I recently went to a presentation about the growing use social media in college courses. Confirming what I already suspected, Facebook and Twitter have taken over the lives of most college students (and maybe some adults, too).
The presenter, someone with more than a decade of experience teaching with and researching social media emphasized the positive effects of using social media in her college courses. She indicated that creating a course “fan page” worked to build community, fostered spontaneous participation, and enhanced student learning. She cited several examples, including feedback from other instructors who have started using Facebook. Increased student engagement was noted many times. Not much time was spent discussing Twitter, but the presenter mentioned using it to send reminders about due dates and other information.
I have very mixed feelings about the whole thing. Social media sites provide entertainment, advertising, and a quick way to keep in touch. It’s fun. Ok. And, if something really works well and improves learning, it is certainly worth trying. Since fully online education is becoming common, I can understand the appeal. Ok again. On the other hand, I fear this attachment to social media and its presence in nearly everything we all do has done some harm. As a working professional, I do not get “tweets” from my boss. He does he leave comments on my profile. My office does not have a fan page. Somehow, we still manage to get to work and do our respective jobs.
Plus, social media creates (and feeds) a need for a constant flow of information snippets on demand.Not everything can or should be reduced in this way. My concerns were supported by another research finding. Apparently, most college students (at least those who participated in the study being referenced) no longer see regular email as relevant; it was associated with old people and institutions. So, students seldom use or check their university email accounts—the same accounts that the university uses to communicate key information, such as notifications about billing and registration deadlines.
For better and sometimes worse, technology has changed the way we do just about everything. I taught for a time and I appreciate the desire to grow professionally and embrace new technologies in an effort to improve learning. Still, the growing dependency on all of these applications is something educators and the rest of us should carefully consider. Every random thought of the famous, not so famous, the people we actually know, and the people we really only know through a profile is available via a never-ending feed. Is this really a good thing? I am not so sure.
Using all of the technological tools available sounds great, but at what expense? Discussions and participation take on a very different tone when two or more people actually have to see one another live and in person. For all of the ways that technology helps us reach out and connect, people still need to be able to interact confidently and appropriately in real time settings, using complete sentences. If young adults are no longer learning to do this in school, then where?
