After attending the EduCause SWRC08 conference here in Houston last week (btw - great job, folks!), I've been pondering what, why and whether certain popular Web 2.0 and Social Networking technologies are needed, useful, or even appropriate for our campus. The essence of SocNet tech is that it helps the user to overcome either physical or temporal constraints that limit participation in traditional (time and place constrained) social networks.
On many university campuses, these physical or temporal constraints are felt most keenly by those who are part-time and/or older students. These groups usually have full-time jobs, families or other off-campus commitments which can interfere with classroom interaction and (perhaps even more importantly) interaction with professors and fellow students outside the classroom. For such non-traditional students, SocNet tech can make a decided difference in the overall quality of the educational experience and may even help to determine whether the student is successful in the course.
On commuter campuses or at schools which host a reasonable percentage of non-traditional students, the advantages of tools such as blogs, IM's, tweets, virtual worlds, podcasting, etc. are becoming more recognized and accepted. At my institution, however, we have very few non-traditional students, either at the undergraduate or graduate level. Classes tend to be relatively small and the interaction between students and professors, both inside the classroom and out, is quite high. Indeed, class participation is counted heavily in most professors' grading schemes. In an environment such as this, Social Networking technology is merely a solution looking for a problem. In fact, many faculty members view such technology as interfering with communication between faculty and students. In short, we don't need it. That doesn't rule out possible limited use for some or most of these applications, but there is certainly no need to mount a campus-wide effort to integrate these technologies into the everyday lives of either students or faculty.
The approach that I'll need to take in helping to advance SocNet on campus is to look for niches where such technology might be used to enhance and support normal classroom interaction. One way in which we've begun to use some of these techniques is in the use of audio & video pod- or web-casts to provide general IT information, such as e-mail configuration, network storage access and other services offered by IT.
For now, I see my role as that of a (cautious) evangelist, taking every opportunity to discuss these technological options and probing for the right niches where some of these technologies might be able to augment existing programs.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Interesting that I should come across this post today. I'm a non-traditional student at OSU and have been thinking that the use of social media for study groups would certainly enhance my learning process. There is so much to cram into a quarter and the classes are to big to have real, meaningful discussions. If instructors had chat room hours to go along with their office hours, I think their would be greater participation and a higher quality of learning.
merrycricket, I think you have just defined one problem in education that social media can help to alleviate. While face-to-face, small group learning is the gold standard, the tools encapsulated in "Web 2.0" go a long way toward bridging the gap.
Post a Comment