Category: social media

288. Mobile-Mindful Teaching and Learning

Posted in edtech, evidence-based practices, higher education, inclusion, learning, mobile, pedagogy, social media, teaching, universal design
May 10, 2023

Faculty generally design courses on their computers, but many students interact with courses through mobile devices. In this episode, Christina Moore joins us to discuss the benefits of being mobile mindful in course design.

Christina is the Associate Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. She is the author of Mobile-Mindful Teaching and Learning: Harnessing the Technology that Students Use Most, which was recently released by Stylus Publishing.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Faculty generally design courses on their computers, but many students interact with courses through mobile devices. In this episode, we discuss the benefits of being mobile mindful in course design.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…

Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.

[MUSIC]

John: Our guest today is Christina Moore. Christina is the Associate Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. She is the author of Mobile-Mindful Teaching and Learning: Harnessing the Technology that Students Use Most, which was recently released by Stylus Publishing. Welcome, Christina.

Christina: Thank you so much. So glad to be here.

Rebecca: Today’s teas are:… Christina, are you drinking tea?

Christina: I am.

Rebecca: Woohoo,what kind? [LAUGHTER]

Christina: I have to, of course. I am having honey vanilla chamomile tea. Just something refreshing and light.

Rebecca: That sounds perfect for a Friday afternoon. [LAUGHTER]

John: And I have one of my usuals, ginger peach green tea, today.

Rebecca: I just got a new shipment of my blue sapphire tea pack. So I’m back to drinking that. It’s a good spring tea.

John: And it’s all sparkly, isn’t it?

Rebecca: It’s not sparkly, it’s blue sapphire.

Christina: I never heard of sparkly tea, but I’m intrigued.

Rebecca: There is. We need to get our hands on some.

John: It was the same episode where you describe that tea. We’ve invited you here to discuss Mobile-Mindful Teaching and Learning. You note that you started writing this book on your phone? Can you tell us a little bit about the origin of this book project?

Christina: Yes. So probably the very first step is my interest in Universal Design for Learning. I find it to be a really useful framework for thinking as expansively as possible about how students can learn and how we, as instructors, can be involved. So my very first interest into mobile-mindful teaching in earnest was reading Tom Tobin and Kirsten Behling’s Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: UDL in Higher Ed, and they have a chapter on “Meet the Mobile Learners” that was really this important call to learning with our phones and how, as educators, we’re really missing out if we’re not willing to consider the role that that could play, and I thought the argument was really convincing. So I started to do just a little bit of exploration into the topic. And that was probably in January 2020. And then a couple months later, COVID hit in earnest. It really upended our lives. I’m a mother of two young kids, and they were two and four at the time. So it was sometime in late March or early April, that we had been so cooped up, and we had used the family minivan so seldomly that we decided just to play in the car, that that would be the activity; not moving in the van anywhere, just playing in there. The kids would crawl around, listen to the radio… it was just one of those really comical moments just totally different than life in general. And it was really during those days that I was using my phone for work a lot more than I ever had before, because I just sometimes needed to keep things moving while we didn’t have childcare. I would read articles, I would take notes on how they might apply to something else I needed to write or work on that day, or it would spark an idea. And it was really at that point that I realized, it’s not just 18-, 19-, 20-year olds who want to learn on their phones, it’s really something that all of us, at least the vast majority of us, take advantage of. And during certain periods of our life, we need to lean on them more heavily. So I actually started to realize this while I’m sitting in the van, and I started writing down some notes about this experience. I was connecting back to some of the things I started to read and work on earlier. And then I sent the piece to EDUCAUSE and they were really interested in publishing it. It was a really short piece, but I was really surprised with how many people resonated with that, because mobile learning is still something that tends not to excite most instructors, it just feels like this distraction device, something people don’t want to think about, we’re already frustrated about it. But a lot of people recognize themselves, I think, in the story that I told and in some of the practical places to start. So in many ways that was sort of the seed to what would become this book, because honestly, while my interest has been in educational technology for a while, I would not have guessed, I would have written this book, but really it was the need to address something that I think we’ve been ignoring, or just haven’t been able to find a really accessible entry point to as far as a really good learning opportunity and even a good teaching opportunity for us. I was really inspired in this book to say “Okay, let’s come up with a starting point for at least considering what role mobile learning can play. And let’s start developing our curiosity and see where we go from there.

Rebecca: Can you talk a little bit about who the audience of the book is?

Christina: I really tried to make this book to the person who is excited about teaching, they really care about their students’ learning experience, even if they’re not so excited about the idea of students learning on a mobile device. And I would describe the audience that way, because I think that’s the audience that a lot of the enthusiasm around mobile learning has been missing. And we haven’t had that critical mass of instructors who are finding a good entry point in. So I would say it’s like the learner first, tech second, type of instructor who uses technology, normally, because they see it has a real benefit for students. And they may not always be comfortable with it, but they’re willing to try things as long it isn’t too overwhelming. So with that audience in mind, I really tried to take a beginner approach to tech. I explain how QR codes work, how you can create one, might even explain what the share icon is, because that’s really important for fluid learning and connecting our learning experiences. But I also allow space to dive into more course activities and possibilities that you can do with students, even if you don’t feel completely mobile tech savvy, because I’m somewhat in that boat as well. Of course, I learned a lot through this book, but I hope I did some of the learning and pre work so that faculty readers and other educators can just feel free to try things out, even if they’re not totally sure how they feel about these things.

Rebecca: Can you define what you mean by mobile learning, just to make sure that we’re all on the same page early on the conversation?

Christina: Yeah. So mobile learning, first and foremost, makes us think of learning on a smartphone, which mobile learning can sometimes mean like tablets, and even non-smartphones. But we’re normally talking about smartphones, phones that have the capability to connect to the internet, especially because increasingly, most people, most adults, have mobile phones. But I do think a little bit larger about mobile learning as well, just acknowledging the fact that we learn in motion. I think a lot of us sit in front of a computer for a lot of the work that we do. But what I try to guide us to think about is the fact that we learn and work in multiple places, with our laptop, with our phones, while we’re on a walk, while we’re on a drive. We do not stop learning or stop thinking the second that we are no longer in front of a screen officially working on things. So I also try to tease out that much larger idea of we are learners in motion and that we are learning and responding to our environments.

John: And smartphone ownership by students is close to being ubiquitous, nearly all students have a smartphone. And they normally have them with them all the time. And they use them regularly for learning. Yet there is some faculty resistance to students using smartphones in the classroom. How do you address that when faculty say “I don’t allow smartphone use in my classes?”

