Requiring social media participation in classes

A discussion on PROpenMic this week reopened a question that educators have been debating for several years now: should students be required to participate in social media as a class assignment?

Reasons not to require it:

• Using social media means participating in a conversation with transparency and authenticity; can someone be "forced" to do that?
• Students should be using social media anyway, so there's no reason to make it a course requirement
• Requiring social media turns it into a "chore," which is not a good learning experience
• There are no set standards for what "good" participation should be; how can you grade it?
• Students sometimes show poor judgment in what they post, so requiring them to participate puts them in danger of harming their future career options

Reasons to require it:

• Social media are an increasingly important part of public relations practice, and students should practice using it with transparency and authenticity while in school so they are prepared to use it properly on the job
• Using social media personally (hanging out with friends on Facebook) is not the same as using it professionally, so students may not be as well prepared as they think
• Many of the assignments students do in school are "chores" -- would students practice doing surveys or writing news releases if they were not required?
• Teachers can create rubrics to explain how students will be graded, just as they do with other assignments, so that grading will be fair
• Students sometimes demonstrate poor judgment in what they post, so they'd better learn now what is appropriate and what is not; a poor grade or bad experience now is better than getting fired later; and using a closed platform like PROpenMic can help to limit the damage

You all know which side I come down on, since I've been requiring students to participate in various platforms for years now. But what do you think?

Addition: Be sure to read Tiffany Gallicano's important follow-up post on public participation.

Comments

[Tim Penning, Ph.D., APR]

I think the question is not whether or not, or even participation, but HOW students engage and learn about social media.

Some forced participation has students engaging personally. That's ok to a point to learn how these tools wok. But they need to understand how to appropriate these social media platforms for professional public relations uses, not personal lifestreaming.

So an assignment might be not to require students to tweet and blog on behalf of themselves. Instead, have students pick a business, nonprofit, or government entity and follow/fan/read/engage their tweets, Facebook fan page, blog, YouTube channel etc and write an analysis of it--from a PR (not personal) perspective, and with sound rationale. In this way, they should integrate basic public relations principles into these new media.

[Karen Russell]

Tim, I think you're right that the real question is HOW. I think we as college instructors need to figure out how to balance real-life application with privacy law/ethics as Tiffany's post points out.

This discussion has given me much to think about, so thanks to all for participating -- here, on Twitter, and on Tiffany's blog.