Trials and Tribulations of Social Media in College Education

Social media has great, unrealized potential to improve student learning and engagement. Some f2f instruction encourages “cram, pass, and forget” learning strategies. Yet, my goals are to facilitate personal, profession, and scholarly development in students.  Student development requires smart use of social media.  Marshall McLuhan, media theorist in the 1960s, emphasized that media are not just passive channels of information.  He coined the phrase “medium is the message” and the term, “surfing.”  McLuhan promoted the notion that “media” had profound ramifications for social organization long before the WWW.  In Understanding Media, McLuhan defined “hot” and “cool” media to distinguish between the degree of involvement required of the participant.  In this paper I use these terms to describe the design of “hot” and “cool” assignments and learning environments.   Simply adopting social media tools may not help one learn, just as having a great textbook does not facilitate learning.   Surfing and online reading has made our students less able to read long and complex prose.  I describe adoption of a community of practice approach to teaching. This approach respects student differences and is multi-modal, including f2f, media, digital storytelling, students quizzing students, Flickr, Facebook, and, of course, plenty of “hands-on-fish.”