Christina: I think I take a balanced approach to this. So first, I acknowledge that and understand. I think even our students don’t really like how distracted they constantly feel by technology. Our institution actually just facilitated a student engagement panel with students talking about creating a collaboration around student engagement and learning with faculty. And even that was expressed by the students themselves. And that was corroborated by the research that I looked into. So, I think, and I have this mantra a lot throughout the book, which is somewhat the mindful aspect of it as “Well it’s okay, let’s acknowledge and notice that we have that skeptical feeling, but sort of suspend it and just be a bit curious.” So my first piece of advice is to talk with students directly about this issue, because our classes look different. They’re small, they’re large, they’re gen ed classes or major classes. So I think it helps to first talk with the students, maybe on the first day, if you’re discussing the course syllabus, “What should tech use look like in the class?” It can either be in class or in an anonymous form where you’re saying: “Some research has found that cell phones can be distracting not only to the person using it, but to the person next to them. How do you feel about this and your learning environment?” Then that can help at least bring them into the discussion, so that with whatever you decide, they feel like they have had some say and input, or at least some understanding of why you do what you do. That being said, I would definitely not support just a total tech ban. And that’s because, and the book does get into some of this research, there’s pretty strong indication that students are using these phones for e-texts, sometimes they are caregivers who really feel anxious if they don’t feel like they’re going to know right away if there’s an issue and they’re the primary contact. So there’s lots of evidence that by banning this technology altogether, we can do real harm to the students who really need it the most, which overwhelmingly are women, or people of color, and people with disabilities. So I wouldn’t encourage a total tech ban, a conversation with students, and really, similar to what James Lang has talked about in his book Distracted, that we don’t have to take an either/or stance, it’s not really reasonable to expect totally undivided attention. I mean, think of any faculty meeting and how many phones are even out during those. So just thinking realistically, but also maybe guiding your students, like, which point in class do you think it’s really important to put away the phones because you’re just talking to one another, and then maybe prompting students to do that. Whereas other active learning situations, you might not worry so much about the technology being used, because the activity itself is so engaging that you don’t really have to worry about that. So overall, I actually encourage us to think more about the mobile learning possibilities outside of a classroom, because I actually think that that’s where its virtues come out a lot more than it’s vices.

Rebecca: I’m really struck by the idea of this fluid learning and learning on the go. [LAUGHTER] And having learning in your pocket and work in your pocket. Your story was reminding me that just the other day, I was enjoying the nice weather, but had a lot of work to do, so I got out my mobile device and I talked through the presentation I needed to give so I could get an outline done while I was on a walk without having to be at a computer. And there’s lots of ways that we can use our devices. We talked a little bit about QR codes, and that might be one obvious way to use a mobile device in a classroom, but what are some of these other ways to use a phone that are in these other spaces that we don’t always expect?

Christina: So I think your example of being on a walk is one that I talk through, because part of the book, a fairly large section of the book is called “Start with Self.” And this is really guiding us through the basics of what it means to be a mobile learner, what are some basic skills that will help you actually become more familiar with what it is to be a mobile learner firsthand, because we’re really not used to thinking of ourselves in that way. And I like the walking to sort of get a break, but you’re still actually being very productive. And maybe you’re being more productive because you’re breaking up your thinking, your body is moving, your muscles are moving, so your brain is likely going to be better and more responsive. But I think, for most of us, we have to sort of walk through the steps of “Okay, but how do I make that happen? How do I use voice to text in order to be able to speak into the phone and have the text written out? Where do I do that? What app do I use?” And along with fluid learning, which is the idea that we design learning activities so that if we do our learning in one place, we can then access it in a useful way, in a different context, a different device, in a different situation. So it gets into that decision of am I taking my notes in a app that I can easily access when I do decide to sit back down at the computer? So I think going through those simple steps of “Okay, what buttons do I have to press? How do I find out how to do that? What tools and processes are going to work best for me?” I think is something that we have to start with, because many of us aren’t used to putting all of those pieces together. But just to use this example, again, the idea of being able to walk and learn in a productive way, is a really good example of something that’s good for our bodies that in a way actually takes us away from screens a little bit because we’re not so focused, even on the screen in front of us, we’re just using it basically as a recording device. And that’s why I do like us to think a little bit broader about mobile learning because yes, it is learning that is made possible because of phones but it is not always just us with our thumbs staring at this teeny tiny screen, but it’s also how it allows us to take pictures of things that we find so that we are actually connecting whatever we’re talking about in class to something that we are seeing in a completely different context. And if we think about the application that we make possible, how much more powerful is that learning that we’re able to take it from our environment, and then find some way to share it with our classmates, such as a shared messaging platform or a shared folder where people can put their pictures, I’ve heard really amazing examples, especially in like biology and STEM fields, where instructors are using, whether it’s something like social media or just a shared photo folder, where both the instructors are sharing photos and asking their students to identify them, sometimes on a daily basis, where also students are actively collecting samples via photos. And then they are working as a class together to label the genus or species of whatever leaf, plant, or whatever that they have identified. So I think that answer was a little bit mobile in and of itself, it might have kept going, but I think it provides some examples.

John: In the title of your book, you use mobile mindful, rather than mobile learning. Why is that distinction important?

Christina: Even stepping back to when I was thinking of mobile learning directly, I was really wanting to use my phone more productively so less mindlessly, because I was noticing I was just going to my phone to pass the time. And I was doing things I wasn’t even interested in or was consciously thinking of. So I began thinking, “Okay, how can I redirect this habit into something that is more intentional?” So that’s one reason for the use of the word mobile mindful is this idea of intention, and using our phones for the things we actually want to do rather than just for this pure distraction. But I also use the word mindful with it as a hopefully less intimidating and less techie sounding approach to it. So when I think of mobile mindful, I think of something that’s mobile aware, or mobile-ish, or it’s an adding a piece to our already existing rich ecology for learning that we create in our classroom. And just adding this as like an extra tool, an extra really powerful way to connect all of these pieces together and help our students learn more often and think about the content more often. So it’s a mindful approach to mobile learning, but also like, let’s start with mobile aware before we like go diving into mobile learning. So I contrast it with mobile first learning, which some people are doing amazing work on, which is putting in the constraint and challenge of let’s try to create a whole learning environment that can take place on a phone. That is not the approach that I take in this book. I think it’s productive for most college and university instructors to first start with, “Well, how can this be one piece and one delightful added element to all of the good work that we’re already doing?”

Rebecca: I’m curious in your role as an instructor and in a teaching center and your interactions with students, what are some of the most interesting ways you’ve seen that students have just adapted to using their phones to help with learning?

Christina: Well, I’ll answer the question, but I’ll also add something to it that I think is important for us to realize, that once we go through the learning process of being a mobile learner ourselves, there may need to be a little bit of prep work that we also do with students. Well, a lot of our students have only known the world that is mobile phone capable, it doesn’t always mean that they are ready to be mobile learners. They have definitely internalized messages that phones are bad for them, phones shouldn’t be in the classroom, even though they bring them in anyway. So there’s very much this vice type of attitude towards it. And therefore they haven’t had always a lot of opportunities to use their phones as these powerful learning devices. So I would add sort of the caveat of “Yes, students are doing amazing things and can do amazing things, but they may need to be guided into it a little bit just as much as we do.” So with that being said, I would say that some of the exciting things that students are doing and going back to QR codes, I really liked the example of audio essays that were taken to specific places. And again, QR codes have become so much easier to both use and create. You can basically create them from any browser. The QR codes in my book are purposely created for free by right clicking on any website and there’s a drop down option that says create a QR code. You can create fancier logo specific ones, but I decided to just use the default one as sort of a demonstration of the fact that they are really easy to create, and that’s how I went about it. So I think even just adding an element to maybe research presentations or things for a specific audience where you say, “Okay, how could you use a QR code to direct people to a different learning element?” And so it might be directing them to a piece of audio where you’re explaining something that is in a very specific environment. So again, thinking about learning being mobile is you are creating learning experiences that take place in very specific locations, or could take them to a form that they fill out or a petition or something like that. So I think it creates a lot of convenience and thinking about your audience and makes it a little bit more creative. And then the one other really interesting use that I cover, and I talk about the ethics of mobile phone use and inviting students to use their mobile phones. That’s actually a really good opportunity to get students to think more critically about the data being collected on them. So some faculty have done really interesting work in places like statistics, or other data analysis type of classes, and students have been invited to download the data that is collected about them on social media or on Pokemon Go, especially those that are mobile dependent, like especially Pokemon Go. It not only teaches the students a really useful content skill and applies it, but it helps them be a little bit more critical about what is actually going on behind the scenes when they don’t actively take a role in limiting data sharing about what they’re doing and where they are. So I think that type of application of getting students to think and actually dig into their own data is a really good example of what I think faculty could start to find as really exciting about mobile-mindful teaching, as they start to see that there is a lot they can have students do that really isn’t as possible in other ways.

