Teaching with social media: Digital tools give students flexibility
This blog series highlights educators who have embraced social media in their ongoing quest to meet students where they are, increase engagement, and improve results. Through these stories, you’ll discover how they got started, learn a few tips to make your foray into social media as seamless as possible, and hear some advice about incorporating these new technologies and platforms into your instruction or institution.
One of the great things about social media is the flexibility. That’s what students are looking for, especially nontraditional students.
Social media can morph and accommodate your lifestyle, timeline, and schedule. You can utilize it as extensively as you’d like or minimize your utilization. But it accommodates. And that’s what online students especially are looking for.
Incorporating social media into courses
Traditional brick and mortar classrooms with set timelines and activities are never going to go away, but there are many students who need the flexibility that virtual learning offers.
And social media can be worked into that in a way that is comfortable, because it’s something they’re familiar with and use. If you can utilize their understanding of the technology for course content, students really appreciate that capability.
Today we have more digital tools and more approaches to teaching that we can leverage — that’s one of the virtues of social media. Sometimes we just have to get out of that comfort zone of how we were taught, or how tenured faculty may teach.
We’ve seen success with those models, but you can have success in other ways, too. Don’t be afraid to take that leap and really explore something unfamiliar.
"It’s a matter of knowing your core competencies, knowing your capabilities, being adaptive as a teacher, and being willing to do a little bit of training sometimes."
Be ready to adapt
One of the tricks is not getting overwhelmed by the sheer volume of platforms or capabilities of a platform. Just take it step by step.
You may teach one way today and a different way next term, but always be open to digital tools and technologies that can incrementally help you improve and help your classroom advance.
It’s really important to know your students and not assume that any social media platform is good for any particular student. Sometimes my class Twitter feed really gets picked up on, and other times the students just really aren’t familiar with it or are uncomfortable with the interface or platform.
Not everybody’s on Facebook, and not everybody’s on LinkedIn, so you want to find the sweet spot. That might even involve presenting options and asking students for their preferences at the beginning of the term.
Favorite strategy
Sometimes students have trouble with different aspects of social media, so if they have questions, then I can create a screencast where I can walk them through the functionality. Whatever it is, I can send them a video of me walking through and explaining to them. They not only appreciate that, they come away from the class learning a life skill.
Dive deeper
Build up your virtual learning toolbox and learn the distinct benefits of different social platforms by reading "Strategies for teaching with social (PDF).”
About the author
Dr. Sean Nufer
Dr. Sean Nufer is an elearning specialist, assistant adjunct professor at Pacific Oaks College, and associate adjunct professor at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology where he received his PhD in Psychology.
As the director of educational technology for TCS Education System, he works collaboratively with the instructional design team to ensure utilization of state-of-the-art resources in the classroom, assessing organizational eLearning needs and working to develop and implement policies and procedures for utilizing educational technology by identifying and coordinating the design, execution, implementation, and evaluation of various online and virtual educational activities (including webinars, instructor-led courses, virtual conferences, and online courses) within the TCS Education System affiliates.
