Social Media and the New Classroom

I’ve been teaching here at the University of Rochester for about five years now, at first only one class a year, but for the last three years at least one course every semester. It keeps me busy, but I like it because I get to interact with students in the department. I feel more like a member of the department rather than merely a laboratory grunt, which is what I’d pretty-much be otherwise. Plus, I get to teach, which is something I have always wanted to do.

I love teaching. I love sharing what I know, and my enthusiasm for that knowledge, with anyone willing to listen. This is why I almost never turn down an opportunity to give a talk to any old group that’s interested. The downside to teaching, of course, is that I have to actually assign grades, which stinks, but these are people’s careers we’re talking about. Assessment is necessary.

One of the problems I face as both an instructor and a laboratory manager (and, really, any faculty member has this problem) is making myself available to my students outside of the classroom for whatever matters they might want to discuss. I have office hours, of course, but in the five years I’ve been teaching, I think I’ve seen students actually use my office hours twice a semester. Part of the problem is that students have other classes. They can’t make my office hours. The other part of the problem is that, unless there is a student actually in my office, I’m usually in the lab, doing science-y things. Most of the time, students just e-mail me and that works OK.

This year I’ve decided to try something different. In the spring, I went to a two-day conference supported by The Rochester Institute of Technology’s Faculty Institute on Teaching and Learning. There were many options for sessions to attend, but for whatever reason, I was drawn to those focusing on social media.

It seems that social media, like Twitter, are getting a lot of mileage in some professions, and are beginning to be used in courses training students for those professions. Typically, these programs are in journalism or political science, not in the ‘hard’ sciences like geology. Twitter especially, has been used effectively as a teaching and communication tool. I was impressed.

I recalled that I once used Facebook in my classes, but that had problems, not least of which was that not everyone was on Facebook (or wanted to be). I gave up on that pretty quickly. But Twitter is another beast altogether. I decided to try out Twitter for my introductory geology class this fall. I came up with a hashtag (#UREES101)  which students could use to post questions about their materials. Students could troll that hashtag and watch without even signing up for Twitter. Alternatively they could engage in discussions without having to ‘friend’ or ‘follow’ anyone. I thought using Twitter would enable two things: 1) Students could communicate with me whenever they needed to, even if they couldn’t make my office hours or if they weren’t comfortable asking questions in class; 2) Students would also learn how to be succinct in their questions and answers – a skill notably lacking for a lot of people.

While I still have office hours (that no one still comes to), I also have set Twitter hours, late in the evening, when students know that I’ll be on-line and they can use the hashtag and tweet their questions. My colleagues expressed skepticism that this could ever work. But it has, and much better than I anticipated!

I have interacted more with my students this year than in all the other years past combined. Students ‘come’ to Twitter hours with their questions, and though usually only one or two are talking, other students tell me that they do look and watch. Other things have come out of this, too. Students are answering each other’s questions. They are discussing things! And sometimes their discussions include geological colleagues outside of this class or even this continent.

I’ll pose questions on Twitter for students to struggle with. These are usually things that have been problematic in years past that I want them to think a bit more about. I’ve had people from all over the world explain these things – like strike and dip – in ways that I couldn’t. I think the students benefit from someone else’s explanation.

All-in-all, I am excited about how social media is enhancing my classroom. Yeah, I’m ‘on call’ a bit more often, but that’s OK. It lets me do what I want to do: teach. Students have questions, I (or someone else) answer them, students move on rather than struggling for a while and giving up. It’s win-win. It’s easy. It’s free.