John: You mentioned QR codes. When they first came out, they were really useful tools, but you had to dig up a specific application to scan them. Once smartphone manufacturers allowed the cameras to directly read and respond to QR codes, it became such a game changer in terms of their use. I don’t think I’ve given any presentations, either in class or at a conference in the last three or four years, except during the time when all instruction was remote, and then I was more likely to drop URLs in the chat. And it just opened up so many great possibilities for sharing resources with students, with colleagues, and so forth. I’m still amazed at the number of faculty who don’t know how to use QR codes. And I was really glad to see you had a discussion of that in the book in terms of how instructors could use those within their classes. You mentioned a little bit about the use of QR codes, but how might instructors use that in their class?

Christina: Yeah, so and just as a funny note, back to the audience, my mother is reading my book, and I asked if she’s tried any of the QR codes yet. And she said, “What’s a QR code?” [LAUGHTER] And I said, “Oh, maybe you haven’t gotten that far in the book yet.” But then I was explaining it to her. And she’s like, “Oh, it’s what’s been on all of the restaurant menus.” I was like, “Yep, those are the ones.” So I also think of like, you don’t know what a QR code is and you’ve seen it, but you haven’t connected the dots. I’m hoping that this book will connect a lot of the dots. So I will give a couple of really useful examples of an instructor intentionally using QR codes. So, I think in the spirit of Universal Design for Learning, it can be really nice to add QR codes to print handouts, because I think sometimes students do like to have print handouts because it helps them resist some of the distraction that comes with phones. They like having something tactile, but by putting a QR code on them, if they would rather consult something on a phone and take digital notes, they immediately have that option. So I think that’s something that’s fairly easy that can be done if you use print handouts, but want to be conscious of people potentially using mobile phones, or directing people intentionally to other websites by using their phones. My other favorite, which I think is also useful in other contexts, is when you want to get quick feedback from your audience, such as students, displaying a really big QR code on a projector. And then even in a really large class, they can pretty easily scan it and then they can give you some really useful feedback that you have in a digital form that can be automatically analyzed or you can quickly go through it. So I think of some of the really classic active learning strategies that we may be familiar with such as exit tickets, what you want to know from students at the end of class. It might be the muddiest point, where you want to know what students are still confused on, or one-minute papers, where you want a really quick reflection about what they’ve learned in the class. So by displaying that QR code, students can take the form there, and then you quickly have all the data. Inversely, you can also do this at the beginning of a class, if you want to ask students, either three review questions, or you want to ask them three questions that are just going to prime the pump of whatever you’re about to discuss to sort of see what they know before you’ve even covered it. While I didn’t do it with the QR code, this was one of my favorite mobile learning activities that I tried the last time that I teach. Because it was an asynchronous online course, I wanted to get a sense of students feeling like I am responding to what they’re learning and thinking. So I would start the week with a really short form and say, “This will take you five minutes, I just want to know what has your experience been doing primary research? Do you know the difference between primary and secondary research?” And then I could address that feedback directly into my instructional video. So it would create that sense of presence, even though it was an asynchronous course. And by telling them it would take them five minutes, they did it right away. So like, that’s kind of the magic of micro learning, which is, I think, one of the superpowers of mobile-mindful learning is if you can break things down into smaller chunks, students will do it. And that’s kind of the interesting course design pedagogical challenges, to figure out how to get things into smaller pieces.

Rebecca: I think one of the things that we often assume is that the students who are using their phones for learning or to complete work are more traditional aged college students. But from my experience, [LAUGHTER] it’s often adult learners who are using their phones the most, because they’re often double timing as your example in the van [LAUGHTER], or at soccer practice or during swim lessons and trying to complete a module or reading the captions on a video, or [LAUGHTER] any number of other things, getting a start on a paper or trying to edit or providing feedback to peers or something. So they’re taking it with them, and often maybe in an environment where there’s other things going on, but trying to make progress on something in the little snippets of time, those small chunks of time that might be available.

Christina: And that’s what I think is useful about thinking of this fluid learning environment is, of course, we don’t always want to be learning in that context. We want our students to think deeply, we want them to have time to really mull over ideas and work in larger chunks of time. But what I’ve come to realize is that there really is quality learning that can happen in those snippets of time, mostly by frequency. Because I think a lot of times with the way activities and courses are set up is that the students are cramming right before class, the last possible minute, to do everything they were supposed to do over the last week. And we know from experience that this does not produce quality work. And it doesn’t bring into our class, a really curious thinker who’s really been mulling over these ideas. So I think if we reframe this sort of micro learning as “How would your students think differently, if they thought about your course content four times a day, even if it was in really small snippets?” They would probably be a lot more prepared and have more interesting things to say once they do sit down with that hour to work on things. So even if we sort of dread and don’t love the idea of our students doing things while waiting in line for five minutes, or being in a waiting room for 10 minutes, I think reframing it as like this is a piece that will contribute to a longer work period. I think that’s a lot more inspiring.

Rebecca: You know, from my own experience, I get more reading done, because sometimes I have my device read to me and I can do that in the car or in other places… maybe not good for research kind of reading but good if I’m trying to get background knowledge on something or keep up with something that’s current.

Christina: Rebecca, you’re narrating and describing exactly the types of things that I want readers to notice about themselves, about how they learn, because I think we normally don’t notice these things. We just sort of do them because we’re trying to just do what we can. And what we want to get students to notice about their own learning emotion as well.

Rebecca: I mean, I’m a designer who designs for mobile devices, so I’m already sold. [LAUGHTER] But I think it’s important that we recognize how often people are using their devices already, and all the ways that we could use them that we don’t always know that we can. My students are often really surprised when I show them some of the features that are available to them on their phone that make their lives easier.

Christina: Yes. Exactly. And that’s why we have to take students along with us and pointing things out like, “Oh, do you know how to do this? Do you know that the learning management system has an app? Do you know that it will give you push notifications when I message you, so you don’t have to worry about catching up on my emails as much?” I think those little nudges like, “Oh, did you know or how do you keep notes on a phone?” I think those types of nudges and getting them in the right direction will help in your class and throughout their whole lives.

John: And you mentioned that you got started on this through a UDL approach. And smartphones enable a lot of assignments that can be done in multiple modes. Could you talk to us a little bit about how instructors might use that to give students multiple ways of demonstrating their learning?

