I do believe that it would work in building a relationship with your students. The real question is how responsive will you be when your student tries to contact you. My issue is that it's a conflict of interest at my school and we are not allowed to socialize with our students until after they graduate..............
Craig,
In order to keep the student/teacher relationship professional, I limit my current student interaction to LinkedIn, Twitter (class feed only), and the forum built into the student portal. I do not feel it is old fashion to limit social media interaction.
Wishing you continued success in the classroom.
Theresa Schmitt
Yes!
keeps them engaged both in and out of the classroom
Social networking incorporated into the classroom teaches proper internet etiquette and relates to employment opportunities.
interact in real time within a three-dimensionalenvironment daily with millions of people
wealth of resources
Blogs can post objectives, assignments, and act as a question and answer board.
Tweets short and sweet, provide a deeper context to the post.
Instructors may learn from each other and create a culture of collaborative learning end encourage peer coaching.
I can see how it would be advantageous, but can also see the possible problems that may occur as a result. Some educators are hampered by school policies that do not allow instructors to use social media for the purposes of education. If this is the case, most student/faculty portals have group discussion boards and perhaps this is a great substitute.
No outside contact with students is our policy at school. Only means of contact is thru email. We are not allowed to be Facebook friends until after they graduate from school. Company policies. Personally it would be a great way to bond with your students providing if you have portable units like a Ipad or smart phone. Not everyone owns one including myself.
I'm probably being labeled as old fashion, but I believe the instructor should remain disconnected socially from his or her students.Classroom time, office hours, and school e-mail should be enough contact time. The instructor can and should engage the students in the class envirnoment to know them better.
I'm personally not a fan of student and instructor interaction on social media sites because fraternization policies can be questioned. Unless a Facebook or twitter page is created with not only instructor and administrators able to view the content discussions and comments. As much as I would like to stay in contact with my students I think social media is a slippery slope for educators.
I think it's a great idea to have a class Facebook page. A class Facebook can be both informative and educational.
In our school it is actually frowned upon to connect with our students on social media, until they have graduated. However I encourage my students to connect together, it gives them a sense of belonging to something bigger. I also do allow them to facebook me after graduation and encourage them to start networking with other professionals.
Yes as long as it in a cotrolled environment that the topics are subject related only. I encourage my students to go on my Chef Mulia Food and Art page so they can discuss food related topics and draw information that corresponds to their culinary education. On your page you then can delete any thing off topic or offcolor and reiterate the parameters with your students.
I believe students and instructors should be able to connect through Social media if clear guidelines are set by the institution. It is a great place to promote anytime learning. The key is clear guidelines. Without this you will have to many ethical issues between student and instructor.
Yes, it is very important to have dialogue going on classroom topics that were discussed. Having social media keeps the students engaged until the next time class meets.
Yikes!
I was all set to say an emphatic "yes" until I read through the comments.
They made me stop and think. There have been so many cases in the news in just the past six months that would never have resulted in arrests were it not for postings on social media that proved illegal behavior.
That fact, and the number of institutions that forbid teacher/student contact on social media, suggest that it is wise to move carefully. For the protection of all involved, the communication would need to be clearly limited to course-relevant discussions. That would require extra thought and precautions. They would be worth the effort if they prevent the site being used for bullying or inappropriate messages.
Maybe I'll put more thought into how to do this well before pushing immediately into the social media. I'll begin by learning best practices from instructors who have been successful with them.
Yes, I believe an additional resource can be beneficial.
Bob I agree i gave out my cell # and that will never happen again the 3am call is not good.
Many schools actually frown upon teachers and students socializing outside of the school/classroom setting. This, then might be walking a fine line, and not one I'd personally like to cross. On the other hand, The class management programs that are becoming popular in colleges now do have the ability for students in a class to interact with each other and with the instructor. Students contact me all the time on that!
I think connecting on social media is a great idea! It can help keep students involved in the class and the instructor can check on a student if they are not showing up.
Connecting with my students on social media has been a helpful tool for me. Sometimes, I cannot connect with my students via telphone or email, but it seems as though whenever I try to contact them on Facebook, the students will respond immediately! The only thing is that some students fail to remain professional at all times and making sure that the students understand the boundaries, but this is a problem that can occur in the classroom as well. Other than that, I have had success with social media in the past and I plan to incorporate it even more in my future classes.
I believe that social media sites could be useful to an instructor if used correcty.
No I dont believe that teachers and students should be "friends" on facebook but I have utilized a Facebook page as a forum type page. I have posted assignments, pictures from classes, food for thought questions, discussion boards, etc.
I feel the instructor needs to be knowledgable in using Facebook or which ever site they choose because securities need to be in place and the page needs to be monitored often for content. There is no way to prevent off subject discussion if the site is not monitored by the instructor.
I feel like there are too many problems that can stem from this. Our School strictly forbids this type of relationship and I have had multiple students attempt to look me up and find out every little detail about me that they could. Having a seperate facebook which has no personal info of any type may prevent this type of problem but in post secondary education lines can get very blurred very quickly and this is certainly one way that can happen.
