Social media in classroom: What I’ve learned.

Gerald C. KaneGerald C. Kane

Associate Prof. of Information SystemsAssociate Prof. of Information Systems

Boston CollegeBoston College

NSF CAREER AWARD 0953285NSF CAREER AWARD 0953285

Recent NYT Headlines

• July 17, 2012: Universities Reshaping Education on the Web…

– Consortium of Universities using Coursera

• July 19, 2012: The Trouble with Online Education

– UVA Professor arguing that true education is dialogue.

• I agree with both perspectives.

•My Question: How can social media be used to:

A) Create learning opportunities outside of the traditional classroom environment.

**AND***

B) Improve the co-located learning experience of the traditional classroom.

•Requires knowing what can and cannot be moved to online space.

My Use of Social Media in Classroom

•My first day teaching undergrads September 5, 2006.

– To generate interest in new core IS course, decided to integrate Facebook as part of course.

•September 6, 2006 Facebook Introduces NewsFeed

– Within 48 hours, over 700,000 students joined a group “Students against FB Newsfeed”

– Realized something important was afoot, began to study and use carefully.

•Since then, I have been actively experimenting with social media in the classroom.

– Experiments rarely work well the first time, several semesters of tweaking each one to achieve desired outcomes.

– NSF Grant keeps me innovating.

Opening Insights

•The technology is not magic.

– It must be accompanied by appropriate guidelines and incentives, integrated into your teaching strategy.

•Be sensitive to privacy concerns.

– Be open to discuss reasonable alternatives if the student has confidentiality concerns, they usually don’t exercise.

•“It’s easier to gain forgiveness than permission.”

– Be aware of FERPA and Copyright, but don’t be afraid of them.

•There are pros and cons to the use of every technology in the classroom.

– The key is understanding the tradeoffs you are making.

Wikis (PB Works)

• Quickly switched from FB to Wiki, because more flexible.

– Serves as centralized repository for all course content, including student assignments.

• Most significant use: “Crowdsourced” exams.

– Students generate questions and answers for exam.

– Wrong answers/ missing questions most helpful, because requires critical reflection.

• Pros:

– Class information can be updated on the fly,

– Mechanism for students to self-organize,

– Digital record of course activity (e.g. group projects, troubled students).

• Cons:

– Can be difficult to maintain consistency of information over time.

Blogs (Wordpress)

• Students required to author a blog regularly through semester, read and comment on 3 other posts by students weekly.

– Opens up insight to outsiders: guest speakers, bosses, moms, local business leaders.

• Pros:

– Encourages deeper reflection on course content,

– More granular deliverables,

– Students read and critically reflect on work of others,

– Primes class discussions.

• Cons:

– Discipline of regular contributions difficult for some students,

– Can be a lot of work for prof if not managed properly,

– Potential downside to outside participants,

Twitter

• Creates online discussion between class sessions using hashtag (#mi621)

– Students required to make 2-4 posts/ week: balanced between new content, retweets, and responses to classmates.

• Pros:

– Gets students reading for and sharing related material in class,

– Forum for updates and announcements (lowering email load),

– Class alumni (and other professors) can monitor content,

– Keeps me up to date on rapidly changing field.

• Cons:

– Can include “outsiders,”

– Susceptible to spam (inside and outside class),

– Twitter can be technologically flaky (but gotten much better).

Interactive Response Systems (iclicker)

• Provides lightweight opportunity for in-class review quizzes (primarily used in core course).

– Surprisingly, the most highly rated of all my innovations on student surveys.

• Pros:

– provides mechanism to encourage regular attendance, content review, and preparation.

• Cons:

– Difficult to monitor cheating,

– Students regularly forget clicker,

– Forced multiple choice,

– Technology malfunctions (or user error)

• Solution: very “low stakes” grading.

– Will drop the two lowest scores. Above 50% total = B, above class average = A, top scorers = bonus points.

Lecture Capture

•Technology that automatically records video, voice, and computer screen during class.

– Built into my classroom (and several at BC), but also available in laptop version for just audio and computer.

•Pros:

– Helpful for students with “excused absence” (i.e. athletes, sick),

– Allows exchange students to review material again,

– Backup for cancelled classes.

•Cons:

– Some fear encourages class skipping (but I have not experienced that, perhaps due to iClickers).

– Digital record of mistakes you might make in class.

Class Surveys (Survey Monkey)

• Employ weekly class surveys to help judge quality of student’s in class and online contribution

– I still assign grade, it is only input into professor’s grading decision,.

– Students given opportunity to read and evaluate one another’s work, a valuable learning process that improves their own standards (e.g. reviewing papers).

• Pros: – Remarkably consistent with my own assessment.

– Broad quantitative measure of student performance.

– Transparency raises standards, lowers complaints.

– Regular opportunity for student feedback to professor.

• Cons: – Students will try to game the system

– Students provide relatively narrow range of evaluation,

– Students reluctant to criticize peers (now constrain responses to “good” and “best”).

Classroom

•Don’t forget face-to-face is social media too.

– Use of online tools changes class participation, creating recursive interaction between online and offline exchanges.

– Social media not very good for dealing with debates and deep discussion, so I try to emphasize these elements in class.

•Pros:

– Many of the “routine” matters are dealt with online, allowing class time to focus on most interesting content.

– Online interactions can create content for class discussion.

•Cons:

– May require professor to think on their feet, shift from pure lecture-based format. The amount of this can be controlled somewhat by professor.

Concluding Thoughts

•Explicit instructions are given that “online interactions will be treated as part of class, so standards of acceptable behavior are expected in both settings.”

•The first few weeks are difficult, but gets easier once the standards and expectations are established.

– Publicly recognize positive examples, and constructively suggest where negative ones can improve.

•Carefully consider incentives – carrots and sticks. Sticks require quantity of participation, carrots reward quality contributions.

• I’m not sure “halfway” works: if you use social media, you need to embrace a more participative and open educational style.

– Recognize that you will have to experiment and tweak for your setting and style