Christina: Yeah, this reminds me of a course activity that I propose in the book. And it’s called “untethering the research presentation,” because I predominantly teach writing and rhetoric to first-year students, they’re required courses. So I think students are really used to doing slide presentations for their classes. And I think they do that because we’re comfortable with them and so it just becomes this routine thing that doesn’t have a lot of love and spirit behind them. So I think this idea of untethering the research presentation is like, let’s think of this in a little bit of a different way. If we’re not using slides, what else can you do? Is it a really engaging discussion without technology? Is it a video? Is it coming up with a social media campaign. And what I like about that idea is not only is it a more creative and authentic way to put whatever they’ve been researching into action with a real audience, but it gets them to think in a different way about how that information lives. So I think mobile learning can be a really important part of this, especially if students are thinking about who their audience is. They may determine that their audience is going to best be reached on a mobile device. So if they’re doing a video, and they determine that their audience is most likely going to look at this on a phone, how are they going to design that video accordingly? If it’s on social media, then doing something in portrait might be the best because it scrolls through better that way. So I think prompting our students to also be, depending on their field, be prepared to be mobile practitioners and how they can reach a mobile audience. Another example I use is if you are a math educator, we hear about the new math and reaching out to parents about how to guide them through that. How many of your parents are likely going to maybe be smartphone dependent, meaning that the only reliable internet they have at home is on a phone? So how are they going to use that sitting next to their child helping them with math? So I think by posing those types of ways of presenting information for a specific audience, is a good example of both inviting students to express their learning in a way that they are comfortable with and excited about and speaks to their strengths, but also getting them to think about the audience for the work that they’re doing too, and how to demonstrate that learning to an audience in a way that is relatable and accessible to them.

Rebecca: So one of the things that got me really curious about how students are using mobile devices is actually, how they might even engage in the learning management system. So we talked a little bit about having an app, but also sometimes there’s a web version that’s made responsively, and also exists on the mobile device. And what I’ve discovered often is that those are sometimes different, or the way you even get to information material is different. So that’s always something that I start talking to my students about is like, “Okay, if you’re using the app, you can do this one thing, if you use the website, you can use this other thing.” I’m mentioning this, in part, because the way that students are engaging with their materials sometimes is really different if they’re in the app of a learning management system versus the website version of it. We might have micro lessons or small activities that we’re doing on our devices, like videos and things and those experiences might be really different. I’m curious about the ways that we can help faculty become more aware of the different ways our students are using their learning management systems, even on our mobile devices.

Christina: Yeah, so that’s great. And I’m glad we’re bringing it up. I highly encourage us to regularly take mobile test drives through our materials. I think it’s a really good place to start. So pull up your syllabus on a phone, what does it look like? How easy is it to navigate how when you open up links that are there? How many clicks does it take or how many taps if we’re thinking mobile mindful? How many taps does it take for them to get to the content that they want to get to? So I think actually going through the tactile experience of going through your course materials on a phone is really insightful, because I actually hope that you’ll find things work a lot better than you expect, because I think mobile accessibility has gotten a lot better. And I think sometimes we might still be thinking in like a 2004, even 2012, realm of like, where everything just looked terrible on the phone. I think we might be surprised when we actually go through that things scale, and are more responsive than we expect. So I think that that’s a great place to start. If you use the learning management system at your institution, and you’ve never looked into whether they have an app, you can do that. Download it. You might discover things, like I mentioned sort of offhand earlier, that there are push notifications whenever you use the announcements forum, or whatever it’s called in your learning management system. So students get that right away, rather than hoping that they get into their email. So you may discover that there are certain surveys that work okay, but if you maybe used a slightly different tool, or you broke up the question in a different way, it might be even more responsive. And that might make you think, “Okay, if I actually just break this one 30-question quiz into three 10-question quizzes and open up that access so that they can take it as many times as they want, and then I tell them in class, I want you to do these, you can do them on your phone, it’ll probably only take you 10 minutes a day, I mean, then you start to think of how much they’re practicing and reviewing the material so that they don’t even have to think about it anymore, they can get right into the more complex thinking. I think even that test drive mentality of like, “Okay, let’s see how it looks,” then I can sort of guide students on what I think works well on a mobile phone and what I think doesn’t work well on a mobile phone. And then even, and this is what I was doing throughout the book, is taking screenshots that I wanted to save and show in class, okay, this is how it looks. It really helps reinforce that for students, and then going through your course texts, trying to identify what works well, on a mobile device, tell students to do that. You might also feel free to say: “This one text, it really doesn’t respond on mobile well, that’s something I would say to do on your computer, to do offline.” I think talking students through those options really gives them a lot more agency, because I think a lot of our impulse is to say, “Don’t use your phone for the course, it’s not designed that way.” But they are, for different reasons. Sometimes, they’re just going to do it that way. So if instead we can say, “Well, the discussion forums work well if you do a video post, but otherwise, if you need to cite things it might not.” So by giving them an action and plan, rather than just saying, “Don’t do it,” I think that’s gonna get us a lot farther. And I know that in doing this test drive and thinking about how we can leverage those five and ten minutes, it actually got me really excited to think about quiz design, how I get feedback from students, and even how I design my instructional videos. In the UDL mindset, I started to record my videos the same, but I would just pass them on to YouTube as well, instead of just in the learning management system, and then I would have a link that says access on YouTube. And then I would make that into a playlist. It’s not really any extra work, it’s just organizing them into one list. And then it gives students the opportunity to just keep playing through, which we probably know, as mobile consumers ourselves, is that it’s easy to get us to buy in, if it’s only a three-minute video. But then we’re like, “Okay, let’s just do one more three-minute video. And then we’ve been watching videos for a half hour very easily. So if we can use that capability for good, [LAUGHTER] I think that can be something exciting for us.

Rebecca: Christina, did you just suggest designing a learning rabbit hole? [LAUGHTER]

Christina: I sure did.[LAUGHTER]

John: We gave a workshop recently where we encouraged people if they were using videos in their class to do the embed, rather than sending students to YouTube, because that rabbit hole could often take them in directions away from the course. But if you’re directing them to a playlist with a whole series of videos, then having that rabbit hole could be very useful.

Rebecca: That’s downright sneaky.

Christina: Yeah, but let’s use the sneakiness for good. But, doing the test drive, we can also recognize where things are distracting if we tried to take them to a mobile device. And we might just be transparent about that, and for that reason, suggest that they don’t go in that direction. So it’s why it’s this mindful approach. It’s just being aware of what works well and what doesn’t, and giving our students some direction accordingly.

Rebecca: Sometimes that test drive can reveal even little details like should this open in the same window or a different window?

Christina: Mm hmm.

Rebecca: Because some tools are fine on a desktop, but as soon as you try to do it on the mobile device inside of the learning management system, it’s a nightmare.

Christina: I think that’s actually a really good example of how I think going through this thought process will reduce friction, and overall just improve the teaching design in general, because we found that with online teaching, too, is that when people began teaching online overall…I mean, as long as they did it, right, of course, and took a good approach… it actually often increased the quality of their in-person or on-ground learning as well, because it was just a different way of thinking about it. And it helped you see where there were barriers that you could take away. So I think that’s a good example of, it just helps you pay attention to the learning experience in a different way that could give you really good insight overall.

John: We always end with the question, what’s next?

