College
students practically live in social media. Accounts are free and new enhancements
are added all the time. So doesn’t it make sense that professors should use
social media to post course materials and communicate with their classes?
It’s
a great idea except for one thing: the horrified reaction of students.
“We
asked 236 students in two states if they believe there is a use for these sites
in the learning process,” stated the research report by Diana L. Haytko,
Florida Gulf Coast University, and R. Stephen Parker, Missouri State University,
in the Journal of Instructional
Pedagogies. “The answer was a definite NO. Students want to keep their
social roles and their student roles separate.”
In
response to Haytko’s and Parker’s online survey, 73.2% of students rejected the
notion of faculty using Facebook to post course content and class messaging and
84.5% felt the same way about Twitter. Even those who were okay with professors
employing social media tools thought it ought to be limited to merely
communicating reminders and providing links to content elsewhere. Most
students, however, expressed sentiments such as this:
“I don’t think it should be; I think that’s for the college student generation to stay connected, not the entire college faculty and staff. Facebook with the older generation has gotten out of hand in my opinion.”
The
researchers also asked students whether it was appropriate for faculty to post
course content specifically for access on an iPhone. There the students were
divided almost 50-50, with most of the negative response stemming from concern
that many students don’t own iPhones and wouldn’t want to be required to
purchase one. But otherwise many respondents thought it would be convenient to tap
into course materials and recorded lectures via phone while on the go.
