Social Media in the Classroom

Picture this: I am lying cozy in my bed at 11:24 p.m. on a random weekday night. I am scrolling mindlessly through social media — trying to unwind and relax, but there is a weird nagging feeling in my stomach that I am missing something. When I wake up in the morning, I have missed an assignment. Oh no!

Now, picture this:  I am lying cozy in my bed at 11:24 p.m. on a random weekday night.  I am scrolling mindlessly through social media — trying to unwind and relax, but there is a weird nagging feeling in my stomach that I am missing something. As I scroll through Instagram stories, I come across a post from the COM 570 Instagram account, run by our professor, Jon Pfeiffer. It is a story reminding us that another essay is due before class starts and a reminder to make sure to get it done. I jump out of bed — I knew I was missing something! I complete the essay and get it in before the deadline. Yay!

This story may be a dramatization, but I firmly believe that social media could be a fun and creative way of reaching students; to give them study tips, remind them of assignments, and create a safety net for overwhelmed students using social media to procrastinate or distract themselves. Of course, many professors would feel annoyed by this suggestion; why go the extra mile to post on social media? College students are adults and should be treated as such. But higher education professors across the country have been integrating social media into their classroom curriculums. The Higher Education Research Institute found that 94 percent of first-year college students spent time on social networking sites in a typical week. Based solely on the amount of time and the percentage of students who use social media regularly, integrating it in and out of the classroom may be worth the extra effort on behalf of the professors. In 2011, researchers reported on a social media survey that showed “nearly two-thirds of all teaching faculty have used social media in their class sessions,  and 30% have posted content for students to view outside class.” A blog article from Hootsuite, a social media management platform, uses the example of a course from Memorial University to explain how and why professors should use social media in the classroom. The professor used Twitter as a discussion forum, where students tweeted about their readings and research for their Human Kinetics and Recreation 1000 course. Utilizing the hashtag #HKR1000, the professor uploaded tweets to mark discussion forums and remind students of due dates and course assignments. Utilizing social media in this way can also create another avenue of connection between professor and student — the student can begin to view the professor as a real human being who posts and exists on social media. An experimental study from the Routledge Journal of Communication Education found that “participants who accessed the Facebook website of a teacher high in self-disclosure anticipated higher levels of motivation and affective learning and a more positive classroom climate.”

As an avid social media user, social networking sites can often distract me and remove my mental focus from my education or school work. Yet, it is a part of my life which has seemingly always existed and which I project will never go away. Therefore, rather than banning, fighting against, or dissuading the use of social media in and out of the classroom, professors should lean into the terrifying creep of social media into every aspect of our lives and utilize it to communicate with the new generation of college students. If you can’t beat them, join them.