Embedded Files
Online Faculty Development Course
Social Media
Social Media
Social media is a huge category with vague edges. However, Social Media is where a lot of us interact with others, get our news, do shopping, relax, watch videos, and more. If we are interested in students creating a more traditional blog-style type of thing, we can use Reddit (See Leveraging Reddit in academia for more information), though we can do something similar with a Microsoft Teams Team, though the audience will be much smaller.
Some faculty have used social media sites like X, Instagram, and even Facebook in classes successfully, and it's tempting because it's so widespread. But there are two considerations to doing so:
Do you use social media to communicate with friends, family, colleagues, or perhaps a broader following? If not, then using it to communicate with students may be more trouble than it's worth. After all, it's one more thing you must learn.
Your students probably have social media accounts, but they may not. Students who do use it might be reluctant to mix their academic and private life by using an existing social media account. If work in social media is a major part of your course, you could ask them to create an account just for your course. But be sensitive to student reluctance or objections.
If you have specific, describable reasons for using social media in your class that are related to learning goals or objectives, then proceed. If not, and you really just need a place for asynchronous discussion, consider D2L instead.
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