Meet Your Students WhereThey Are: Social Media

Effective educational practices suggest that we engage our students

in order to improve educational outcomes. We’re used to engaging

students in the real world, now it’s time to engage them in social

online spaces like Facebook and Twitter.

Online social networking has become an integral space for many of our students to liveout their daily personal interactions. A large percentage of our students are using socialmedia from the moment they wake up (Mashable, 2010). Data recently collected by Reyshows that college students spend an average of one hour and 40 minutes per day onFacebook. With often-misguided fears and feeling the need to keep personal and profes-sional relationships separate, many faculty and administrators tend to steer clear of onlinesocial space. But this is as important a space to engage students as is the classroom, lab,or student union.Research indicates that outside of stopping by the student’s residence hall or running

into them at coffee shops and discussing course content, there is not another method thatis as ubiquitous, cost-effective, or engaging as co-opting emerging social media like Twitterto enhance student-student, student-faculty, and student-content engagement outside ofclass. In a time of drastic budget cuts, campuses should not be spending money on expen-sive and unwieldy learning management systems. Our fiscal constraints combined with achanging workforce that continues to enjoy the flexibility of the faculty role, this student-faculty engagement can happen as effectively from home as it can from your drab, entropiccampus closet/office.

BY:

GREG HEIBERGERSouth Dakota State

University &

REYNOL JUNCOLock Haven University

Thriving in Academe is a joint project of the NEA and the Professional Organizational Development Network in Higher Education (www.podnetwork.org.)

Social Media, Teaching,and LearningResearch based strategies to increaseengagement, grades, and persistencethrough social media

“Students spend more time on Facebookthan in class or studying,” “Student sus-pended for threats made on Twitter,” “Facultyfired for Facebook.” ... Headlines like theseskew our thinking about social media andits effect on college students, and frequentcomments about our students wasting timeon social media just adds fuel to the fire.Even if we hypothesize that this is true formany students, do we not owe it to themand their future workforce colleagues tohelp them change? Most would argue thatstopping students’ use of Facebook is

impossible. It also should be argued thatthese sites help establish and maintain verypositive interactions and social connections.Research even shows that their use can belinked to better grades, engagement, satis-faction with the university experience, andpersistence from first to second year.

So what is an ethical educator to do?Leverage this new media to meet your needsand those of your students. We often say

Greg Heibergeris an instructor,academic advisor,and coordinatorof the Pre-HealthProfessional programat South Dakota

State University. He has providedmore than 60 presentations tostudents, faculty, and administratorsthrough consultations and work-shops. He can be reached atgreg.heiberger@sdstate.edu oron Twitter @greg_heiberger.

Reynol Junco is anassociate professorin the departmentof Academic Devel-opment and Coun-seling and Directorof Disability Services

at Lock Haven University. He is theauthor of two books, “Connectingto the Net.Generation: What HigherEducation Professionals Need toKnow About Today’s Students,”and “Using Emerging Technologies.”For the latter, he analyzed socialmedia’s role in student engagement,technology’s potential to improveretention, and blogs’ potential toimprove writing skills. He has givenmore than 50 talks and workshopson topics such as: how technologyimpacts colleges students; usingsocial media in educationally rele-vant ways; teaching students aboutprivacy; marketing university pro-grams and services through socialmedia; and developing effectivefirst-year seminars.

I TALES FROM THE FIELD > GREG’S INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL MEDIA

SO WHAT IS AN ETHICALEDUCATOR TO DO?LEVERAGE THIS NEW

MEDIA TO MEET YOURNEEDS AND THOSE OF

YOUR STUDENTS.

Meet Greg and Rey

Asanew profes-sional in highereducation in the

early days of Facebook,I saw its instant pull onstudents and figured(as I’m sure many of usdid) that it was not agood thing. But I soon

learned, I was wrong.The social network keptmy student orientationleaders in touch withincoming freshmenlong after their “work”was done, and I sawthe value in these inter-actions. Consequently,

we began creating andmaintaining Facebookgroups for incomingstudents. Future re-search led me to seepositive links betweenstudents’ social mediause and engagement incampus activities, and

also their feelings ofconnectedness tofriends. In 2009, Reyand I began testing thepotential of Twitter toincrease engagementand grades. At first, wereasoned Twitter wouldbe too truncated, too

unstable, and toosimplistic to continuecourse discussionsoutside of official class-time. Wow, were wewrong! For details ofthe study see: Junco,Heiberger, & Loken(2010).

we should “meet students where they are”— but it doesn’t make sense to go to thestudent union to teach chemistry lab skills.

