Integrating Social Media into Online Educational Spaces: Modeling Professional Practice in Instructional Interactions

Dr. Brad MehlenbacherLeadership, Policy & Adult & Higher Educationbrad_m@ncsu.edu

Ashley R. KellyCommunication, Rhetoric, & Digital Mediaarkelly2@ncsu.edu

NC State UniversityRaleigh, North Carolina

Computers & Writing 2012

Social media in instruction: Outline

Audiences for social media Social media history Opportunities and challenges of

social media Emerging social media literacies Contested writing spaces Struggles in contested spaces Instruction and professional writing

as humanistic Rhetorical professional writing

instruction Challenges to a humanities

orientation.*

Sirona Says Blog (2008). Available online: http://blog.sironaconsulting.com/sironasays/2008/06/social-media-ro.html *To download this presentation, see http://www.slideshare.net/bradmehlenbacher/

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Audiences for social media Interviews with 1,753 (12+) people in 2010 indicate that 48%

have profile pages on Facebook, LinkedIn (75% = 18-24). 30% use social networking sites several times/day By 2008, 48% of 3054 Internet adults have visited video-

sharing applications (double last year) 400 million active Facebook users; 106 million Twitter users Frequent social networkers are active and group-oriented

learners and watch less TV Social media are difficult to categorize, to compare, and to

describe in terms of their functional goals

Cheung, C. M. K., Chiu, P-Y., & Lee, M. K. O. (2011). Online social networks: Why do students use facebook. Computers in Human Behavior, 27, 1337-1343.Miller, C. C. (2010). Twitter loses its scrappy start-up status. The New York Times, April 15. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/technology/16twitter.html Rainie, L. (2008). Video sharing websites. Project Data Memo of the PEW Internet and American Life Project. Available online: http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media/Files/Reports/2008/Pew_Videosharing_memo_Jan08.pdf.pdf Stross, R. (2010). Getting older without getting old. The New York Times, March 6. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/business/07digi.html?_r=1 Webster, T. (2010). The social habit—Frequent social networkers. The Edison/Arbitron Internet and Multimedia Study 2010. Somerville, NJ: Edison Research.

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Social media history Hundreds, perhaps

thousands, of social networking applications created since 1997

Boyd, D. M., & Ellison, N. B. (2008). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13 (1), 210-230. Available online: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.htmlethority’s comprehensive social media graphic at http://www.ethority.de/weblog/social-media-prisma/(see also http://www.go2web20.net)

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Opportunities and challenges of social media

Adopted from:Arola, K. L. (2010). The design of Web 2.0: The rise of the template, the fall of design. Computers and Composition, 27 (1), 4-14. Boston, I. (2009). Racing towards academic social networks. On the Horizon, 17 (3), 218-225.Bilton, N. (2010). Price of Facebook privacy? Start clicking. New York Times, May 12. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/technology/personaltech/13basics.html?pagewanted=print Griffiths, M., & Light, B. (2008). Social networking and digital gaming media convergence: Classification and its consequences for appropriation. Information Systems Frontier, 10 (4), 447-459. Lange, P. G. (2008). Publicly private and privately public: Social networking on YouTube. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13 (1), 351-380. Lundin, R. W. (2008). Teaching with wikis: Toward a networked pedagogy. Computers and Composition, 25 (4), 432-448. Maranto, G., & Barton, M. (2010). Paradox and promise: MySpace, Facebook, and the sociopolitics of social networking in the writing classroom. Computers and Composition, 27 (1), 36-47. Young, K. S. (2004). Internet addiction: A new clinical phenomenon and its consequences. American Behavioral Scientist, 48 (4), 402-415. Zimmer, M. (2008). Preface: Critical perspectives on Web 2.0. First Monday, 13 (3). Available online: http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2445/2213

Emerging social media literacies

Coppola, N. W., Hiltz, S. R., & Rotter, N. G. (2002) Becoming a virtual professor: Pedagogical roles and asynchronous learning networks, Journal of Management Information Systems, 18 (4) 169–189. Jenkins, H., Purushotma, R., Clinton, K., Weigel, M., & Robinson, A. J. (2006). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. An Occasional paper for digital media and learning. MacArthur Foundation. Available online: http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/{7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E}/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF

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Current strategies for integrating social media into educational spaces

Social media use is always changing (non-stable), instructionally and professionally.

