The world shrank today. It will do the same tomorrow and into the foreseeable future. Social media websites, like Twitter and Facebook, are a major part of this global downsizing, as they have exposed the human experience and enhanced communication like never before.
At Auburn, these sites impact student social life and learning on a daily basis. Any organization, whether a bar on Toomer's Corner or a basket-weaving club, you can have instant electronic access to a community of interested students and vice versa. Twitter accounts like Auburn Memes connect those who find humor in their university experience, while Instagram portrays the Auburn culture in ways that words cannot.
"There's more connectedness among students as well," said Monnie Wertz, Vice President of programming and planning at the University of Tampa. "We see a lot more students coming in who haven't met their roommates but know them from Facebook already."
In her view, these sites have profoundly positive effects on students, allowing them to instantly interact with people and organizations directly related to their interests.
Kelsey Loftin, a graduate student working for the College of Liberal Arts while obtaining her Masters in technical and professional communication, said getting word out for events is much easier through sites like Twitter and Facebook, and her experience is doubtlessly mirrored in businesses and organizations everywhere.
This increase in connectedness and communication can be a double-edged sword as well. Over the past few years, numerous incidents have led to the coining of the term "cyber bullying".
"People post things online that they wouldn't normally say to someone's face," said Wertz. Though there are no public instances of cyber bullying recorded at Auburn Univeristy, most people can simply look through their Facebook homepage and find some example of this trend.
Even given the potentially lethal nature of cyber bullying, the rampant posting of inappropriate material by students on their own profiles has had a much broader and more negative impact. Pictures of partying and profanity-laced posts abound on these sites, so they are one of the first places employers and grad school admission officers go to learn about applicants.
"What students don't realize is that once it's on there, it's on there forever," Wertz said.
Loftin had to go through her accounts and remove any unprofessional comments or pictures before applying for grad school. She believes, however, that students are not the only ones involved in spreading inappropriate material. "I wish sites would educate more people about privacy settings," Loftin said, adding that she was "concerned by websites' lack of interest in privacy."
Whether sites are interested in user privacy or not, Wertz feels that the result of social media sites' expanded role has stagnated the process of integrating them into university learning.
"When Facebook was just for college students, teachers and students would friend each other frequently. As [Facebook] opened up to everyone, it became unprofessional," Wertz said. As a result, social media saw a decreased role in the classroom, and today, has been "scaled back as an educational tool'" according to Wertz.
Dr. Michael Fuhlhage, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism, sees social media sites differently and wants to use them to further learning. Instead of banning devices from his class in an attempt to curb distraction, he encourages students to interact and ask questions on Twitter.
"As teachers, we have to communicate with students on their platform," said Fuhlhage.
On Twitter, he believes students are more likely to ask and respond to questions than they would be in front of an entire class.
Fuhlhage acknowledges the potential for distraction among students but said it doesn't bother him.
"Teachers tend to have a you-kids-get-off-my-lawn reaction (to social media), but there are always distractions," Fuhlhage said. "What I think is different about this distraction is that if a teacher knows how to use it, it can become a great learning tool."
Fuhlhage envisions a future where specific hashtags for individual classes make it so that students in those classes can keep up a running dialogue with their teacher monitoring the conversation. This vision, shared by an increasing minority of teachers, has led to several classes at Auburn requiring professional Twitter handles as they would books.
Because of social media's ever increasing role and usage, Fuhlhage doesn't see an end to this form of communication and expects the future to bring even more effective tools. "Twitter is only the latest thing," Fuhlhage said "Somewhere in a Google lab on the West Coast, someone is creating the next best thing, and teachers are going to have to decide whether it's a distraction or a tool."
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