Learning in Public: Faculty and Student Opinions About Social Media in the Classroom

Abstract

For communication instructors charged with safely and constructively educating students, incorporating social media in communication coursework presents a variety of problems. Among them are how to grade social media and how to respond to students’ social media mistakes, knowing these mistakes and corrections could follow students into their careers. This project surveyed journalism faculty (n = 125) and students (n = 323) to learn how each assess the challenges and opportunities of using social media in journalism coursework. Both groups expressed concerns about privacy, but faculty were also concerned about the legal consequences of students making mistakes publicly online.

Keywords

social media ethics media law privacy assessment libel

Introduction

Using social media for work is increasingly a requirement for communication professionals in public relations, advertising, and journalism. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (2015), jobs in advertising and promotions are expected to increase by 12% between 2012 and 2022, and 87% of small businesses rely on social media to create awareness and advertising (Fisher, 2014). The necessity of social media skills in professional work has heightened the debate over whether and how to incorporate social media in university coursework. Despite their perception as “digital natives,” college students are primarily experienced with social media as a strictly social and not a professional means of communication (Hirst & Treadwell, 2011).

The lack of preparedness to use social media in communication professions can lead to embarrassing missteps for individuals and the organizations they work for. In the media industry, social media best practices are sometimes prescribed in codes of ethics, but are largely a product of trial and error (Takacs, 2015). Many employees have learned lessons the hard way, losing jobs or having to give public apologies for indiscretions. For university instructors dually charged with providing honest constructive feedback while requiring students to engage in public platforms such as Facebook and Twitter (Bor, 2014), social media mistakes present professional and ethical dilemmas. For example, how do/should professors respond to novice students’ social media missteps, knowing that unedited mistakes are immediately public and that the digital footprint of such incidents can follow students into their careers? Acknowledging that instructors and their students may have differing perceptions and experiences using social media (Galant & Boone, 2011), we surveyed journalism faculty and students in the United States to understand their attitudes and opinions about incorporating social media into traditional coursework.

Literature Review

Social Media in Education

Perhaps the biggest debate about social media use in coursework is over whether it improves or hinders learning outcomes. Of particular concern is the seeming compulsion of students to check social media on their smart phones while in class (Xia, 2015). Such behavior drove the provost of Harrisburg University of Science and Technology to temporarily block campus access to social media networks to promote stronger face-to-face interactions among students and faculty (Troop, 2010). However, some research suggests that students use social media to reinforce and supplement personal networks with friends and family. On the flip side, research also suggests a cost to what Katz and Aakhus (2002) call “perpetual contact.” Social media use, including texting, during class can lead to students missing important information and facilitate cheating (Xia, 2015).

Research exploring social media use outside physical meetings and integrated more purposefully into broader coursework is trending more positively, suggesting it can be harnessed to promote learning. In a meta-analysis of 29 dissertations focused on social media, Piotrowski (2015) found only two studies suggesting a negative relationship on learning. Students, for example, report enjoying using social media in coursework (Abe & Jordan, 2013), and two thirds of faculty report using social media at some point in class, usually showing YouTube clips (Moran, Seaman, & Tinti-Kane, 2011). Other faculty have integrated social media use in coursework in more diverse ways. Some require students to use social media, particularly, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, to create original content, engage in peer discussions, or connect with professionals in their prospective fields. A growing body of research demonstrates that the collaborative potential of each of these activities is especially beneficial to learning both rote knowledge and critical thinking (Gikas & Grant, 2013; Kimmerle, Moskaliuk, Oeberst, & Cress, 2015; Pimmer, 2015). Furthermore, student use of social media in the context of course-based work is associated with higher enthusiasm, engagement, and even grades (Junco, Heibergert, & Loken, 2011; Pursel & Xie, 2014).

Yet there are caveats here, mostly with regard to specific types of assignments. For example, Lin, Hoffman, and Borengasser (2013) observed that Twitter engagement fell off over time and that students were reluctant to engage with others through a re-tweet or direct reply. Similarly, Kuznekoff, Munz, and Titsworth (2015) found that sending and receiving messages unrelated to course content correlated to a decrease in learning. Indeed, there are a number of variables at play in teaching effectiveness and social media merely introduces more. As Tess (2013) noted in his meta-analysis, most of the research on social media and teaching is diffuse, experimental, and reported by instructors particularly dedicated to making social media work in their teaching. Perhaps it is unsurprising that scant literature specifically addresses the use of social media in journalism coursework.