Christina: Well, first is, a little bit of a break. [LAUGHTER] I definitely want to talk about the book, and I will be, but I’m taking just a little bit of a pause. But during this pause, I’m actually putting together content for a blog to kind of be the “what’s next” of the book, because the book is an invitation and it’s a framework for us to get started with mobile learning. But from there, I know that there are people doing brilliant things with mobile learning, or they’re going to have lots of light bulbs that go off because of this book. So I want to continue the conversation. I didn’t want it to end with the book. So I plan on contributing content myself, but also inviting people to share their mobile learning strategies, victories, challenges, stories. So I may provide my email address so that people can feel free to contact me if they would like to contribute something. I’m gathering up goodies so that I can start to share them out into the world. And then I also want to work with faculty to research how the application of these strategies are going, because I’d like to see the evidence and put them out in more formalized ways so that we can really build and make this a practice that is more common, more accepted and really is convincing that it is what students need and provide guidance on how to do it well.

Rebecca: Well, thank you so much for the book and really thinking about introductory audience.

Christina: Thanks a lot. This was great.

John: I really enjoyed reading the book and I’m really happy we can share this with our listeners.

[MUSIC]

John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

[MUSIC]

69. Students as Storytelling Ambassadors

Posted in higher education, internships, learning, social media, teaching
February 20, 2019

Students can be important ambassadors for our programs, institutions, and disciplines. They are able to understand and speak to their peers more effectively than we can. In this episode, Tim Nekritz joins us to talk about how to leverage students as digital storytellers across social media platforms. Tim is the Director of News and Media and an adjunct Professor of Communication Studies at SUNY Oswego.

Show Notes

Transcript

John: Students can be important ambassadors for our programs, institutions, and disciplines. They are able to understand and speak to their peers more effectively than we can. In this episode, we talk about how to leverage students as digital storytellers across social media platforms.

[MUSIC]

John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.

Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…

John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer.

Rebecca: Together we run the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at the State University of New York at Oswego.

John: Today our guest is Tim Nekritz, Director of News and Media and an adjunct Professor of Communication Studies at SUNY Oswego. Welcome Tim.

Tim: Happy to be here.

Rebecca: Today our teas are….

Tim: I got blueberry green with just a hint of honey in it.

John: And I have ginger, with more than a hint of honey in it.

Rebecca: And I have my favorite tea, which despite popular belief is not English Afternoon. It’s Golden Monkey, and that’s what I have today.

John: We’ve invited you here to talk about how social media storytelling can be beneficial to students and to institutions. How did SUNY Oswego start it’s student storytelling program?

Tim: It started about a dozen years ago and there was a bit of a trend at the time to have student bloggers. And my social-media mentor Rachel Reuben, at New Paltz at the time, was doing a very good job at it. The idea there is it’s a little bit more authenticity, because I’m a marketing communication person, so can anyone really take my word for anything? And then when you’re talking to prospective college students, honest experience of a student and really, the student is still working for you, they still might sometimes complain about it being cold, or the parking or what not. So about 2007 is when we launched the student blogging project with about seven or eight students. And it was nice and it got a lot of notice at first… really good traffic because it was something new, and I had a really good group of starting students. One of my favorites was Erin who is legally blind, and had a lot of chutzpah. A good example, she had a blog post called, “The Blind Chick Goes Skiing,” and how can you not want to read that blog post. And I tried to get people from a variety of different backgrounds… and this was really before social media was taking off to the degree we see it now. It was a nice thing for prospective students, and we found out that faculty members, current students, alumni, they all consumed it as well and liked it a lot. It’s had its ups and downs along the way. It’s still part of our program but it’s not the main part. But then as social media started to evolve, it’s like, “Okay, well how can we change how they’re telling stories?” And obviously Facebook got bigger, Twitter got bigger, Instagram got bigger. I had interns who were working with Twitter, for example—just simple stuff like live tweeting events, or hockey games, or Quest Day, or something. And then finally, something like Instagram comes along… very visual, very resonant with current students and prospective students. So I had my interns working on that, but also started something called a Laker Takeover, another idea I borrowed from another college, my friend, Meg Keniston at St. Lawrence University. Basically, they have a whole account that’s all Takeovers, all the time. But for us, it was kind of like, “Okay, well I’ll have a student takeover the Instagram account—or do most of the posting for a week and talk about some part of the student life.” And so, like the first one we did was Lizzie Marks who is a women’s hockey player and a future intern of mine. Because everyone knows hockey and that type of thing around here but they don’t know about the preparation, the practice, and the weird bonding activities that are part of a hockey team or any team really. And then just started doing ones for like theater productions, and upcoming things, like there’s a current one for an event happening in Riggs Hall that’s also talking a little bit about life in a residence hall living on campus. And so a lot of it is, “Okay, this thing is happening.” And it started out with me just reaching out to people. Now, students or advisors are coming to us and saying, “Oh, there’s a really cool thing happening this week. Do you think we can work with you on it?” So that the word is out on that. It’s a dichotomy because you want them to be honest, but they’re also ambassadors for the college. No one’s going to be showing off a keg party or anything, but at the same time, it’s the point of view that people really are looking for and between that and the interns… I get stuck in the office a lot… It’s good to have the eyes and ears out there showing them a more authentic college experience and so like Instagram has been kind of our main part for that but the blogs still happen. We’ve had video blogging happening—I think that was probably one of our biggest successes. A student by the name of Alyssa Levenberg basically tweeted at us in our first week and said that if we wanted someone who could tell video stories that “I’m your girl” and I went and I looked at her YouTube channel I said “Yes, this is a good sell”. We came up with the name Alyssa Explains It All for her series. We were never sued by Nickelodeon, so I feel good about that. [LAUGHTER] The idea was, “What is a prospective student interested in?” It’s great because this is fresh to her. She started as a freshman —This is all the stuff that she thought about and lived through in college. So having that authentic approach I think was really really good and plus she was very good at what she does. She’s been doing video blogging and video storytelling ever since she graduated and it got to the point she was actually featured in two stories of the CASE Currents magazine which is pretty good and we were invited to speak at a conference called Confab Higher Ed in Atlanta which is a primary content strategy presentation conference and she was the only student presenting there. And I say “we” because I think they pitied me and didn’t think they could invite her without me… because I talked a little and then she talked and all the questions were for her. But it’s been a good experience because I had a couple of journalism students who came to me specifically on the internship because they realize that blogging and telling stories in that genre is big. Because that’s, for a lot of current journalists, columnist, that type of thing, they will keep a blog… or least have to approach it in that personalized way—and then I’ve had other ones who really parlayed it into parts of their portfolio as far as this shows their ability to organize and present and whether it’s write or perform, I guess you could say it’s a video so it’s really helped them with their professional portfolio. But, you know, again, there’s a marketing reason behind it and a reason for people to understand college life and Oswego in general. Alyssa’s blogs—some of them are Oswego-specific but most of them could apply to any student applying to any college and that’s really what we were looking for. And so those still get a lot of hits on YouTube. They’re three-, four-, or five-years old, but they’re the questions that come up all the time like, “How do I make friends?” and “How do I deal with homesickness?”, “What would I have to do to study or have time management?” that was the idea, to find really universal themes, which is what I like them to post.

Rebecca: How do you train the students or prepare them, and then also make sure that they’re ready to be an ambassador for the college? Especially because you need to be careful about what content they actually are posting.

