Student Engagement Roundtable

13Dec08

I am really late with this “update” but better late than never!

A few weeks ago I attended the Student Engagement Roundtable that Dr. Alice Camuti put together.  She invited students and faculty who were interested to come and discuss using things like text messaging, social networking, social bookmarking, blogs, wikis and other widely-used technologies by the latest generation of college students in a classroom.  About a dozen people showed up from several different disciplines (Chemical Engineering, English, Art, Business, Biology and others) and discussed the use of of these technologies.

Andy Smith, an Instructor in English here at TTU, came with one of his previous students and presented on how he has embraced some of this technology in his class.  Here is a summary about the presentation Andy Smith and his student Sarah presented to help jumpstart the discussion.

“OMG Prof”: YouTubing, Facebooking, and Blogging in the Writing Classroom

Today, most students enter college already fluent in various forms of new media. While the essay itself remains a vigorous venue for creative expression, this genre every day responds to the collapsing of boundaries between genres and mediums.

Life in the world of hypermedia involves immersion in interactive arts that invoke immediacy. How might we fashion the composition classroom as a site that engages with new media while still inspiring the integrity of the essay as a valid form?

This collaborative presentation emerges from tentative experiments with these ideas in a first year writing classroom. Over the course of one semester, an instructor and student investigated the practical (and often playful) incorporation of such web-based realities as YouTube, Facebook, Blogger, and LiveJournal into the classroom.

The student’s projects included composing an essay about a YouTube commercial and utilizing YouTube as a source for research, employing Facebook as an alternative to email or course web tools for planning and networking, and completing an anti-essay in blog form. Web realities can be interpreted and analyzed as texts (as with YouTube) or they can be utilized as tools for composing, publishing, and networking (as with Facebook or blogs).

Through a multi-modal presentation about their discoveries, the co-presenters (an instructor and student) will provide a theoretical framework for hypermedia practices in the classroom based on current studies of online networking, share online examples of their work, and offer practical suggestions for incorporating YouTube, Facebook, and blogs into our classroom practice at the university.

The people that were there really were interested in how they could get the students involved using some of the technology they already use now.  We talked about different ideas and ways to implement using different technologies.

Clickers vs Cell Phones:

We have standardized on clickers here on campus, but another idea that was discussed was using software that allows students to use their cell phones to text answers for in class polls and things.  Dr. Camuti used a USB drive that she bought from telecommunications that is from Verizon Wireless that allows you to collect the data.  Another way is using www.polleverywhere.com.  Try it out, you can use it for free for small classes.  If you have larger classes you might have to get more creative and perhaps have questions that can be discussed and answered by small groups.  Janet Coonce has used this in her large Chemistry class and has liked it.  It gives you the ability to download a PowerPoint slide to just insert into your presentation if you would like to.  There is a free version that has some limitations, but using that creativity we could figure something out.

Another faculty member, Ward Doubet, mentioned about a project he has his students do.  They have to map out a road trip that has points of interest dealing with art.  Some of the tools like blogs, wikis or other software that can be shared with others could be perfect for this.  How fun and interesting that would be to read those!  It would be even more fun to go on one!

Some other points of discussion were:

• Peer evaluations and peer reviews by using blogs that are public
• Supplementing face-to-face with new communication and technology
• Options for assignments like a written paper OR an mp3 audio presentation
• Including a better communication area on your syllabus that lets students know the best ways to communicate with you using different tools, specifying timeframes and such
• Facebook and whether faculty want to allow students to see their “real-self” vs their “digital-self”, personal vs professional.

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Tags: Social Media, Student Engagement