So how should you use social media?Content matters should always drive yourpedagogical and curricular decisions. Forexample, students in Physics could beasked to watch a TED talk on string theory(http://www.ted.com/talks/brian_greene_on_string_theory.html) and then discuss itwith renowned physicists and educators onthe site. Future healthcare professionalscould create and maintain a Facebook pageor Twitter account that shares risks andprecautions to take for diabetics. Politicalscience students could use Twitter to keepabreast of breaking news and have real-time, outside-of-class discussions aboutU.S. budget cuts or the overthrow of a Mid-dle East dictator. Students can share links,answer questions from the instructor, andeven pose questions to fellow students.

In the first and only published con-trolled study of social media as an educa-tional intervention, it was shown to be aneffective teaching medium. Students in thestudy used Twitter to discuss a commonreading, answer questions relating to othercourses, and formulate study groups forBiology and Chemistry courses.

Become an expert—or atleast find confidence inwhat you know.Like any new venture in teaching and learn-ing this will require an initial and sustained

investment. Find and develop relationshipswith colleagues near and far (you can stayconnected via social media) who will learnalongside you.

Businesses that are creating social-media products to sell on college campusescan be great resources for how to imple-ment social media in your classroom. Onecompany, RedRover, helps students orientto your campus by connecting them to clubs,majors, and other students with similarinterests. Inigral engages and connectstudents pre-admission, and Sophia is asocial media-based learning environmentrelying on peer-to-peer learning.

Even if your campus isn’t ready to jumphead-first and spend money, these compa-nies regularly offer free webinars and othertraining opportunities. Don’t get discour-aged—you may need to wait for a criticalmass to develop on your campus beforethese pedagogies are widely accepted. Butas soon as your colleagues see the successyou are having, they will get on board.

Innovate, Pilot, andAssessAs with any new teaching method, pilotyour ideas and strategies with students andthen rigorously assess them. Use bothquantitative and qualitative feedback toassure accuracy in your assessment. Don’tlet any one assessment be the sole drivingforce for your decisions.

Social media can span your students’college experience as well as your campus’

administrative structure. Just as studentengagement is not a pedagogy for studentaffairs alone, social media should not beused merely by auxiliary units. Whetheryou work in Admissions, serve as Dean ofthe Medical School, or teach, social mediais a proven effective means of distributinginformation, making connections to stu-dents and between them, and most impor-tantly helping them learn.

Realize that new teaching methods andtechnologies will take time for you andyour students to adapt to, try it again nextsemester with a few tweaks and don’t giveup too soon.

Get excited; find waysthat you can benefitfrom social media and itwill help you motivateyour students!Why are you apprehensive about using socialmedia in education? Maybe you say youdidn’t learn this way when you were an

There are great exam-ples of professionalsusing social media to

meet their students wherethey are. For instance, T.J.Logan, associate director ofhousing at the University ofFlorida, uses Facebook toallow incoming students toself-match with roommates.Art Esposito, director ofDiscovery Advising atVirginia CommonwealthUniversity, uses his Face-

book profile to post tips,videos about common sug-gestions he makes to studentadvisees, and answers totheir questions. At UW-Waukesha, director of uni-versity marketing andcommunications, Liz Grossuses Facebook ads to enticefans to the school’s Facebookpage, where they receiveupdates, ask questionsabout campus, and connectwith current students and

faculty. Since they are a two-year school serving mainlyone county, she uses Twitterto “listen” to chatter fromthe local area and “follow”community members whomay be potential studentsor campus partners. Manyfaculty are using blogs toenhance student writingskills and to help themdevelop their prose for anonline audience. This semes-ter, Rey is having students

in his graduate-level SocialMedia in Higher Educationcourse blog about weeklyreadings and discussions—a model based on whatAssociate Dean in LiberalArts at Penn State UniversityChris Long is doing with hisphilosophy courses.

JUST LIKE ANY NEWTEACHING METHOD,

PILOT YOUR IDEAS ANDIMPLEMENTATION

STRATEGIES WITH YOURSTUDENTS AND THENRIGOROUSLY ASSESS

THEM.

I BEST PRACTICES > INCORPORATING SOCIAL MEDIA

undergrad, back in the good ol’ days….but actually, you did. You studied in thestudent union, at the library, or at the coffeeshop and had meaningful conversationsand debates with your peers and advisors.Unless you are currently able to do thatwith all (yes I said “all”) of your students,you are doing yourself and your professiona disservice by not finding ways to engagestudents outside of the formal classroom.Many faculty were not “taught to teach”but became students of our disciplines aswe accumulated our advanced degrees.If we did learn teaching pedagogy alongthe way, it certainly can be translated tosocial media.

Teaching with social media will not besuccessful if you are not personally andprofessionally invested. It takes time tofind its value and invest in its success, butyou must value it as highly as teachingface-to-face. You wouldn’t assign a bookto your students if you didn’t value it. In thesame way, it will be difficult to encourageyour students to find value in social mediaif you do not do so yourself.