Contested writing spaces “What unites and distinguishes these digital writing

environments from those in print is their materiality–their existence through the hardware and software that shape their design or what Lessig (2006) calls ‘architecture’” (p. 508)

“While digital writing spaces are coded in diverse ways, they all exist in and through digital technologies, and as such they enable, constrain, challenge, reproduce, or question established practices, social orders, and hierarchies rooted in print materialities while also offering alternative practices and social orders to those established around print” (p. 508)

“Each new discursive space … is a unique constellation of participants and digital software codes” (p. 403).

Starke-Meyerring, D. (2008). Genre, knowledge and digital code in web-based communities: An integrated theoretical framework for shaping digital discursive spaces. International Journal of Web Based Communities, 4 (4), 398-417.Starke-Meyerring, D. (2009). The contested materialities of writing in digital environments: Implications for writing development. In R. Beard, M. Myhill, J. Riley, & M. Nystrand (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of writing development (pp. 506-526). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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Struggles in contested spacesStruggles overEqual accessIntellectual property and sharingPrivacy and surveillanceImplicationsPolicy engagement and research attention: “what student writers, citizens, and others will be able to access, build on, what kind of knowledge they will be able to make (p. 520)Reconsidering writing pedagogies, policies, and infrastructures: “that allow students to critically analyze and engage in the design, use, and regulation of the … spaces they inhabit” (p. 522).

Starke-Meyerring, D. (2008). Genre, knowledge and digital code in web-based communities: An integrated theoretical framework for shaping digital discursive spaces. International Journal of Web Based Communities, 4 (4), 398-417.Starke-Meyerring, D. (2009). The contested materialities of writing in digital environments: Implications for writing development. In R. Beard, M. Myhill, J. Riley, & M. Nystrand (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of writing development (pp. 506-526). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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Instruction and professional writing as humanistic

Tacit positivist assumptions of both science and technical writing pedagogy leads to view of writing as superfluous—“technical and scientific writing become just a series of maneuvers for staying out of the way” (p. 613)

However, “Facts do not exist independently, waiting to be found and collected and systematized; facts are human constructions which presuppose theories” (p. 615)

This view of writing as epistemic and transformational highlights invention, agency, genre, and community

Instruction too becomes argument, construction, critique A non-rhetorical professional writing classroom

emphasizes (rules, procedures, methods, technical “accuracy” and “completeness” and single authorship of uncontested scientific and technical “facts”).

Miller, C. R. (1979). A humanistic rationale for technical writing. College English, 40 (6), 610-617.

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Rhetorical professional writing instruction

A rhetorical professional writing classroom Focuses on critical role of rhetorical invention,

investigative and symbolic technologies and processes of emergent knowledge (writing as epistemic)

Critiques scientific and technical objectivity as driving principles in the construction of arguments/texts

Examines various materialities and spaces, contested and established

Highlights audience, community, and participation (“concepts, values, traditions, and style”)

Assesses and critiques reductivism and determinism in scientific and technological contexts and cultures.

Miller, C. R. (1979). A humanistic rationale for technical writing. College English, 40 (6), 610-617.

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Challenges to humanistic orientation

What we do now (skills-based training) is a reaction to the anti-intellectual privileging of STEM disciplines inside and outside the academy and driven by funding and budget cuts (and threats of further cuts)

Adjuncts, instructors and other non-tenure track faculty hoping to re-conceptualize as humanistic their professional writing classes may face bureaucratic and negative feedback (or worst individual reprimand)

We are inadvertently colluding to render our discipline irrelevant by ignoring the principles, theory, history, and convictions of humanistic disciplines.

Bousquet, M. (2008). How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation. NY, NY: NYU Press.Brown, M. (2011). The Sciences vs. the Humanities: A Power Struggle. The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 11. Available online: http://chronicle.com/blogs/old-new/the-sciences-vs-humanities-a-power-struggle/336 Wright, J. (2012). Debating higher ed: STEMs, skills, humanities, and hiring. Newgeography.com, February 9. Available online: http://www.newgeography.com/content/002661-debating-higher-ed-stems-skills-humanities-and-hiring

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Thank you. Questions?

Mehlenbacher, B. (2010). Instruction and Technology: Designs for Everyday Learning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Mehlenbacher, B., McKone, S., Grant, C., Bowles, T., Peretti, S., & Martin, P. (2010). Social media for sustainable engineering communication. SIGDOC’10: The 28th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication. São Carlos-São-Paulo, Brazil: ACM Press.