Journalism Professional Ethics and Classroom Ethics

Given that social media will likely be a job requirement and not just a learning tool, the stakes for including social media in journalism coursework would seem to be higher than in other fields. Social media allows students to interact with and produce content alongside professionals. This creates learning opportunities and networking but also carries great risk. A mistake on social media, whether it is a matter of inaccuracy or poor taste, could cost students in their future careers. For example, after the Penn State news blog, Onward State, falsely reported the death of former football coach, Joe Paterno in 2012, the student editor made national news and resigned. Googling “Onward State” or the student editor’s name and Penn State today demonstrates that although this is old news, the story never died.

An increasing number of news and creative media companies and organizations have specific social media policies to discourage missteps. For example, National Public Radio and the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) offer social media guidelines in addition to their main codes of ethics. However, language in codes of ethics is deliberately vague to avoid sounding like a contract, which, in theory, may open organizations to lawsuits for breach of contract (Foreman, 2016); the social media guidelines are gray. For example, SPJ writes, “These guidelines can be summed up in three words: Use common sense” (spj.org/social-media-guidelines.asp). Similarly, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association that provides social media guidelines for marketers simply advises marketers to exhibit behavior that promotes transparency and trust. No more detailed specifics are conveyed.

Despite these guidelines, social media mistakes happen. In the event of a social media mistake, whether an inaccurate tweet or tasteless quip, offenders, such as the editor of Onward State, find themselves publically shamed and can lose their jobs. Writing for the Public Relations Society of America website, public relations professional Jim Lukaszewski (2012) advises, “When you venture into social media territory you immediately experience the YOYO effect: you are on your own. Like it or not, that is the way it’s going to be.”

For instructors, the “YOYO” attitude potentially conflicts with the core of their educational profession. Part 2 of the statement of ethics of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) says,

As teachers, professors encourage the free pursuit of learning in their students. They hold before them the best scholarly and ethical standards of their discipline. Professors demonstrate respect for students as individuals and adhere to their proper roles as intellectual guides and counselors. Professors make every reasonable effort to foster honest academic conduct and to ensure that their evaluations of students reflect each student’s true merit. They respect the confidential nature of the relationship between professor and student. They avoid any exploitation, harassment, or discriminatory treatment of students. They acknowledge significant academic or scholarly assistance from them. They protect their academic freedom. (http://www.aaup.org/report/statement-professional-ethics)

If faculty members are “guides and counselors,” you could say they have an obligation to intervene and coach students about social media related to coursework. Also notable in this statement from the AAUP is the emphasis on the “confidential nature of the relationship between professor and student.” How does this apply to public course products, such as social media? If the work is public, does the instructor waive confidentiality? Does the student? Does it matter if the instructor teaches in a field where students produce content alongside their would-be peers, rather than, say, a nurse or scientist?

Because some research (Galant & Boone, 2011) on the attitudes of young people about social media suggests they are more open to sharing than older people (i.e., their professors), this study attempts to update earlier research by disaggregating the attitudes and behaviors of journalism faculty and students by surveying a national sample in the United States. Specifically, we posed the following research questions:

RQ1: How do faculty and students perceive integration of social media in journalism coursework?

RQ2: What are the biggest challenges of using social media in journalism coursework?

RQ3: How should social media assignments be managed and assessed?

Material and Method

To learn how faculty and students currently balance the need for real world social media experience with concern for students’ futures, this project surveyed journalism faculty (n = 125) and students (n = 323) in Spring 2014. A snowball sampling technique was used to collect data with recruitment emails being sent directly to faculty members at various universities in the United States. The email included a link to a questionnaire to be shared with students. We also posted a recruitment notice on Facebook pages of all major journalism and mass communication groups and sent invitation emails to journalism faculty around the country. Faculty were located based on various online listings that indicated the university or college has a journalism program.

The survey included both closed- and open-ended questions asking faculty and students to report on their use of social media in journalism- or communications-related courses. Open-ended questions focused on respondents’ use of social media and challenges associated with incorporating it in classes. Closed-ended questions included a combination of multiple-choice, categorical, Likert-type scale, and ordinal types of questions, designed to capture demographic information, opinions about social media between educators and students to formulate best practices for educators to train their students.

Qualitative content analysis, a method defined as a systematic analysis of latent meanings in data (Schreier, 2012), was used to analyze open-ended response items. Data from the following open-response items from faculty were analyzed: “What is the hardest part of incorporating social media in coursework?” “Why do you choose to or not to require social media in coursework?” “How have you addressed inappropriate or unprofessional social media use by your students?” and “What are the most common mistakes made by your students when using social media?”