Tim: It’s an interesting thing, I don’t want to throw them in the deep end necessarily. For a while everyone was having trouble with their first blog entry, and I said, “Just introduce yourself.” Then everyone had a problem with their second blog entry. [LAUGHTER] But I basically told them, “Try to find something that you’re interested or passionate in.” I’ve had students who would pick almost like a beat—like being at a newspaper—whether it’s student involvement, student organizations, or arts and entertainment, or find things that they’re interested and comfortable in writing. I’ve had ones who do listicles, “seven-tips for,” different things to get ready for college. But I also want them to find their voice, I don’t want to be looking over their shoulder and dictating that. And something I picked up very early in the process was you don’t approve blog posts, you approve bloggers. So in other words, you have to have a comfort level with them. We always let them know in front, “You’re an ambassador for Oswego. Oh, by the way, this will be seen by your parents, your professors, probably your future employers. So be sure that you keep that in mind.” It’s generally been a positive experience because they get that. And I think it seems like today’s students, a lot of the ones I work with anyway, are already more professional minded. They understand this is something that’s good for them to get into, to be part of their personal brand, I guess you use. Usually what happens in the semester, like our first meeting is supposed to be tomorrow—as of this recording—where I’m really going to talk to them a little bit, show them our social media users’ guide, ask them to look at some of the posts that we have, maybe other colleges have, and then come back the next week to discuss what they like, what they thought could have been better, and then ease them into it. I don’t give any of them a huge workload for that, for any given time. It’s like, “Okay, you’re covering this event, and you’re covering this event? What are you writing a blog entry on?” I ask them what they’re writing. And also it’s good because it’s expectations. I’m not asking them to do a ton of things, but understanding what’s going on in the first place. And I’m always saying, “Brainstorm, give me an idea.” I’ve never had to say no to an idea, their ideas are always better than my ideas.

Rebecca: What are some misconceptions that new social media storytellers have about storytelling?

Tim: I think, I guess if we were to define social media storytelling, in this way, it’s social media posts that are in service of a personal or a larger story, their journey as a student, or the journey at a college. In a way it’s understanding the difference between me and we. To a degree, we want their personal story, but also, in a broader sense. Let’s say if I had a student at the MLK celebration or something like that. If I had a student covering that for Instagram, it’s not a selfie, “Oh, look, here I am with Symone Sanders.” Its, “Here’s Symone Sanders, here’s what she talked about, here was the crowd.” Telling the story from, I would say somewhat of an institutional perspective or more of a we perspective, what anybody who goes to an event is going to experience, not as personal. And I know that there’s a lot of people who really like their selfies these days. My personal anecdote is, I was at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Oswego like two years ago—and I’m not going to make generational stereotypes—but a lot of people, all the photos they were taking were selfies with them and the parade in the background. And older people like me, we’re just taking pictures of the parade. I think they get it because they’re usually PR, marketing, or communication majors. So they’ve got an underpinning of the larger goal that we have here.

John: So most of the students have been in public relations, or social media, or communication studies?

Tim: Absolutely. Sometimes I’m their second or third social media internship. So it’s really just a difference perhaps in protocol and goals and everything and they understand it. There are exceptions to the rule, like Alyssa—who I mentioned earlier—asked if she could be an intern. We scheduled a meeting and I said, “When can you start?”, because I already knew what she could do, I wasn’t going to do that. We had a social media Laker Takeover with a student named Anna Chichester who was a freshman and I think she was in Pride and Prejudice. And after seeing her Laker Takeover, I said, “Hey, how would you like to be an intern?” But again, they’ve all been PR, marketing, communication, so they know some of the fundamentals of it. So for me, it’s really more adapting that to this job. But again, part of that is not watering down their experience too much because again, they are much closer to the target market than I am. But they all come in with the general skills. I have to tell them about something like accessibility, and tone, and that type of thing. And always spell check, because Lord knows even I will post something with a typo on Twitter, since you can’t edit it. You know, delete it and do it again, a lot of its repetition. So like, they start with some things and then by the end of the semester, or by the time they graduate, you start to miss them.

Rebecca: I think a lot of faculty are curious about using social media to tell the stories of the work that they do too, and trying to get it out. How does that connect to, maybe the work that we do as an institution or this bigger we voice?

Tim: Well, it’s interesting because there have been some questions from various parts about, for example, faculty having blogs. I think that type of thing could work really well, but also the idea of students showing a professor’s work is always good. Like we’ve had some students doing a research internship and they can show a little bit—I know the professors don’t want them to show all. We had a really neat one over the summer, for example, the study abroad course that was engineering students over in Trinidad and Tobago about engineering a steel pan or looking at ways that a steel pan creates noise from an engineering standpoint. And that was fantastic because first of all, they showed some research then they showed, “Oh, tropical stuff,” and you know, “Here we are in this forest.” It was an interesting way to transcribe what’s going on in that course, with something that’s a lot more fun. As opposed to, “Oh, here’s this class. Here’s this class, we studied abroad, we did these cool things.” So it’s trying to find ways to make it more of experience, as opposed to, “Here’s my research, here’s my work.” How can that be fun? I mean, I know there’s people like Professor Brian Moritz in Communication Studies who’s doing a lot of things with students where they might have blogs or they might do things on Twitter. And then ultimately, produce, I guess we could call it an online multimedia publication at the end of the semester on one theme. So I think it’s creativity on the professor’s part. There are professors I know who do class blogs, and I think that’s a really really cool concept to do. I don’t do it in my class just because I have so many other things to cover. But I know when I was at the Winter Breakout for the first-year signature series— which I know was discussed previously— it was interesting to see the people talking about how blogs are really a teaching tool. And students discover a little bit about themselves and how they write, because writing is practice. So for faculty, certainly trying to find students’ storytelling as a way of teaching and self discovery, I think it’s an awesome idea, I’d like to see more of it happening.

John: But also it’d be a nice way of engaging and reflective practice, where they’re working on their learning and reflecting back on it. And its applicability, which is, in general a good practice. But when they post that publicly, either within the class or perhaps more broadly, it forces them, perhaps to think through things a little more deeply than they might if it was just something that was, as Robin DeRosa called it, “a disposable assignment,” where they write it, it goes to the professor, and then it’s never seen again.

Tim: Yeah, and reflecting is a big part of it. I know we have a student here named Joely Rice, aka, “Joely Live” who has 500,000 followers on TikTok. I had to go and see what TikTok was, I don’t totally understand it yet. But…

John: … short videos.

Tim: Yeah, short videos. And basically, she’s doing an independent study. She’s working for something called Rumble—yet another thing I’d never heard of—which is basically a site, it’s almost like an entertainment site involving social media and social media influencers, and other things that I’m like 30 years too old to understand. For the independent study I said, “I absolutely want you to do some reflection papers or videos.” She’s an IMG model. She has her own show on TikTok already, or a couple of shows, a weekly show and a daily show. And for her she said public speaking was the biggest thing because they had to record something and submit it—because it’s an online course… she’s an online broadcasting major… and she said she’d never been so self conscious. All the stuff she does for social media, great. One for a class, she just became so self conscious about it. And I think there’s a lot of that going on because very few of us like to see ourselves in video, or hear our voice. I think for students, just like the rest of us who are going to cringe… but I think they learn more from hearing their thoughts. When they use a blog or video blog I think the reflection that goes into it is fantastic, and then when they read it back it’s almost like they learned a little bit more the second time around as well. As John said, it both commemorates it but it also has a bit more life to it.

