Pinterest in Higher Education: Insights From a Sport Management Course

Universities and instructors seek to design educational experiences and programs that help students learn and develop professionally. One effective approach to doing so involves using active teaching-learning approaches in which students take the lead and learn by engaging in real-world situations that require reflection and decision-making. Social media platforms hold some potential for hosting such teaching-learning activities, and can facilitate connections between the university and the professional world through active learning approaches. This study focuses on exploring the educational use of Pinterest, a social media platform emphasizing the audiovisual component. An educational experience was designed using Pinterest in a sport management course, requiring students to generate pins and boards based on audiovisual material they captured from sports facilities and equipment with their smartphones, thus connecting theory with practice. A total of 247 students (77.7% male and 22.3% female) completed a questionnaire to assess their perceptions of Pinterest’s educational opportunities. Findings demonstrate Pinterest’s educational potential, showing that students perceived learning as more productive, benefited from peer and faculty opinions, experienced a flexible hybrid teaching-learning environment, and developed their professional profiles. These results provide valuable evidence that can inform university educators’ design of social media-based experiences grounded in active teaching-learning approaches.