Gaining Twenty-First Century Employment Skills: Using LinkedIn to Teach Online Presentation of Self

This original teaching activity is conducted throughout an online class unit on maintaining a professional image online. The activity provides online students with authentic experiential assessments that offer them insight into how others view their LinkedIn profiles as presentations of self and how students can use impression management strategies to adjust their public image. This learning activity has students apply Higgins’s (1987) three domains of self, including the actual self, ideal self, and ought self, to their LinkedIn profiles, during the peer assessment process, and while conducting a self-analysis. This unit activity is a useful tool for teaching students about their presentation of self and sharpening 21st-century employment skills.