The following open-ended items from student responses were also analyzed: “What have you/do you appreciate the most about being required to use social media in coursework?” and “What have you/do you appreciate the most about being required to use social media in coursework?” All the responses were organized in a spreadsheet then read closely to initially identify major themes and patterns, which were labeled for further thematic analysis. Using the constant comparison method (Glaser & Strauss, 2009) to refine coding categories and quantify cases fitting under each salient theme, we identified three major categories of findings.

Demographic Data

Our respondents included 60 (48%) male and 68 (52%) female faculty, and 76 (23.5%) male and 247 (76.5%) female students. In terms of academic majors, the sample was distributed predominately across four groups with 12.1% majoring in advertising, 19.5% in public relations, 26.3% in journalism, and 11.1% in communication. For faculty, respondents’ rank was distributed predominately across three groups: (26.4%) assistant professors, (33.6%) associate professors, and (10.4%) full professors. In the next section, we present overarching themes identified in our analysis focusing on (a) how faculty and students perceive social media platforms as learning tools, (b) the perceived ethical tensions associated with blending private and public lives, and (c) opinions about assessing social media–based activities.

Results

Social Media Platforms: Teaching and Learning Tools

A majority of the faculty and students in our sample agreed that it is important to incorporate social media–based activities in their journalism or communication courses as information gathering and networking tools because it is expected by the industry. As a professor with more than 10 years of industry experience explained,

We’re becoming increasingly social creatures and the media is moving that way. It’s important that our students know how to do this professionally and by following best practices.

Likewise, an associate professor with more than 6 years of industry experience reiterated the importance of graduating students who are media savvy as, “It’s expected by the industry that students will have this experience by the time they graduate; students must realize that there are many ways to communicate.” Similarly, a graduate student instructor with more than 6 years of industry experience described how inclusion of social media in curriculum could be a teaching and learning tool:

I choose to include social media because it’s a ubiquitous part of our lives. Increasingly professionals in the field are asked to learn to use the tools social media provides as they do their work—students must learn how to use these things before they leave our classrooms. So, I work it into my syllabus and my approach to teaching. I’ve also used Peartrees—sort of a collection site—in my classes which allowed my students to provide content for our conversations. Students are already online and already using social media, it’s up to us to help them understand how they can use it as professionals.

For their part, students who recognize the importance of being media savvy across all platforms appreciate the creative integration of social media in curriculum. A first-year student majoring in public relations appreciated the required use of social media in classes, saying,

Having social media as a requirement helps me get practice for business and professional settings and understand the differences between those and personal accounts.

Another student, a senior majoring in public relations, while recognizing that not everyone will be an expert on social media, appreciated its inclusion in curriculum:

I think as a communicator, it’s important. Many students come into the program with little to no knowledge of Twitter or LinkedIn and afterwards, they might not be pros, but they’re on a good path.

Notably, if students felt social media–based activities were incorporated into the curriculum well, they appeared more likely to say they understood its importance for their careers. Sample comments from students in this group included, “It allows students to get used to social media practices in a business/corporate structure, as opposed to casual and amongst friends,” and “It confirms that social media isn’t merely a waste of time, but rather an effective method of communication.” Although students in general appreciated having social media–based assignments, their approval was also influenced by their comfort levels using public platforms for communication. In the next section, we elaborate on how technological barriers and varying skill levels can undermine effective use of social media in classrooms.

Concerns About Sharing Private Information

Although Pew Research Center (2015) survey results showed 71% of teens surveyed reported using more than one social networking site regularly, when it comes to using these platforms in an academic environment, there are still concerns from both faculty and students. One of the salient concerns raised by majority of our faculty respondents was maintaining a divide between their own public and private information and protecting copyrighted content circulated as part of coursework. Some of the faculty respondents reported creating separate accounts for professional and personal use, as they did not want their students commenting on personal information.

A majority of faculty in our sample reported they tried and struggled to teach their own students how to keep their own personal information private while trying to engage with others on social networking sites. Some of the recurring comments by faculty referred to students as, “mixing up personal communication with business communication,” “over sharing and being too edgy,” “publishing photos or content that would be deemed questionable by a potential employer,” and “thinking their comments are private; commenting negatively on the professor; commenting on the class DURING CLASS TIME when they’re not supposed to be using it.”

Student respondents in our sample also raised concerns about required social media use in classes and forced “social” interaction with their peers and faculty. Some of the recurring comments included sentences such as, “I dislike being required to follow my professor and tweet with a class hashtag,” “In general, I do not care for social media and do not like being required to use it for class,” “It mixes school work with personal experiences,” and “I don’t like knowing our professors could potentially see our personal lives online.”

