New Media Resources

For more information about using new media technologies, check out the following works.

Books

Educating Educators with Social Media, edited by Charles Wankel, is brimming with case studies demonstrating social and new media implementation into the university classroom.

Web Resources

The Association for Social Media & Higher Education is a community for sharing information, learning, tools and ideas among social media practitioners, scholars and higher education officials.

New Media Literacies, a project headed by USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, is a portal for instructors interested in developing and sharing ideas for media use in the classroom.

The Pew Research Center's Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next: "A yearlong series of original reports that explore the behaviors, values and opinions of today’s teens and twenty-somethings."

• How much do you have in common with your students? Find out how Millennial you are.

ProfHacker, a blog from The Chronicle for Higher Education, "delivers tips, tutorials, and commentary on pedagogy, productivity, and technology in higher education." Follow ProfHacker on Twitter and Facebook.

Journal and News Articles

Dunlap, J. C., & Lowenthal, P. R. (2009). Tweeting the night away: Using Twitter to enhance social presence. Journal of Information Systems Education, 20(2). 

"The future of higher education: How technology will shape learning." (2008). The Economist Intelligence Unit. Retrieved from The New Media Consortium.

Zhao, D., & Rosson, M. B. (2009). How and why people Twitter: The role that micro-blogging plays in informal communication at work. In Proceedings of the ACM 2009 International Conference on Supporting Group Work.

Please feel free to leave suggestions for additions to this resource list in the comments!

The Pros and Cons of New Media in the Classroom

New media are an accepted form of communication and learning among Millennials, the current generation of students making their way into colleges and universities. Implementing these technologies in the classroom has a number of potential positive impacts on the higher-education environment.

New media contribute to higher education by…

• …enhancing professional writing skills.
  The brevity of new media encourages students to write clearly and concisely, especially important when using these technologies as professional communications tools. Social media also help students think critically about their contributions to the online community: the ideas and perspectives they share publicly.
•  …supporting informal, interactive learning.
  Incorporated into the classroom, new media help learners participate beyond traditional channels by allowing them to create personal learning environments. New media can be incorporated into textual assignments, allow students to both produce and access audiovisual content, and facilitate collaborative work and knowledge-building.
• …helping instructors address issues in a timely fashion.
  Time-sensitive matters, including questions and clarification for assignments and notification of personal emergencies, are easily handled by logging into Twitter and Facebook. The immediacy of online communication allows instructors to sort out issues before they spiral out of control. Instructors may also use social media to disseminate information related to the course and provide students with quick access to resources on the World Wide Web.
•  …allowing students to build and maintain relationships beyond the classroom.
  Social networks are used by professionals around the world, and students using those technologies can enhance their networking skills by interacting with authorities in their fields of interest. Relationships with classmates and instructors, which often end with a semester, may be maintained through social media connections.

Applying new media to the higher-education context is not foolproof, however. Before employing new media technologies in the classroom, instructors should carefully consider that…

• …not all Millennials use technology constructively.
  Because Milliennials were raised with computers, mobile phones, video gaming systems, and the Internet, instructors often overestimate these students’ technological savvy. Some Millennials lack basic computing skills, and despite their multitasking abilities, they are easily distracted and require some formal instruction.
• …new media use may spur a digital divide among students, their peers, and instructors.
  The use of new media in a course requires students to have access to potentially costly technology inputs. Lack of ready access to computers and mobile devices may put some students behind their peers. Likewise, instructors may lag behind their students in understanding social media, putting them at a disadvantage in the classroom.
• …the Web is a free, open, and often unpredictable environment.
  Unprotected student-produced content is open for commentary and criticism from non-class-related parties. Generating two-way dialog on blogs and microblogs is a potentially dangerous proposition for students unschooled in productive online interaction. Constant change requires students and instructors alike to stay abreast of new technologies and applications.
• …social media change how students and instructors interact.
  The norms of traditional classroom interactions may not translate into the realm of social media. The essence of social media lies in sharing personal information and media content, and such disclosure may result in loss of privacy for both students and instructors.

