Mobilizing Faculty into the Future: Using Online Technology as Teaching Tools

Methodology 4 – Effectiveness:
I thought using social media to encourage student interactivity during a summer online course would be relatively
easy to implement and would be welcomed by the students. The reality was that due to the huge diversity of work
and travel schedules, coupled with general indifference to voluntary participation in a project during a busy or recreational
time, only four out of ten students bothered to participate on the Facebook page, only two students out of
ten actually participated in the Google+ discussion -- end even then, it was difficult to find a common meeting time
just for those two, let alone for potentially ten total students if they had all participated. In addition, the students
had some difficulty figuring out how to connect through Google+.
Methodology 5 – Disadvantages:
It is apparent that in order to guarantee success in this type of project, mandatory student participation through a
course requirement with credit is necessary. However, it was too late to change my syllabus to include this requirement,
as the course had already started before I launched this project. Since most students these days are on Facebook,
that aspect of the project was and will be more successful than requiring students to register for yet another
online account. I underestimated the use of Google accounts or the desire to acquire one among students. However,
I understand that group videoconferencing will eventually be built into Facebook, making it totally transparent to users.
At that time I believe this approach to encourage group participation for online students using common social
media will be more successful, albeit a bit more challenging during the summer.
Additional Information:
I will continue to create Facebook pages for graphics courses for students to display and comment on their projects.
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