The Active Class

Your students are already using tools like Facebook and Twitter.  In fact, they’re often using them when you’d rather they’d be doing something else (like paying attention in class). How can we turn the potential obstacles of Web 2.0 and social media into an opportunity for effective teaching and learning?

I recently gave an overview talk at the American Association of Physics Teachers, sharing some techniques instructors are using for communicating with their students and each other, including class blogs, real-time aggregated conversations in class, tweeted answers to student questions, dedicated YouTube channels, wiki-based class contracts, and more.  I did a lot of research for this talk, and wanted to share the fruits of my labor on this blog.  I argued that by using these tools, rather than ignoring them, we can help students gain social media literacy skills.   Thus, we may choose to leverage social media to promote conversation about things that we care about, using platforms that students find familiar and fun.

Below is the Prezi that accompanied this presentation.  I recommend you open this in another window to watch, while you read this blog post.  First of all, it took a lot of time to make it, and I think you’ll enjoy it!  Secondly, a visual is always helpful in getting a sense of the landscape of ideas, and I was very careful to make this presentation a concept map of a rather broad area in the scholarship of teaching and learning.

I also recommend you check out the Diigo list of social media links that I made for the presentation — here you’ll find examples of class blogs, research articles on social media, and more.  It’s a really useful list.

1.  Students’ Use of Social Media

Students are using social media a LOT.  They’re a different kind of student than we were.  Some startling statistics that I found while researching the talk:

• Teens spend as much time on social networking and websites as they do watching TV!  This was the bastion of education back in my day.
• 73% of teens and young adults use social networks (from Pew study)
• 80% of young adults are on Facebook
• The average Facebook user spends more time on Facebook than on Google, Yahoo, YouTube, and Wikipedia combined.

Interestingly, most young adults don’t use Twitter.   They like the Facebook status updates, but the microblogging of Twitter hasn’t caught on in the same way.

So, they’re using social media – this is an opportunity for social learning, right?

Not so much.  The Venn diagram of how they’re using social media, and what we want them to learn, has very little overlap.  For the most part, social media and the web is serving as a distraction from their studies, rather than a support.

2.  Digital Distraction

I’ve sat at the back of a classroom, and watched students surfing the web, shopping, texting, and using Facebook in class.  They’re not necessarily aware of how these distractions affect their coursework.  Diane Sieber (Univ. of CO) has students sign up to use their laptop in class, or not.  She’s then shown the class that those students who use their laptops in class, on average, do worse on exams than those who don’t.  And that those students who cease using their laptop during class then do better on exams.  That kind of personalized data can be very compelling to students, and raise their awareness.  Some other ideas:

• Lids-down time. To signal when something is particularly important, or that it’s time to have a discussion, some instructors ask for students to put their laptop lids down.
• Banning laptops. Since everything in class is important, shouldn’t lids-down time be all the time?  I don’t think so.  This doesn’t teach students responsible use of these tools, which can be very useful for their learning.  I think it’s a misuse of your authority.
• Social contract. Diane Sieber at the University of Colorado has students create a wiki-based social contract as one of their first class assignments, detailing how they expect one another to behave responsibly during class.  They always bring up something about responsible use of technology (no texting/emailing in class), and because they come up with the agreement, they enforce it.  This also teaches them to use the wiki, which she uses throughout the course.

3.  Using social media to support learning

We can, instead, co-opt these tools to support learning.  There are a few main messages about how people learn that I often use in other talks:

• Learning is social
• Metacognition (learning how to learn) is important
• Interactive engagement improves learning
• Motivation and relevance are important for learning

I think that, if used right, social media can address many of these aspects important for learning.  But which tools?  There is a dizzying array of social media tools, but I argue – you should think, first, about the answer to the question:

What do you want to do in your classroom?

Start with your goal.  Then find the tool that helps you do that best.

Below I’ll outline the major things that I found that social media can help us do in our classrooms:

1.  In-class backchannel

Like Twitter during a conference, you can create a backchannel where students can have a conversation – the electronic equivalent of passing notes.  This can increase the communication between students, and between students and instructors, improving the social learning environment.

• Students could report out their discussions from small groups, as the groups are going on.
• They could discuss a movie as it’s underway.
• They could discuss a colloquium or seminar while it’s in progress.
• They could provide feedback to the instructor as to what they’re understanding or not.

But it’s important to provide a code of conduct so that the backchannel stays on task, and polite.  Some instructors use specific backchannel breaks, where students enter the backchannel discussion for a short time, so that it’s not a distraction during class.  I’ve blogged before about the use of backchannel in class.

Take a look at the Prezi to see all the tools that I found that people use for backchannels.

2.  Student-teacher communication

How many wasted office visits have you had, where students come, one after the other, with ill-formed questions?  How about being available during off-hours, when students are in the process of working on their homework or projects?

I would much rather be texting a student usefully at 9:30 on a Saturday than playing catch-up in a purposeless office visit

So said an instructor in a twitter conversation on social media.  If you want to answer questions on the fly, you might use Facebook fan pages, Google chat, or existing course management systems.  Some instructors just tell students they’re available anytime they’re logged in.  You can also do this through online office hours, which I’ve blogged about at length before.   You can also ask students to discuss questions amongst themselves.  One way that I liked that people have done this is through a class blog, where the instructor poses a question on the blog, and students respond via the comments.  The questions have to be authentic, however, for people to get really engaged in this way.  Online forums and Facebook groups are another way to do this.

3.  Your Own Professional Learning

This is where I think social media is the most useful.  I still use email lists, but I also have Twitter lists of people that I follow, blogs and podcasts that I subscribe to, and my LinkedIn network.  You can create your own professional learning network, and this is where I would recommend that you start if you are new to social media.

4.  Virtual Class Space

I’ve heard many instructors complain that existing course management systems (like Moodle, Blackboard, etc.) are insufficient and difficult to use.  Some instructors have moved to a class blog or Wiki to house their website.  Here’s an example of a class blog, which will show you how detailed you can get with this approach.  You might also want to check out Socialmediaclassroom, which is a suite of tools specifically for the classroom.

You can also create a Facebook Fan Page for your class, and make use of the dozens of apps that are relevant to education, such as Slideshare (for your lecture slides), Quiz creator or Poll (for creating polls), Google Docs (to embed documents in your page), and many others (see the Prezi).  One thing to be aware of, of course, is that you need to make it optional for students to sign up as a fan on such a page, so that you are not essentially publishing your class list online.  I’d recommend taking a look at the faculty ethics on Facebook document, too, for some important ethical considerations.

5.  Student/student collaboration

I’ve put this one last because, even though it’s the first thing that many people think about when you say “social media in the classroom”, I think it’s the hardest to implement.  It’s tough to create genuine, authentic assignments, and frame them in a way so that student actually collaborate using the tool.  Many an instructor has set up a class wiki, only to have nobody comment on it, or to have the comments be substance-less notes to get credit for having done something.  Here are some great tips about creating good discussions in online forums.  Some teachers have had success with student-run blogs, or with collaborative Google Docs for group assignments.

My final thoughts in the presentation were

Give students clear guidelines.

If any of these tools are used for credit, make it clear what students need to do to get that credit.

Geek out on your own first

Get comfortable with the tools — enjoy it! — before trying it out in your class.

If you want your students to tweet you well, then you need to tweet them well

Model good behavior in these forums, and participate in them.  Don’t ask your students to do something that you’re not willing to engage in yourself.

Again, check out the Diigo list of social media links!