Social Media Goes Academic

By Kristen Luca

Facebook may soon be coming to a classroom near you.

Or at least one of its companions in the social media market may be. Services like Facebook, Twitter, and del.icio.us are not going unnoticed on college campuses. Two University of Georgia professors have decided to work with those services in their classrooms.

Karen Russell, associate professor at Grady College, uses several social media platforms in her courses.

“Since I teach PR and social media is important ... I try to expose them all to social media,” Russell said.

She connects with her students through del.icio.us, a social bookmarking Web site. Russell assigns her course readings through the service, which is a place for Internet users to share and distribute links.

While Russell uses delicious, Scott Shamp, director of the New Media Institute at UGA, utilizes Facebook, a popular social network for college students. Facebook is another popular social networking Web site, which allows users to make profiles and create groups based on interests. Students are required to have a account to join the class Facebook group, which is used to send out readings, answer student questions, and deliver assignments. Shamp could not be reached for comment, but his teaching assistant Cindy Reynolds spoke on the use of Facebook in teaching the “Introduction to New Media” course.

“Some of them didn’t want to join,” Reynolds said, “but we made them. It’s a New Media course and they need to use new media.”

Facebook facilitates class communication for her course. For instance, according to Reynolds, she gets asked the same questions by students repeatedly, and the Facebook group cuts down on the time spent answering them by allowing her to answer the question once.

Facebook is not the only option for classrooms. In addition to del.icio.us, Karen Russell uses Twitter. “My favorite by far is Twitter. [My students] will tell you I’m addicted to it,” she said.

Twitter is a microblogging service allowing users to update their page with messages of 140 characters or less. Users can choose to receive updates, called “tweets,” from other accounts, as well as reply to tweets and hold conversations.

Russell uses Twitter to communicate with her students. “I could do the same thing by e-mail,” she said, “but doing it by Twitter forces them to use it.”

Russell said that social media allows her to connect to students on a more personal level, since her students often use their Twitter accounts to comment on their personal lives. She said that the technology gives her the ability to get to know students in a different way.

However, some are resistant to the idea. Ricky Contes, a third-year English major, said he would be uncomfortable if a professor required him to use social media for class. Even with services like Twitter, which do not offer as many potentially personal details as Facebook, he said he would object to their use in a classroom setting. Contes also said that if social media and academics were combined, “I would never get anything done.”

When Russell first started using Twitter for class, in the summer of 2008, students’ reactions were similar to Contes’s. “Let me tell you,” she said, “at first they hated it.”

This semester, however, her students have been more agreeable. The Web site’s popularity has reached the point where her students already have accounts before coming to class and she has received positive feedback about it. She also uses other Web sites like PROpenMic, an online community for PR students, educators, and professionals.

A student who has not used social media in class before seemed to reflect that attitude. Katie Wyke, a fourth-year English major, said that she would enjoy using social media for coursework.

“It’d be easy to get on it. I’m on it anyway sometimes,” said Wyke.

While social media have become more popular, convenience and a personal quality have now extended that reach to desks in UGA classrooms.

Edited by: Christopher