Classrooms welcome social media: Professors using Twitter, Snapchat to engage students
September 8, 2014
By Marjorie Kirk
Unlike in high school, when distracting electronics were kept out of classrooms, UK professors are adapting to trends by including social media in their teaching plans.
“I decided to use Twitter years ago in the classroom to better communicate with students, and this is in the context of a large classroom (of) over 200 people,” said Jeremy Crampton, a geography professor. “I wanted to have them be able to contact me and stay focused on the class — around a particular hashtag, #digimap — so they could always find those tweets.”
Crampton said the use of Twitter erased some of the boundaries between him and his students, allowing them to reach him in case they were too shy to go to his office hours.
“It was a little nerve-wracking because they could post anything and I didn’t necessarily know their name or their twitter names,” Crampton said about displaying the Twitter page in class. “But they really got a kick out of that, and then I was able to provide some extra information or class material.”
Political science professor Christopher Rice began using Snapchat this semester to send his students reminders about the reading assignments and discussion questions.
Rice uses the “My Story” feature of Snapchat so students can view his messages for 24 hours before they disappear. He does not follow students back to make sure no boundaries are crossed into his personal life, he said.
“I’ve used Twitter in my class since 2008 as a way for my students to give feedback during class,” Rice said. “I would encourage students to tweet during class using the class hashtag, which I would put in my syllabus.”
Rice said that he would receive responses to his in-class questions via Twitter, and if students used it to get in contact with him, he made it his own policy to get back to them quickly.
Julie Lang is a pre-nursing freshman whose chemistry professor uses Twitter to send reminders and study hints to her students.
“I think it’s been really helpful,” Lang said. “It’s nice because Twitter and social media is something that students use on an everyday basis. It’s nice to be looking through my feed and to be reminded, ‘Oh I forgot to do this for chemistry,’ or she’ll put up helpful hints and tricks on how to understand the homework.”
While Lang said she was pleased to see her professors using social media, she said she could understand the drawbacks of bringing the personal sites into the classroom.
“I think some students might feel uncomfortable with it,” Lang said. “Like this is more of their private life and they don’t want school intruding on it.”
Austin Dalton, a mechanical engineering junior, only has a Facebook and hasn’t felt the need to open other accounts.
“I only have a Facebook,” Dalton said. “I still think it is smart to help get to people nowadays because a lot of people are using that sort of stuff.”
