LSJ colleagues will know I’m doing a survey of how we all use social media in our teaching. I thought I’d start this survey via my blog.
Just us
This survey isn’t about how students use social media themselves. I know that in my production modules, for example, they mostly use Facebook for project management, scheduling meetings, etc.
And they use Twitter for finding sources and stories. I imagine this is true across the school.
It’s really about our using social media as a teaching aid.
What are we talking about here?
I’d think we need a fairly broad range. I’d want to know how we use:
- Blogs
- Google Drive (for writing and editing, collaboration, etc.)
- Social bookmarking services (Delicious, Diigo)
- Archive and read-later services (Evernote, Instapaper)
- Cloud servers (Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive)
- Multimedia services (YouTube, Soundcloud, Flickr)
And anything else you can think of that I’ve missed?
Owning up
And I’ll start off my admitting that, aside from blogging, I don’t use social media at all for teaching purposes. I don’t even tweet about my classes.
I already know I should be doing more, but I stuck to Blackboard this term.
This has obvious advantages for management and admin purposes (easy to contact students, set up groups, accept hand-ins, etc.).
But we all know its disadvantages: it’s not that intuitive, and while it’s fine for distributing basic documents (handbooks, etc.), it’s a bit clunky for things like sharing URLs, or quick notes.
Next term
I’m planning to set up Facebook groups for all my modules next term and next year, and to work more systematically with social bookmarking and archive services.
Any thoughts?
So … what’s everyone else doing, or planning to do?
First of all I think we need to recognise that Blackboard is a form of social media albeit with a limited access and allegedly has many of the tools found on other platforms. But it is a clunky system so does not get used to its full potential by many of us (me included).
I am nervous about getting too carried away with SM, as I explain to my PR students it is but another channel of communication and the golden rule is ‘right message, right channel, right time’
The UL_PR twitter feed is essentially a tool to build reputation for the PR courses at Lincoln therefore the tweets are limited to successes and sharing useful and interesting PR links.
My personal twitter @jane63c (my house number not my age!) is just that. So I will tweet about all kinds of stuff, but I amcarefeultobe positive about the PR courses and students. I may retweet from the UL_PR feed to give it a bigger audience.
Face book is used to mange Cygnet PR post new opportunities and assemble project teams. I also have a PR page like the J&PR page, I plan that this year will be the last time that happens as I think It is important to develop a single brand for the school. I note this is generally undergraduate in focus ….. What do we do for Masters? Also run PR Geeks as a group for past and present pR students and practitioners, I kind of job show and information exchange.
My own Facebook page is personal but if students wish to friend me I do accept them, Ihave unfriended the odd one when I got sick of their personal style. I note that the students are less swift to friend me these days and tend to wait bit, they are in their final year or post graduation. This is a good thing.
In class I use blogs as the channel for assessments at level two and three. I also encourage a support students in embracing the full range of tools available online, many of which are SM, to build their online personality and professional persona, a kind of online CV to support their future employability. I also encourage them to have an online portfolio of work (tools like Pinterest have potential here) I often recommend that students serialise their dissertations in a blog, if it is interesting and good enough after ithasbeen marked to give them something professional to post once they leave and before they secure a job. Some students blog the disser before then as part of the primary research. In PR a bog standard CV will not get you the best jobs, you have to be relative in the way you present yourself which is way I pace an. Emphasis on t for the individual. However, I also encourage them to not just use SM to be different ( because it isn’t anymore) so things like you tube applications, making a brochure about themselves etc ie getting a job is your own personal PR campaign!
At level two the students have to deliver a live campaign, if SM is a suitable channel for part of the campaign that will obviously form part of the assessment. I tend to discourage this as it can be an easy cop out for PR. at final level the main project is a critical analysis of an organisational issue and they have to produce a supporting solution as part of the assessment again, if SM is a suitable channel for this it will form part of the submission.
I think it is important that, if we encourage students to blog outside of their studies we should undertake to follow their logs and comment on them ( I do not currently do tis as much as I should) I think we should also tweet some of the interesting posts for them via the official twitter feed to get them more coverage.
My concern is that, like all these new toys, fashions will change and they are very time consuming. The alumni log, for example, was very easy to set up and post to in the early days but now I am struggling to get contributions and have not had time to beg for items as much as I should. I will address that soon. I think Facebook and twitter are very well,established and won’t disappear but I think the way they are used will change.
It occurs to me that Linked In is a much under used tool and I know at Sheffield Hallam the PR teaching team use that rather than Facebook to engage with students. I do encourage students as part of the CV work to develop Linked In as the professional platform, it issued by business. Maybe we need to look ore closely at how it could be used? I have a Linked In profile and I gues we all should demonstrate best practice.
Our own YouTube channel is something we might want to consider, we could post some (not all) lectures on there eg the visiting speakers and the intro sessions so they are there as a source of information? I think it has a lot of potential however I would want a make up artist and wardrobe assistant in residence before I do anything!!
OK those are the early thoughts, if I have anymore I will get back to you. I think this is a great way of starting the debate and a lot quicker than gathering in a room and going round in circles!! Apologies for any typos and nonsense, I blame it on clumsy fingers and varifocals!
As someone who only lectures in ‘print’ – Newspaper and Magazine Production/Editorial production (Level 2 and MA) there are very few opportunities (and little need) to engage students in social media.
Interestingly (or it is to me!) at the start of Semester A I always ask how many students regularly read newspapers, magazines, websites etc.
There wasn’t one student this time around (can’t remember last year) who ‘regularly’ followed anyone on Twitter; no students accessed websites for their news (very occasionally BBC); seven students ‘regularly’ bought a daily newpaper; 10+ students bought a magazine.
Don’t know what that proves but I thought I would share it with you.
They do, of course, use Tumblr, Facebook etc etc to communicate with each other.
In Semester B – very much geared towards teamwork – most (if not all) of my groups use Facebook to organise meeting times/photo jobs/interviews etc.
This is something I actively encourage them to do but only after I realised two years ago this was how they were communicating – always pays to be alert to student thought processes and trends!
The essay in Semester B centres around the impact of the digital revolution in print publishing.
Therefore ‘social media’ is mainly on the periphery of what I teach and is something I will mention (eg: the different theories behind headline writing for print and websites) but in no great detail
I communicate with my students (between sessions) exclusively through BB and email groups.
Hope this is of some use