Students as facebook friends: Too much, too close?

What's the harm? I innocently thought. Having a facebook group for the basic communication class I teach was a great idea (started by a student and now handed over to me and the GTAs for the class). It wasn't long before undergrads (first-year students) started adding me as a friend. Given the group we all belonged to it, I felt refusing to confirm students' friend requests would be a bit of a double-standard. Sure, I would be well within a traditional student-teacher relationship if I had refused, but it seemed a bit hypocritical to encourage them to use the technology to foster community among lecture students and then refuse to fully be a part of that community.

Needless to say, this is no longer a traditional student-teacher relationship, and refusing to confirm students' friend requests of me is not like refusing to give them my home or cell phone number. It's more like asking them to be part of a phone tree with me and then refusing to give them my phone number.

So, social networking technology like facebook (which I believe can be an effective teaching tool) has changed the student-teacher relationship. This isn't news. And others have theorized, speculated, and written about this change better than I can.

More specific for me, I now get news of their photo albums on my own facebook news feed. While none of these photos are of a...compromising nature, some come close. Some involve activities that could be illegal, and others just provide more information about the students than I'd like to know.

The students aren't to blame, although they should think about taking down some of these photos before embarking on a serious job hunt or be "found out" by potential employers doing the regular google-facebook-myspace search of applicants. No, I think it's just a matter of technology fostering unintended consequences in a more nontraditional teacher-student relationship.

Interestingly, I think the next step is to use these experiences of mine as teaching tools in the classroom, examples of the ways technology is both open and public (even when we think it's private or, at the least, harmless to our "online reputations"). I'll certainly include this little talk in my lesson plan for lectures to the basic oral communication class I teach.

So, all I can do now is grin and bear it...and not click on the pictures when the icons pop up in my news feed!

Simple Answers to Difficult Questions

As Director of our basic course and supervisor of 30-40 Graduate Teaching Associates, I often have to complete online training courses about diversity, sexual harassment, ethics, etc. in the workplace. I (usually) gladly complete them, as I consider those topics important to doing my job well.

With some of the sessions, however, I can't help but be struck by the simple, black-and-white way the "correct" courses of action are portrayed. In the workplace ethics course, for example, if an employee took every "correct" course of action recommended by the program (like calling a co-worker out for using sick days inappropriately), that person would be ostracized at work, find his or her car egged in the parking lot, and generally find that others avoid him or her in the hallways.

I know these courses are meant for people in all positions, but quite a few of the situations just don't apply to being a professor. I used to be more sympathetic to criticisms of scholarly communication research that focused on life in the academy. While I do write autoethnography (not about life as a college teacher, though), and I've read some very good autoethnographies about life in the academy (see Pelias, A Methodology of the Heart, in particular), the label of "navel gazing" both stung and struck a chord with me.

After doing these online classes, though, I've realized how unique our position is in the world of work. We need more research exploring, detailing, and attempting to understand this sphere of work. Much of the Cultural Studies writing about education is a great start, but I'm thinking about more focus on us (the teachers)--If for no other reason than to be able to take online training courses more specifically tailored to our job concerns.

Summertime, and the living's...easy?

I used to dislike summers. Sounds strange to some, I know. I didn't like summers because school was out. Sounds even stranger, huh? Here's my reason: all my friends were gone, scattered, life was a little less structured, and I had to get a "real" job.

When I got to college, my initial thought was, "This is where I want to spend the rest of my life!" I was done with high school and not interested in going back (I haven't even been back to any reunions). But there was still my summertime blues.

When I became a college teacher and was able to teach in the summers, I got a bit of a respite: structure, social activity, students, and all the other benefits of summer (weather, for one). Now, however, it seems I'm busier during the summer than during the regular school year. How can that be? I suppose part of it is the gear-up: syllabi, orientation schedules for the Graduate Teaching Associates, and catching up on research. I kinda want the summers back now...

Are there any original experiments in social behavior left?

If the Pulitzer isn't proof of an original thinker, what is? In Communication Studies, we often value building on the work others, even going so far as to do replication studies to test the reliability of the data garnered from a particular study. This doesn't seem to be the case of this social experiment in the name of journalism.

How to "fix" a basic communication course?

Well, not fix so much as refine, revise, and improve.

My colleagues and I did some work on our basic communication course this past year with a grant from San Diego State's Course Design Institute/People, Information, Communication, and Technology institute. Here's the presentation from the CDI YouTube channel. Thanks to Suzanne and the ITS/CDI crew!

I'm planning more changes for this year, though it's a bit daunting when considering the impact on the 5,000 or so students we get in the basic course every year. Imagine steering a very sensitive, 50 foot yacht--even the slightest adjustment will be felt relatively strongly by all the passengers, and given its size it may be more difficult to readjust as the trip goes on. I've never been "yachting" (in case you get any misconceptions about professors' salaries here at SDSU!), but that seems to me to be an apt metaphor.

At any rate, watch the presentation and you'll get an idea of the complexities of teaching 5,000 first-year students (probably about 96% of all first-year students at SDSU) in a large lecture/break-out format. Of particular interest to me is the use of the facebook study group, which just happened by accident this past Spring but I plan to use deliberately this Fall. The clickers to which I refer, course response systems from einstruction.com, also worked out well. I'm interested to hear from others who've used similar technology in their classes.

Liking your job too much...

I love my job. It's no secret. And even though my wife, Heather, often tells me I need to spend less time at the office, here am I on yet another holiday's eve (this one is July 4th) prepping for classes and getting some writing done. The main office is closed, all my colleagues are gone, and I'm reading about the Human Relations and Human Resources approach to Organizational Communication.

I find this more than a bit ironic. The Human Resources approach signaled a shift from a management attitude that assumed people didn't really want to work and needed to be closely monitored (for example, watching employees to make sure they're not chatting online) to an attitude of: "If you make the job fulfilling, people will want to work. In fact, it's human nature for people to need to be part of something bigger than themselves, like an organization."

So, here am I, needing to be fulfilled and finding my job fulfilling. But at what cost? I suppose it's the nature of this particular academic beast to work "overtime" prepping, grading papers, writing, and all the while thinking, "At least I don't have a 9 to 5 job." But when 9 to 5 becomes 8-6 or (like this past Spring semester) 7-10, it might be time to put things in perspective and get a hobby (again, something Heather tells me I should have). Ah well, at least the hallways are quiet.

Do white people really love grammar this much?

I'm not sure I buy this, although I did spend some time marking such mistakes on graduate student theses this semester. Hmmm...