You want us to do WHAT?

Oh, boy, they don't look excited about this. Well, I guess excited might have been a little much to expect, but interested would have been nice. This could be a long term ... then again, maybe it's because I'm talking about technical communication at 2 p.m. in a small room on a summer day.

I'm not sure that's exactly what I was thinking, but that's probably pretty close to what was running through my mind as I introduced the course assignments to my undergraduate summer technical communication students. I put a lot of work into my class prep, since I added a new unit to the course - new media - so I was hoping for something more than 11 "you want us to do WHAT?" looks.

Since that first day, the students have come around a little. We've talked more about the media I expect them to create by Aug. 4, and a couple of them even have asked why we're doing more than writing papers and fact sheets. That explanation was simple - new media is here, guys, and it's not going anywhere. You need to know the basics of how to use Facebook for something other than posting your 21st birthday pictures and stalking the cute guy in the front row. You need to be prepared to embrace Twitter and blogging as a professional, even if you swear now that you'll never use them. And, you need to be comfortable with the technologies and media available now so that you're prepared for what is coming, the things we haven't even thought of yet, that you'll have to learn on the fly as a big kid.

Most of them pretended they understood what I was saying.

Even if they didn't understand, maybe they will by the end of the summer, after they choose a topic to research and write about, and an organization to represent. Based on their topics and organizations, they will create a strategic communication plan that has to include tweets, blogs and a Facebook page (among other, more archaic publications, like memos, fact sheets, press releases and reports). And - because I'm one of those instructors that expects way too much sometimes - all 11 of my students will have to observe and participate in streaming conversations over Twitter ... if they can keep up.

I'm trying to keep the assignments fairly simple. Tweets and blogs have to be about the topics they choose. That shouldn't be rocket science ... but we'll see. Their Facebook pages are supposed to represent their organizations/topics, and be connected to their tweets and blogs. I want those Facebook pages to be hidden - here's to hoping they follow directions - which isn't ideal, but the idea is to give them the experience of creating something professional on Facebook without starting a Facebook fan page battle that they may not be prepared to deal with.

Keeping the assignments simple also will allow me to include a few basic things about content development and management. We'll see how that goes.

So, one last question that I had to answer for myself, when we decided to share this info: Why does it matter to us - the faculty members, the graduate students, the professional communicators? That was simple. SAAS ... ACT Professional Development ... Western ... AAAE ... ACE ... NACTA ... AMS/NACT ... seven conferences, seven ongoing conversations about using and teaching new media.

Blogging is hard?

Last semester I tried to incorporate blogging into an undergraduate agricultural technology class. After all, we talk about current, past and future innovations that are related to agriculture. The Internet and more specifically, Web 2.0, falls into that category. I hear from students all the time they do not want to be "lectured to" but rather want "to do." So, how could encouraging students in a technology class to blog go wrong?

It did. I asked students (not all were agricultural media and communication majors) to do a feature story on a local innovator. Rather than turning the paper in through tradition methods, I wanted them to post it to the class blog (which I created). Simple enough, right? This assignment was not a new assignment in the class, but the way it was turned in was.

I assumed college-age students were familiar with blogging. After all, they do it everyday right? Wrong. Most of the class knew what blogs were but had never read a blog nor had they ever commented on one (not even a news story).

Where I failed was not properly training students on the technology. I assumed digital natives knew enough about web applications to post to a blog. And most did. From my observation, the idea of blogging, its significance to the course and real-world, the steps needed to post (creating an account, finding the blog, attaching files to a server, etc.), and its relationship to agriculture were foreign to students. Thus, my failure was in preparation. I assumed students knew the importance of new media to the overall cause and promotion of agriculture, its people and its products. However, when students do not see personal gain in a technology, how (without assistance) will they see professional gain in a technology?