Social Media in OL--A Fine-Tuned Mess



While participating in a 3-part online workshop, I was asked to complete a reflection on my personal/professional philosophy on the use of SM (social media) in OL (online learning). In doing so, I started out with first laying out what I've done at this point. Here it is up to this point:
  • SM has been used for connections with remote (OL) students. I began this initially by collaborating with a friend and colleague and building out an online VW in SL, many years ago. We actually built out a tremendous re-creation of our campus, which was interesting, but a time-waster in some ways as there were many educational opportunities to be had from pre-built sites on SL. 
    • From this, I took my remote OL students on tours of sites--we were in a developmental psych and then an adult dev & aging class, so we toured a dementia site, an autism site, and many others. These allowed students to engage with others and immerse themselves into VR scenarios. One of the more interesting opportunities I used SL for with students was to engage them through the orientation, where I created virtual tshirts that our whole class had to wear...newbies to SL inadvertently end up naked (virtually), so this was always entertaining and I wrote a small manual of instructions on how to avoid this. 
    • The point? to engage them. That's what the point was, and this greatly pre-dated the massive usage of FB, or the advent of Instagram, or the popularity of Twitter, so this was where we started. 
  • After that, I explored FB for classes, and found that I felt quite comfortable with using this, as there were settings that allowed me to configure a  separate professional profile for my class. I used this off and on in classes, and always found it a potential tool but never fully integrated it, in either OL or traditional classes. 
  • In my most recent place of employ, I managed an OL group and set up both a FB group and also a FB page for our OL audience, which was predominantly composed of previous ,future, and current OL students and faculty. This was an easy way to blast information and relevant articles. We moved from a group to a page when FB made that more desirable, perhaps around 2014. 
  • In 2015, working with that same group, I had us set up a Pinterest page, after feeling that I could provide some useful general topics and collections of resources through this. 
    • Both of these were directed outside of the classroom, and were used from an administrative angle. 
    • I found both uses of these to be exceptionally positive, though I did not stay in the position at the last campus for long enough to see how the Pinterest site may or may not have grown. 
  • So fast forward to my current place of employment, and my philosophy on the use of SM in OL. I've used it as a faculty member, and also as an administrator. I also was the PM for a MOOC with 400+ enrollees, and we utilized a small element of SM during the course. What did I find from this and all other experiences? Here is the synopsis, which details in truth my philosophy, based on serving in the above mentioned roles, along with the role of a student in various workshops, courses, and trainings I have attended:
    • In today's world, SM is really the critical broadcast method for reaching students. My personal and professional philosophy's intertwine--I'm all about reaching people where THEY are, where they are COMFORTABLE, where they are ALREADY COMFORTABLE, where they are FAMILIAR. If they are already on FB, let's meet them there. And I'm there, too, that makes it all the easier. 
    • That being said, there are people involved here =), and therein lies the rub that people are all different beings. From that perspective, we each have our own world experiences, and therefore may or may not have used Twitter, Instagram, FB, or any other SM and SM-related tool out there. So I've learned from my various experiences (many of which I've not bothered to detail here) that a STRONG set of instructions are necessary, and NOT to rely solely on what is provided by the various SM sites, because sometimes, they are outdated, and most times, they are insufficient for getting my students/faculty up to speed with what to expect. 
    • Survey! Yes, top tip! Remember tip 1, where are they, and meet them there? Don't pick Instagram because YOUR 13 year old uses it (like mine does). Ask them what they already use, then set up plans to go there. yes, this takes some on the fly set up, but that's part of the joy in it. Or if you find there is not joy in it, that's a likely sign that using SM isn't a good fit at this time for you in your particular situation. 
  • Privacy, FERPA, and naked avatars
    • Siiiiiiigh. SM can be a fantastic means for connecting students, and the best part is that I love to connect students/faculty from DIFFERENT classes, and even different terms, colleges, universities, you name it. BUT...we do have to be aware of the legal ramifications. That being said, make friends with your legal counsel at your place of employ, and definitely check in with them for any guidance and/or restrictions your own campus may have. Funny, I ALWAYS had a great relationship with this group, likely because I was the proactive one who asked the important legal matter questions up front to them. Others always found this group a challenge, but I have and had nothing but exceptionally positive experiences. Don't view them as roadblocks--they are there as your champion, actually, to help you operate effectively, and to stay out of trouble. 
So my experiences and philosophy are spelled out above, and I hope that this is useful information for you. Why do I include the term "mess", then, if this is clearly an avenue of educational outreach that I support? I liken it to chaos theory--sometimes what appears be messy (you my have recently heard of messy learning) is actually a coherent system once you dive in. So dive in 

 I've also included some resource references below that may be of interest. 

Resources:

1. Teaching, Learning, and Sharing: How Today's Higher Education Faculty Use Social Media

Moran, Mike; Seaman, Jeff; Tinti-Kane, Hester
Babson Survey Research Group

2. 

The Theory and Practice of Online Learning

By Terry Anderson
https://books.google.com/books?id=RifNwzU3HR4C&lpg=PA91&ots=SfbpHkHVqs&dq=social%20media%20in%20online%20education&lr&pg=PA96#v=onepage&q&f=false

3. The ‘Facebook' Effect: College Students' Perceptions of Online Discussions in the Age of Social Networking 
Hurt et al. 
http://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/ij-sotl/vol6/iss2/10/ 



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