The privacy concerns are further complicated by how students perceive social media activities versus faculty expectations. Because most college students are accustomed to using social media for personal communication where they are informal, they perceive interaction with their faculty in a similar vein. A number of respondents commented, “It helps connect the class and the instructor more personally than over emails,” “We are able to express ourselves in a way that is relevant to our lives today,” and “It lets us be closer to the professor, takes the mystifying effect away from them and makes them more approachable.”

Faculty Concerns About Ethical and Legal Quagmires

An additional concern for faculty was when students use social media, and Twitter in particular, inappropriately while also using a course- or university-related hashtag. Then the inappropriate information becomes affiliated with the institution and the student’s identity, with no way for the faculty to directly delete the questionable material. In general, faculty expressed a reluctance to address student mistake through social media, instead choosing to address the issue in the classroom or with the individual student privately. As one example, an associate professor with more than 16 years of industry experience described difficulties involved with keeping students professional on social media, especially when they share private or inappropriate information in public:

They sometimes stay too long in a back-and-forth conversation that should go into direct messages or offline after it ceases to be of general interest. Every now and again they give an opinion that goes over the line. A few times they’ve given info that should have remained private (e.g., a street address or phone number).

Only one student (incorrectly) questioned that perhaps requiring social media violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which protects the privacy of student educational records. Faculty overwhelmingly reported using social media for sharing classroom announcements and fielding student questions as they would in a more traditional course management system. Grades were not presented over social media.

Faculty respondents, however, raised legal questions pertaining to libel and copyright. An assistant professor with more than 6 years of industry experience described his experience with students who sometimes cross ethical boundaries and go a step further and publish content with errors. The faculty wondered who, ultimately, could be held liable for libel if the student is tweeting for class. Another faculty concern was students improperly using copyrighted content, which included unattributed circulation of information and unintended infringement of visual content produced by other students. A full professor with more than 16 years of industry experience uses caution when it comes to incorporating social media in his classes because of the copyright issue stating,

It doesn’t make a lot of sense right now to use [social media] too much. Most know how but the copyright factor creates some serious issues that we’re not really sure how to overcome at the moment. People steal photography all the time and so to put it out there on social media is fraught with a certain amount of danger. Yes, there are some ways to slow some people down, but there have been several high profile cases recently of stolen images that we’re taking the slow approach.

The flip side is that faculty also need to help students protect their own work and reputations in a digital first media environment where graduates will have to work as freelancers or independent entrepreneurs.

Challenges of Measuring and Meeting Learning Outcomes on Social Media

An expanding collection of social media platforms continues to open up new ways of producing and consuming information online; however, there is no consensus on how to effectively teach and assess learning outcomes of social media–based activities. Faculty respondents in our sample raised three key points about incorporating social media in curriculum—(a) designing meaningful assignments, (b) quality control, and (c) time management. Although social media allows users to connect instantly with others and access information in a timely manner, pedagogically, instructors still need to teach students how to find credible information and interact with target audience effectively.

Designing Meaningful Assignments

An assistant professor with more than 1 year of industry experience described challenges of designing pedagogically sound assignments:

I find developing rigorous assignments that use social media to be the biggest obstacle. They are varied technologies with multiple uses, but evaluating students’ understanding of these various uses is exceptionally difficult, mostly because the actual texts produced via social media use do not often allow students to display a depth of knowledge in one, discrete assignment.

Another assistant professor with more than 1 year of industry experience noted that sometimes technology and student preferences could be a barrier when formulating activities:

Finding a platform that all students are naturally inclined to use is the hardest part. I find Facebook to be most useful for sharing stories, studies, commentary, etc., and for actually creating conversation, but more and more of my students are dropping it from their media routines. I find Twitter to be too brief, too non-visual, and the posts too solitary to be useful for much more than link sharing. They love Instagram, but I haven’t found a useful way to use that as a teaching tool. Plus, by encouraging students to go to each platform, you’re inviting distraction. . . . Another big factor with my specific student population is that not all of them have smart phones or constant access to mobile wifi.

Millennials who have grown up with social media are good judge of academically driven assignments versus “busy work” as was illustrated by a significant number of student respondents complaining about: “Sometimes social media is seen as an escape from coursework,” “I think it’s a little overwhelming to post daily about a course, when many of your followers aren’t in those classes,” “A ‘going through the motions’ procedure. Posting just to post, no substantial meaning behind it,” and “It can become distracting. I’ve found that I use my personal accounts less, when I’m required to use it for class assignments.” One common theme among students who are unhappy with the mechanical aspect of the assignment is that instead of getting engaged and better with social networking, they are becoming even more resistant to the potential of the platforms.

