better interaction among the students (Forbes Welcome., 2015). The global projects of walled
gardens are America Online, Prodigy and CompuServe which consists of walled garden for their
clients.
The teachers should open up the walled garden in universities or institutions to get the
opportunities of global learning. The opportunities that teachers get from opening up walled
gardens are as follows. The classroom teaching will be extended for the students through social
media where students can ask questions. The creativity will be encouraged through photo or
video sharing among students. The social media and social networking sites will work as a tool
to encourage interaction and enquiry (Sen et al., 2016). There will be enthusiasm among students

2WALLED GARDENS
to participate and improvement in accessing the online information. The opportunities discussed
above can be used by considering the following examples of technologies (Nwosu & Agu, 2015).
The major technologies are Electronic mail or E-mail, digital storybooks, digital photography,
digital video and digital storytelling. The other technologies are instant messaging, blogs,
forums, wikis, Websites, podcasts and videoconferencing.
There are advantages and disadvantages of opening up the walled gardens. However, in
the current scenario, the advantages will benefit the students as well as teacher to explore the
global interaction and learning. The first advantage of opening walled gardens involves sharing,
networking, collaborating and interacting. The second advantage is that an individual member
can contribute as a small part to the whole within a network (Jeon, Menicucci & Nasr, 2016).
The third advantage is minimizing the gap between university life and real life scenario. The
fourth advantage is minimizing the peer pressure on students and going beyond the university
walls to bring education to students. The only disadvantage of opening walled gardens is time
wasting and gossiping among the students. However, this advantage can be outperformed if there
are major interactions related to education among the students.
Therefore, it can be concluded that social media and social networking sites should be
accessible to the students for better future prospective.

3WALLED GARDENS
References
Forbes Welcome. (2015). Forbes.com. Retrieved 2 March 2018, from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sachinkamdar/2015/10/18/3-things-about-walled-gardens-
that-drive-digital-publishers-up-the-wall/#7b2552184aae
Jeon, D. S., Menicucci, D., & Nasr, N. (2016). Compatibility Choices under Switching
Costs (No. 16-691). Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
Nwosu, M. C., & Agu, S. (2015). A New Learning and Service Platforms in Universities in
World of 2.0.
Sen, R., Pirzada, H. A., Phokeer, A., Farooq, Z. A., Sengupta, S., Choffnes, D., & Gummadi, K.
P. (2016, November). On the free bridge across the digital divide: Assessing the quality
of facebook's free basics service. In Proceedings of the 2016 Internet Measurement
Conference (pp. 127-133). ACM.