In times of fiscal belt-tightening, theuse of social media for professional devel-opment is a great way for faculty to startfinding that value. Involve yourself in oneof many weekly discussions on Twitterabout higher ed, like #SACHAT, #SADOC,#EDCHAT, #PHDCHAT, #EDTECH, and#MUSEDCHAT. Similarly, multiple Face-book pages created for professional organi-zations or by faculty colleagues havewonderful teaching, learning, and pedagog-ical resources.

Use social media outside of your for-mal learning environment to post and con-verse about interesting ideas and topics,creating a personal learning network(PLN). Many professional conferencesnow use Twitter hashtags before, during,and after conferences for participants todiscuss and share content, analysis, andreactions. Even if you can’t attend in per-son, participate in the backchannel.

For those of us who are introverts, wemay realize the value of networking forprofessional development but we some-times don’t fully realize its benefits becausewe can’t put ourselves out there at confer-ences, meetings and the like. Social mediaallows us to share our ideas and connectwith others who will challenge and sup-port us throughout our careeras faculty.

I ISSUES TO CONSIDER

RESOURCESAstin, A. W. (1984). Student Involvement: ADevelopmental Theory for Higher Education.Journal of College Student Personnel, 25,297-308.

Heiberger, G. and Harper, R. (2008). Haveyou facebooked Astin lately? Using technol-ogy to increase student involvement. [Arti-cle]. New Directions for StudentServices(124), 19-35. doi: 10.1002/ss.293

Junco, R., and Mastrodicasa, J. (2007). Con-necting to the Net.Generation. Washington,D.C.: National Association of StudentPersonnel Administrators.

Junco, R., Heiberger, G., and Loken, E.(2010). The effect of Twitter on college stu-dent engagement and grades. Journal ofComputer Assisted Learning, no-no. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2729.2010.00387.x

Kuh, G. D. and others. (2005). StudentSuccess in College: Creating ConditionsThat Matter. SanFrancisco: Jossey-Bass.

Mashable. (2010). Retrieved 1/15/11.http://mashable.com/2010/07/07/oxygen-facebook-study/

Tinto, V. (1993). Leaving College: Rethinkingthe Causes and Cures of Student Attrition.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

CAN SOCIAL MEDIA BEUSED EFFECTIVELYWITH ANY COURSE?Generally, yes—but aswith any new curricularintervention, the use ofsocial media should betied to the learning out-comes for that course orcourse activity.

HOW CAN I INTEGRATESOCIAL MEDIA INRELEVANT WAYS ONA COMMUNITYCOLLEGE CAMPUS?The dynamics of thecommunity collegestudent body (i.e., mostlycommuter, part-time,returning students),make this an excellentpopulation to engagewith using social media.You can help studentsbuild and strengthen theirties to the institution,connect with industry/business partners and/orstudents at four-yearcampuses, and build apersonal learning net-work.

HOW MUCH TIME WILLIT TAKE FOR ME TOINTEGRATE SOCIALMEDIA IN WHAT I DO?Because social media isso diverse and each fac-ulty has his or her ownlearning curve, this ishighly dependent on thelevel of integration intothe coursework. Programslike SocialOomph.com or

TweetDeck can help youmanage multipleaccounts and evenpre-schedule plannedupdates to your socialmedia accounts.

WHAT ABOUT SECURITYAND PRIVACY?Social media websites,services, and applicationsare generally open orpublic and therefore, itis important to educatestudents regarding infor-mation they share online.If integrating social mediainto a course, it is impor-tant to explain to studentsthe limits of the servicesthey’ll be using.

WILL ALL OF MY STU-DENTS KNOW HOW TOUSE SOCIAL MEDIA?Although most of today’straditional-aged collegestudents are tech-savvy, adigital divide remains—there are persistent dif-ferences in student accessand use based on age,gender, socioeconomicstatus, race/ethnicity, andeven gender. The morediverse your studentbody, the more impor-tant it will be to makesure that all of your stu-dents are “on the samepage” when it comes tosocial media sites. Youcan do this by makingsure that you teach allof your students how toaccess and use the sites

you will use with them.

WILL STUDENTS USESOCIAL MEDIA FOREDUCATIONALPURPOSES?Our research shows thatstudents will use socialmedia in educationally-relevant ways. Be pre-pared to explain howsocial media will be inte-grated into your courseand how it will benefittheir learning.

I’VE READ ABOUTUSING TWITTER IN MYCOURSES, BUT CANYOU REALLY COMMU-NICATE MEANINGFULLYIN <140 CHARACTERS?Twitter is not meant tobe a replacement forstandard prose, instead,it is a useful microblog-ging and communicationtool. Our research showsthat students who wereencouraged to use Twitterin educationally-relevantways as part of a coursewere more engaged inthe real world and hadhigher grades than acontrol group.