And They’re Off..

Saturday is the 135th Kentucky Derby.  But that is not the race I’m alluding to.

I’m in a race of my own.  I’ve been challenged by Lindenwood University School of Communications Assistant Professor, Jill Falk,  to see who will first reach 400 followers on Twitter.  She was ahead when she challenged me on Tuesday.  She is still ahead and quickly closing in on 400. Falk is among a growing number of professors using Twitter in the college setting:

Facebook may be the social medium of choice for college students, but the microblogging Web tool Twitter has found adherents among professors, many of whom are starting to experiment with it as a teaching device.

Marquette University associate professor Gee Ekechai uses Twitter to discuss what she’s teaching in class with students and connect them with experts in the field of advertising and public relations.

Twitter is helping these professors build community in their classes in a way that appeals to some members of a Facebook-addicted generation. The phenomenon is certainly not ubiquitous, and some professors have found Twitter doesn’t do anything for them in the academic realm.

But others, particularly those who teach in communications fields, are finding that Twitter and other social media are key devices for students and faculty to include in their professional toolbox.

Ekechai started teaching Marquette’s first undergraduate class in social media this semester. She requires students to use the tool for a month. When guest speakers come to class, some students are responsible for publishing the speaker’s thoughts on Twitter during the presentation – called “live tweeting.”

The exercise helps students develop key skills: listening, information-gathering, multitasking and succinct writing. Twitter allows only 140 characters per tweet.

Twitter also allows faculty members to post links to what they’re reading. Students who “follow” a professor’s tweets can get a look at the news stories that help inform their professor’s lectures or connect with the experts their teachers are following.

“If I stumble upon something that’s relevant, I could post that up there, and then when we meet back again in class, I can say, ‘Make sure you look back again at last week’s Twitter posts,’ ” said Marc Tasman, a lecturer in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s journalism and mass communication department who uses Twitter.

Menck says Twitter has increased the amount of communication she has with students. She gets direct messages from students about the industry or the course. She also “listens” to the conversations students have with each other on Twitter to gauge what they’re interested in or what questions they have.

“I’ve been on this morning, and I see my students posting a lot of great links to information about social media, information about going on in the advertising industry, and how public relations is changing,” she said.

Ekechai and Menck see it as their responsibility to teach students about Twitter because social media knowledge is becoming essential to their future fields – communications, advertising, public relations and marketing.

The Internet in general has changed the practice of public relations, allowing companies or brands to communicate directly with consumers and, in some cases, bypass the media.

Connecting to students on Twitter can invite a more informal level of conversation – something Menck enjoys but that not all academics would be comfortable with. One student seemed shocked when Menck tweeted, “Going into 3 hour faculty meeting. Time to catch up on my sleep!”

Not everyone in academe is as comfortable using Twitter to interact with students.

John Jordan, an associate professor in UWM’s communication department, teaches students about social media but doesn’t use Facebook or Twitter with students, opting for more formal channels of communication.

“Not all of yourself can be public,” he said. “There are notions of professionalism. Just the little back and forth that you have with your friends – you may not want your students to ask you about that.”

Others have doubts about Twitter’s educational usefulness. McGee Young, assistant professor of political science at Marquette, experimented with Twitter this semester, posting links and encouraging students to follow him.

With the experiment nearly over, Young said he doesn’t see the tool as useful in an academic sense because he can’t restrict the conversation to people in his class, as he can when he uses Marquette’s online class organization tool, Desire2Learn.

“If there’s 25 of you there in a crowd of 500, and you’re trying to have a discussion in the midst of a large crowd, you can talk to two or three people at a time, but the other 25 aren’t going to be part of the conversation in any meaningful way. That’s what happens with Twitter,” he said.

Tasman, on the other hand, said he prefers Twitter to Desire2Learn because Twitter is immediate and has no barriers to posting links. Plus, he believes Twitter will inevitably become universal.  (source)

If you are on Twitter please help me whip the good professor from Lindenwood.  This is, of course, all in fun.  But I still want to win.  If you are on Twitter please follow me.