Campus Connection

On April 10, UMB’s Health Sciences and Human Services Library (HSHSL) hosted a daylong symposium for faculty, students, and staff on the use of social networking tools—or collaborative online applications such as MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube—to enhance academic teaching and learning.  

The symposium, entitled Are you Connected: Social Networking Tools for Collaborating, Teaching and Learning, highlighted an evolution in online resources that are serving an ever more important role in supporting academics and learning as current students have been brought up accustomed to technology.  

“Studies show that students today have very different learning styles and interact with information differently from students in the past,” said M.J. Tooey, director of HSHSL.  “In the classroom, use of these technologies has the possibility of really enhancing the learning experience.”  

The sessions of the symposium addressed a wide variety of topics including the use of social networking in a clinical environment, YouTube and universities, and student privacy concerns.  Other workshops focused on using specific applications such as blogs, cell phones, Flikr, and iTunes for learning.  Participants were also permitted to “play” in a social networking “sandbox” composed of computers equipped with a variety of tools including SlideShare, WordPress, and Twitter.  

The keynote address featured Andy Carvin, the senior product manager for online communities at National Public Radio (NPR) Digital Media, who discussed the evolution of online tools in academia from the 1970s to present day and the opportunities for social networking in education that lie ahead.  

“It’s a natural evolution of what educators have been doing for a long time and have been trying to do,” said Carvin in explaining why social networking tools have become of increasing importance in academia.  

Vinay Vaidya, an assistant professor in pediatrics and a physician in the pediatric intensive care unit who attended the symposium, agreed with Carvin.  “If you disassociate the computer part of it [social networking] and just say what it can do, they get the message,” said Vaidya in referring to faculty.  “It’s just what [educators] are doing, but these are tools to do it better.”  

Carvin briefly highlighted how online tools such as Usenet, e-mail listservs, and dial-up bulletin boards evolved into modern day tools such as Facebook, Ning.com, and Twitter.  He said that the recent broad public acceptance of the World Wide Web and the proliferation of applications that allow online users to publish and share content—known in the technology field as Web 2.0 or the Read/Write Web—has come together to foster the rapid adoption of online tools in education.  

“Educators need to get a handle on what student groups are being formed on Facebook and elsewhere related to their courses—not to go after them or shut them down, but to figure out how to take advantage of these opportunities,” said Carvin.  

He encouraged the audience composed mostly of faculty and administrators to try out online sites such as YouTube and Facebook in order to build familiarity and eventually incorporate them as tools to enhance student learning.  

Shruti Rana, an assistant professor of contracts and comparative commercial law, heeded Carvin’s advice in an afternoon tour of common social networking services.  She familiarized herself with Facebook in a guided-session led by HSHSL Deputy Director Teresa Knott after recognizing its advantages over the university-sponsored Blackboard.  

“I think I should be able to do things on Facebook that I can’t necessarily do on Blackboard, in terms of loading pictures and things like that,” said Rana.  She decided to attend the session after recently realizing that she could more effectively communicate with her students through Facebook.

“I found that the students were already very linked in using Facebook and also very comfortable with it,” said Rana.  “They were constantly checking their Facebook accounts, and so I think it’s easier to get information to them quickly over Facebook.”  

In contrast to using these tools to teach students, Vaidya simply hoped to gently introduce online applications such as Facebook, YouTube, and other technologies to his fellow colleagues and emphasized that the presentation of new technology is particularly important in how it is received by faculty.

“If you talk about technology, people are put off,” said Vaidya.  “But if you talk about the application of what it can do, and kind of shield the ‘geekness’ behind it, people get interested.”  

Vaidya plans to create YouTube “how-to” videos on patient safety, on performing certain medical procedures, on presenting medical cases, and even a video on how to reach his office.  

Carvin urged hesitant faculty to experiment and seek assistance if necessary in developing uses for social networking tools.  “If you’re not finding things [online tools] that are serving your teaching needs, create them,” said Carvin, “Or ask your students or your TAs [teaching assistants] to create them.”

According to Tooey, the idea for the symposium came about from curiosity in using applications such as MySpace and SecondLife in the library or academic setting.  With the assistance of Alexa Mayo, HSHSL’s associate director for services, funding for the symposium was secured through a grant from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine.  

“I think it is a good idea to offer opportunities to the campus to think about how we use technologies, especially social networking ones, in teaching, learning, and collaboration,” she said.

Tooey believes that the response from speakers such as Carvin and symposium participants reinforces the growing acceptance of the use of online collaborative tools in education.  “Social media is for real,” she concluded.  

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