Adhering to Academic Standards

If the goal of preparing next generation of media professionals to be social media savvy involves students being able to write copy that is appropriate for target platform, grammatically correct, and engaging, assignments need to reinforce those skills constantly. However, these learning goals are hard to reach as was illustrated by number of faculty commenting that students are “Not understanding that social media is simply another platform to deliver news, so the old rules apply: proper grammar, news judgment, professionalism, verification, etc.,” “They assume they’re writing to friends and/or people like them rather than to an audience of strangers who may or may not understand the tone and intent of their messages,” and “Not thinking before they post something, focusing on partying/alcohol use, saying inappropriate/offensive things.”

Although our faculty respondents struggle to get students to produce content meeting course requirements, students were equally vocal about challenges of relying on technology outside of classroom for assignments. For example, a junior majoring in journalism noted, “Sometimes the technology messes up, and that’s out of our control,” highlighting how third-party software and unreliable access to the Internet can jeopardize educational outcomes.

Managing Flow of Information on Social Media

The attraction of social media platforms lies in the instant access to an immense amount of information. In an educational setting, this can be challenge for instructors and their students. A majority of our faculty pointed to time-consuming aspect of grading assignments on social media as either a disadvantage for using the platforms or a reason for not incorporating it their curriculum. Responses from faculty ranged from, “It must be graded immediately or it gets very hard to pick it out of the flood of other social media content,” “Keeping track of student posts and evaluating them,” to “It’s hard to keep track of all of the students’ work and there’s no good way to archive things on Twitter. Facebook is even more of a bear with public/private settings and such.” Similarly, students who have to keep up with their peers’ and instructor’s posts struggle to stay on track, as noted by comments from our respondents, which included, “There’s a lot of people in class and using one hashtag to look for everyone’s stuff is too messy,” “It is not the easiest to keep track of. Many things can be lost over the course of a semester,” and “It is sometimes hard to stay on top of.”

Discussion and Conclusion

The goal of this project was to see how communication students and faculty balance and rationalize social media in their coursework. Both students and faculty agreed it was an important component, but had slightly different concerns about the practice. Faculty acknowledged the difficulty of getting students to produce professional content on platforms students are inclined to use to communicate with friends and family. Meanwhile, some students felt that being required to use social media for coursework imposed unfairly on their strictly social networks.

Faculty and students both expressed privacy concerns, but faculty vocalized more concern over lack of clarity about how to deal with potential legal problems that could arise from requiring social media use, copyright, and libel among them. The legal logic typically applied to campus publications is that the more a university-affiliated advisor reviews content, the more potentially liable for a lawsuit he or she is. This is a potentially serious matter that faculty requiring social media use should investigate with the legal counsel of their university. If the university has libel insurance, would they be covered in the course of their teaching duties?

When faculty observed unprofessional behavior, more often than not they chose to speak with the student privately and confidentially, as prescribed by the AAUP statement. We do not know from our data, however, what the faculty ultimately advised the student to do, for example, publically correct the mistake or merely remove the questionable content. Again, in theory, students and faculty understood the importance of using social media in coursework, but both groups acknowledged practical concerns, including fear of relying on perceived imperfect technology to track graded assignments and the feeling that somehow requiring students and faculty to use social media requires them to always be on call, with no delineated break from class.

Given the disconnect between what students and faculty, namely, that students appear more focused on the impact of social media on their personal networks over their potential future professional ones, we suggest that students and faculty begin each course with a discussion about each other’s perceived value of social media in coursework and each other’s expectations for using it. While Allen (2013) offers practical guidelines for integrating social media in coursework, our data show that students and faculty may find it productive and useful to formulate their own social media guidelines. It is likely that like in journalism ethical guidelines, transparency and trust will figure prominently in the discussion. Faculty should also be honest with students about their concerns for the potential of libel and copyright violations on social media. Law and ethics need not be confined to topical courses. Finally, we believe that if students and faculty model good values and practice their interactions with each other, they will be more likely to exhibit these traits in their social media after the class concludes.

In a rapidly evolving social media environment, where practice and adoption seem more driven by the fear of being left out than critical practice, future research on social media and journalism education is rich with opportunity. Specifically, we look forward to research that explores the content of social media posts as well as comparative analyses of how universities’ social media policies trickle down to faculty and student behavior.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Andrea Hickerson is an associate professor and the director of the School of Communication at Rochester Institute of Technology. She conducts research on journalism routines and transnational media.

Ammina Kothari is an assistant professor in the School of Communication at Rochester Institute of Technology. She studies global communication and journalism practices with special focus on conflicts, health, gender, technology and religion.

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