Rebecca: I had a really great conversation with my students in my class last night—my study abroad class to the Czech Republic—and I posed the questions like “You have to do this journal assignment. There’s prompts. We talked a little bit about what the content was, and I asked “You’re more than welcome to do something and I can be your only reader, or we can make a blog and we can share the platform and you know, I’ll buy a URL, et cetera, and get it all set up.“ And I was like, “Think about it, you know there’s issues. You’re gonna have a bigger audience, you have to think about that stuff. I’m not grading on how well you’re writing, but like other people are going to read it so you have to think about that. And they all just, “Yeah, let’s do that. Can we do that?” and they were so excited about it. I mean, of course I showed them the blog of the students who went on the India trip. I was like, “Don’t want to be like them? Don’t they have a cool website?” [LAUGHTER]

John: But, are they going to India? But the excitement, perhaps, turned them around.

Rebecca: Yeah well I just showed, you know, they each ended up with kind of a landing page that has all their posts because you can sort by author and things like that and they just thought that was so cool. What they were doing could have a bigger life.

Tim: One of the first things I did to break things out in the blogging project was to get study abroad bloggers. Bloggers who had traveled and are experiencing new things because that’s a lot more discovery there than being on campus perhaps. And then, some of my favorite Laker Takeovers have been that too because they’re so much of an adventure but also, as a college that prides ourself and one of our hallmarks is a study abroad program, that makes perfect sense to show this. And if you’re a prospective student it’s like, “Wow, I hadn’t even thought of studying abroad, this looks awesome…” or our current students. Anybody, they really can visualize it when it happens.

Rebecca: I can share that in that same class we were talking a little bit about the differences in how a place presents themselves online versus their physical experience of the space. So we talked about Oswego as the first… and that we’re going to do the same thing… they’re looking up the websites and the places we’re going and then we’re going to talk about like their actual experience. But one of the things that came up in the discussion was that through some of the social media storytelling that’s happening, they got a really good sense that students get to do really cool things at SUNY Oswego, like research and whatever. And they all said “That’s how it actually is here.”

Tim: Oh, that’s great. So we have actual authenticity.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Tim: Yeah, people ask, “What’s your social media strategy?” and for me, it’s to show that Oswego is an awesome college with awesome people doing awesome things… because that’s a pretty broad guideline, but it is. And so to show, as you said, those student experiences and what you get to do here, that’s what we want to make sure is emphasized. And that also the cool stuff they’re doing happens to be great content, so that sure it doesn’t hurt either.

John: And it’s certainly more authentic when it comes from students’ voices than when it comes from a college website or public relations office and so forth.

Tim: Yeah, absolutely.

Rebecca: In addition to the authenticity and the “we” perspective, are there other things that make for a good storyteller?

Tim: I think it’s nature and nurture. I think some people are just born storytellers and really get how to tell a story. But also I think it’s kind of understanding photography, or iPhone photography, iPhotography, whatever you want to call it, but also from a different perspective. Trying to figure out, “Okay, here’s a photo of a speaker,” or “Here’s a different angle of here’s the speaker and the people reacting to them.” Everybody can take a good sunset photo, but can you find a different angle on it? Knowing that there might be a formula but there’s time to go off that formula. So I think there’s a lot of creativity. Curiosity, certainly. Wanting to know more. I mean obviously a lot of the people who do it, that is one of the things. But it’s like, “Okay this is a really cool thing, but why? What’s cool about it?” and that type of thing. So I think having that type of mind and saying “I’m curious about this, I want to know how it works, and I want to show people how it works in an interesting way.” You can say, “Oh it’s this major, this type of major, that type of major,” but they exist in all majors clearly. For the study abroad one usually I’ll ask the professors and I’m going to say, “Here’s what I want, can you recommend a student or two?” And they often do think about that, like, “Oh, we have this type of person. This is what we’re looking for.” There’s no template for what a good student storyteller is. You know it when you see it. We’ve also recruited people just because we’ve seen them in other mediums, like on Instagram or Tumblr—back in the days when Tumblr was a thing—telling really good stories. We said, “Oh, hey, they’d be great for this, because we see they already do it.” So sometimes there’s that too. You see someone who is a good storyteller and it’s like, “I want them as a part of my team. I’m not sure how, yet. But I definitely do want them involved.”

Rebecca: I think sometimes, especially with our students, they might be really good storytellers if they follow really good storytellers.

Tim: Yeah, exactly.

Rebecca: Because they have a good model.

Tim: Yeah, like one of our best student storytellers who just graduated, Mic Anthony Hay who has, I forgot how many Instagram followers but it’s pretty high. He basically has always been a really good photographer. And he followed a lot of people who are storytellers and he will post a photo, and a story to go with it. And the story is great, the photo is out of this world. And so a lot of it was really looking at what other people did. Because he could have just done photos and they’d be nice, but having that extra layer. It might be a question, or a little bit about his life and then a question for people to answer. Because things that everybody experiences make the most sense or that everybody can think about or visualize, but also, in the blogs especially, having that personal experience and that perspective is a good thing because obviously, it’s about connecting with people and being that authentic, interesting person, but also talking about topics that are of wide interest.

John: Now, if a faculty member or an institution is going to have students work in storytelling in some format, is there any advice that you give them in terms of preparing the students to do this… things to perhaps suggest that they encourage students to do, or to avoid?

Tim: Well, I think it’s always great to have proof of concept. Whether it’s your own institution or another institution where you can point them at and say, “Here’s some really cool blogs. Here’s some really good Instagram accounts. They’re doing things.” So, setting those expectations, having a very clear understanding, and constant communication is important. Because sometimes my student bloggers, one of the things they do is, not update very much just because it’s a perfection issue. They want the perfect blog entry. And I’m like, “There is no perfect blog entry. I’ve been blogging since before blogs existed. I’ve never posted a perfect blog entry.” And then if your an institution or somebody put it together a blogging program, think about it from a recruitment standpoint. I have the pleasure of being the faculty mentor for the women’s hockey team here and they don’t recruit seven goalies and no defenseman, and no forwards. So, you almost want people who like have good visual skills, and people who might be better writers, or students who are very involved in this, and/or a student athlete, and/or an artist or a performer, or something like that. So, if you’re trying to cultivate a very broad experience, think about the different types of students you want. If you’re recruiting students also ask faculty, ask staff members the type of students you’re looking for. But for students in general, it’s like a certain bit of professionalism and accountability, I think. But also knowing that you want them to find their voice to a degree. There’s an institutional voice that every institution has, every faculty member has, every class has. But that individual student voice and how that voice is different than other voices, that’s something you want to definitely encourage. When Alyssa was a successful video blogger, all these other students wanted to make blogs. I could see they had the same mannerisms and the same patterns and it’s like, “Be yourself.” Because it’s in a way it is looking, “Oh, here’s a very successful model”, but it’s like “But no. No two people are alike, cultivate your own style as well.”

Rebecca: You mentioned having a handbook. If faculty were going to do this on a smaller scale rather than like an institutional scale and they were to put together maybe a little handbook or whatever for their students, what are some of the key things that should be included?

Tim: Yeah, well, we have as a social media users’ guide and it talks about the different communities that are out there, the do’s, the don’ts. Don’t be too dense. Don’t throw out acronyms. Be a human being on social media as much as you can. Know that, not everything that you do in social media will be well received, some of it might be ignored, sometimes you have to deal with people who are jerks… how do you navigate that, for example, and do you have a policy for it. But in general, it’s also to a degree about you gotta learn, play a bit on the job. And then it’s always funny, people are like, “What’s your biggest advice as far as, avoiding screw ups?” and it’s attributed to Zappos and Microsoft. Their social media policy is, “Don’t do anything stupid,” which, that’s a life policy, I think in general. [LAUGHTER]

John: And a good thing for students or anybody.

