Social Media vs Conventional Academia?

Since coming home from India I have given a lot more thought to this whole social media question in an educational setting.  Until recently I did not realize that sometimes my thoughts on the benefits of the emerging digital culture are not just different from conventional forms of learning, but they are in outright opposition to the traditional education model. 

The first week of school I picked up a copy of the Daily Universe and noted the first page article, “BYU professors turning to social media.”  Because this is in my realm of interests and I have had a great experience with it in India and Ghana, I picked it up.

I was disappointed by the article.  I think it was nice that it addressed the growing social media in classroom question, but in many ways it seemed very surface level—making me think that in general we have not fully grasped the benefits linked with social media for educational purposes.  While there were a few references to an online discussion, the article did not seem to hint that this online discussion could be held with others outside of the classroom and in the real world.  Facebook was the only type of media mentioned, which was discredited as a way for teachers to creep on students and even cause some distraction, where other resources, such as academic blogs, were not even mentioned.  Professor Parker, a religious professor, mentioned that he does not “see social media playing a large role” in any of his classes,” and I think many professors are in that line of thinking.

What is disappointing to me is that I have seen the benefits of integrating my education with social media in a very real way.  Because I have been able to connect with real people and engage in a large audience than myself and a single professor, I have started to care more about it.  Right now, though I am just an undergrad, I am able to establish an online presence which will hopefully aid me in my quest to become a writer, find a job, and get accepted to grad school.    

I feel like academic in general is a little behind the times.  While the print and publishing world is dying we seem to be content sitting in a sinking ship, musing that it is much more fun to turn pages of a real book and turn in pretty, Times-new Roman, printed papers.  I was more than a little disappointed that after buying most of my textbooks this semester on my Nook I discovered that I will not be able to use it on the open book portion midterm for my class on English modernism (what irony).  I’m not saying there are not real concerns to address here with cheating, etc., but I am anxious to see what academic decides to do with this oncoming storm.  Things are about to really change.

But surely I'm not the only one thinking this.  Why in my C.S. Lewis class did the students let out a resounding, "yes!" when the teacher told us we could do online learning journals on blogger?  (This is my blog for that class, by the way).  There is something exciting about merging our academic and personal lives into one, cohesive medium that can be shared with people who actually care, and students are starting to realize that.  

Now that I am stumbling upon these realizations I feel like I want to write some kind of formal paper that articulates some of my positive experiences with social media in a meaningful way.  I think we have a lot more to learn about the benefits of it in the educational sphere, and it is worth taking a serious look at.