This post was written by NMS Public Affairs summer intern Anna Beavon Gravely.
Currently, there is a wide separation between social media and our education system. Few professors are doing anything to integrate social media tools in the classroom. Facebook, Twitter and Flickr are not just ways for students to fill the hour break between Physics and British Literature; they are important tools that are essential in nearly every industry. Politicians and businesses—big and small—are using Twitter to keep their followers informed of their speaking engagement or latest promotional gifts. Writers link to publications and production teams hype up their films. So why is it that social media is everywhere except the classroom?
Why would professors shy away from teaching or even incorporating social media tools in the classroom? Granted there are professors that are ready to be engulfed by the social media wave, but many still have their reservations.
Academia reveres length. Essays and term papers are long, impersonal, and formal, and the conventional wisdom is that longer papers are better, more thorough, and more developed. Students write to a minimum length for nearly every paper. However, it is one thing for a student to effectively communicate his thoughts in a 500-word essay, but takes another type of skill entirely to communicate the very same thought in a status update on Facebook or a single tweet. The shortened form of communication isn’t a representation of a lack of knowledge; it’s quite the opposite. A status or tweet represents the best use of words that efficiently and effectively communicate the opinion, and social media teaches us how to express our ideas concisely. With Facebook and Twitter, users are forced to write to the maximum length. Twitter allows no more than 140 characters and a Facebook status accepts no more than 420 characters. An effective communicator, which is what a writer aspires to be, can thoroughly express his thoughts even with the character limit, and effective communicators must learn how to write both long-form as well as short-form. Social media tools help us master that short form of communication.
The academic community strives to produce the most prepared students in their field. If that is truly the case, then why is social media non-existent in our curriculum? Because students are not taught in the classroom how to effectively use social tools, students who tweet their every thought with no strategy and stalk their Facebook friends every hour consider themselves to be “social media experts” -- which just isn’t true. Social media is a field that is constantly growing and the technology is ever-changing. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and Foursquare provide a more interactive consumer experience no matter what industry you’re in. For example, Fuse TV has taken advantage of the 500 million users on Facebook by allowing users to make music video requests with the help of a new Facebook app.
Education is a very formal process. Students read the text, take notes, listen to the lecture, and write furiously in an effort to catch everything the professor says. Only recently (in the grand scheme of time) have students been permitted to use computers in the classroom. There is a certain lack of seriousness associated with which social media in the academic world. Professors and adults (in general) think that the whole “social media fad” takes place within the younger, more technologically savvy generation. That isn’t true -- in fact the average age of a social network user is 37. Social Media is not a product of the multi-tasking youth; it’s an important communications channel. If the average age of a social network user is the age of recruiters that will be hiring the students out of college, why wouldn’t college administrators and professors make an effort to incorporate social media tools in lesson plans? Education and social media can no longer be mutually exclusive. The education profession must expand to embrace the technological advances of not only today, but also tomorrow.