Tim: Anybody, yeah anybody of any age should follow that. And so I think it’s interesting because it’s evolved so much. Social media’s evolved… certainly since I’ve been involved in it and in 2020 it’ll be different than it was in 2019. So it’s just, you want to know what the general things are. And then every new channel that comes along has its own rules of engagement, its own strengths and that type of thing. For a while, we’re putting some more emphasis on Snapchat we had students who were doing Snapchat posts and that type of thing… I wasn’t really understanding because Snapchat’s interface is rather ridiculous… but then we would do the same story on Snapchat and Instagram and Instagram would get 10 times the engagement. And then they changed the Snapchat design and layout and then suddenly our Snapchat engagement went almost down to zero. And it’s like, “Okay, well, this was nice, this was fun. We’ll put stuff there once a while but not going to emphasize it anymore because Instagram really has been where it’s at.” But also, the blogs are always important. A good example is our students will work with the incoming class group like the class of 2023, which for me, just seems impossible that that’s a year, but they’ll see what questions students have. A good example, one year our incoming students had questions about the Equestrian Club, Cheerleading, and the Ice Effect Synchronized Skating. Basically it was female students asking all these questions maybe because males thought they were too cool, I don’t know. But then one of my interns, Ryan said, “Oh, well, I know the President of the Equestrian Club. So he did like a Q & A… sent her questions… She sent it back, boom, quick blog entry, put it into Facebook, we also put it on Twitter, we put it all over the place because a good piece of content can work various parts. So that was an easy thing. What questions are students having over and over and how can you solve those problems? Whether it’s a blog post or an Instagram series, or even is this something that should be on our website? So we’ll see this, and seeing what students are asking what they’re curious about can inform everything that we do outside of social media, from a content strategy standpoint.

John: Have the students had to do much with, say, trolling and such issues? And how have you dealt with that, or encouraged students to deal with that?

Tim: Generally, if they’re dealing with a troll… it’s just a troll that they’re not going to be able to do anything about. So it’s kind of like an ignore. If they’re blogging about something… we’ve had students that are very passionate about things. I had one, Katherine Raymond, who was very much for sustainability and that type of thing… and so she got some pushback blog entries from people who were not necessarily scientifically oriented, I’ll say. And she did a good job of just very respectfully replying to them. You know, sustainability should not be a hot button topic but unfortunately it is. But generally it’s: understand what’s going on and if someone is snarking at them, they’ll ask me whether they think it’s good to engage or not. And sometimes it’s an honest question or that type of thing, definitely the honest questions we want to get answered. Someone just trying to be a jerk towards somebody, there’s no engaging them, it’s not even worth it. But generally student speaking, this has not been an issue for the students, which has been great.

Rebecca: What’s something that you learned about this process without expecting to learn that?

Tim: It’s going to sound like puffery, but just how good students are at this. So many of them have exceeded my expectations and I said, “Okay. They should be okay, they should be good” and they’re great and they’re awesome. And then 5, 10 years later, they’re working in social media and they’re known in certain circles and some of that you’ll see right away, sometimes you’ll see a growth curve. There’s always a lot of trepidation when you’re saying, “Oh, you’re turning this thing over to a student,” you know, “Aren’t you worried?” and they will more times than not exceed my expectations as far as that goes. Getting back to what I talked about earlier, it kind of teaches me what are we not communicating? What do my students have to say? What do incoming students, what are their questions that we could be doing a better job as an institution communicating? I’ve learned a lot about how diverse and rich students lives are because I think, “Oh, they might be doing this and that…,” yeah, they’re in five clubs, and they play in a band and they’re in a sport and all the rest of this stuff” and like, I’m just so impressed by it. Those are students, it’s like, you’re happy they’re representing you. You don’t want every student to come in to join five clubs and do all these things—at least initially—but just finding exceptional students that make me proud to work with them is, I think that’s been the biggest takeaway, the biggest surprise and probably the biggest pleasure from it.

Rebecca: We always wrap up by asking what’s next?

Tim: What’s next. I mentioned TikTok earlier besides the fact that we have a student with 500,000 followers, there’s some schools that are starting to get into it. University of Florida, my friend Todd Sanders is doing some interesting stuff there and it really skews a little bit lower, but … it’s like high school students, that type of thing… and try to figure out, “Okay, do we have content that’s going to make the grade?” I went in, I got a TikTok account, I put some videos on it and said “Eh, there’s not much going on there…” but again, not the target market. So it’s maybe seeing what students can do video-wise there and also working with other operations around campus. For instance, our admissions… someone in admissions said that their students wanted to do like mini-tours of the residence halls because they don’t have time for all of them so they might see a couple and I said, “That’s content we can use too” and it’s content that the Reslife channels can use too so it’s trying to figure out how to work smarter not harder. So if students are doing these nice little videos, let’s find a lot of uses for them… Because video is a great storytelling avenue. It’s why Instagram has thrived and why Snapchat is static, because they’ve been beaten to the punches. It’s why TikTok is huge, even though people either don’t know it or don’t completely understand it. But yeah, so the video storytelling, trying to figure out ways of doing that within this that are manageable. And obviously accessibility is a big issue on like, “Can you tell a story that people will understand if there’s no sound to it?”, and that type of thing. So I think with my current crop of students it’s going to be trying to figure out visual storytelling things. Is TikTok something worth pursuing or not? Because if it’s not, then we just don’t follow through with it. And then you just never know what’s going to be the next channel. We don’t rush into the next channel, you know, the idea is you want a content strategy you want to do it well, or at least start out doing it at least not embarrassingly bad. [LAUGHTER] But so where we started to stay on top of that and a good wrapping up anecdote is when Pinterest started a lot of my friends and other colleges were like: “Oh Pinterest, so it’s a passing fad, no one should jump on it.” I spoke to my students and I said, “This Pinterest thing. I kind of get it but what do you think? Should we have a Pinterest account?” and one of them Jenna Hanson said, “You know, students are always asking what they should bring for their dorms,” she said, “What about a Pinterest board that says ‘What to bring to your dorm’? Or ‘The winter is coming, what should people bring? What are some of the clubs I can join? What are some of the teams at SUNY Oswego?’” and then one person—an alumni, Shane Leibler who’s not here anymore—did a very popular board called “Oswego rocks!” where he looked at like, Billy Joel played here on his birthday once in the 70s or The Doors played here…it was a wilder time… you could get really good acts for almost nothing. And so he did all these things about, almost a who’s who Rock & Roll Hall of Fame of people who played here when they were not known. That’s one that keeps going really, really well because for Pinterest you’ve got to just come up with a good theme and get some stuff to that board but it’s also something you don’t need to update all the time like Instagram or that type of thing. And Jenna has been working in social media ever since she graduated too. So, it’s good and again, when people have this idea and they understand social media… that there’s a strategy behind it and it should solve problems. When students get that, you know that they’re going to do well in it.

Rebecca: Well thank you so much for joining us.

Tim: Thank you for having me.

John: Thank you.

Tim: Thank you for the tea.

[LAUGHTER]

John: Anytime… we always have tea here.

[Music]

John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.

Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.

John: Editing assistance provided by Kim Fisher, Chris Wallace, Kelly Knight, Joseph Bandru, and Jacob Alverson.