Social networking: use and guidelines

The current assignment (due post-exam, of course) is to research and present findings on the presence and use of social media in corporate settings. As with anything new, the policies lag behind the actual use. One student (from a previous class of mine) found a Social Media Governance site, which contains blogging-related policies and/or guidelines from 99 organizations. While I've not read them all, my current favorite is the Yahoo! Personal Blog Guidelines 1.0. I like the common-sense, treat-them-as-grownups approach...and the lessons learned from the "experienced" bloggers inside Yahoo!. Our interest in this course is whether the use of social media is an extension of corporate strategy...or a bandwagon leap. The early discoveries are intriguing, as are the student opinions.

On a micro-level, the presence and use of laptops and cell phones in class is equally risky. Though I was taught that people tend to rise to the level of our expectations for them, I've found the belief to be both a truth and a trap. In this course, social networking--and, by extension, the associated technology--is potentially an enabler and a distraction. The students are generally quite respectful, though, giving attention to peer presentations and to my occasional formal "lectures."

But it takes everything in me not to walk around and check...are they on Facebook? Email? Twittering? (Doubly painful, that possibility.) What keeps me from checking with any regularity is the knowledge that faculty meetings and business meetings provide the same temptation to professionals who are expected to manage their own behavior. Perhaps this, too, is one of the learning experiences...for me, as well as for the class.

Unintended consequences

It's time for the first exam and we're worried, "we" being the students and the instructor. Despite my belief that the teams are learning (they tell me so, as does their work), we wonder if the class will perform well on the multiple choice exam. Are we focused on the grades or on the learning?

I asked every student to write five multiple choice exam questions (for a practice exam) using Bloom's revised taxonomy, with a focus on application, analysis, evaluation, and creation questions. They found it hard to do. We had a lively discussion about the difference between the learning they say is happening in the course and the use of multiple choice exam grades to assess learning. The first exam is later this week and the unintended consequence is a temporary loss of focus on the learning.

And on a related note, I'm aghast to learn that a prep school library in New England is going "bookless." Lest I be accused of leanings in that direction, let me write for the record that I think all students should read. Books. Nothing replaces the feel of a well-loved book in my hand. I can't imagine curling up on a rainy day with an electronic device. Shakespeare and Dante should be read on paper...and not the paper in my printer. Though I don't require a textbook for this course, I bring four textbooks with me, make them available during class, and encourage the students to use them as resources. And they do.

And when we get through this first exam and back to the learning, we'll be talking about books. Specifically, what is the one book each of them would want to have available were they on a mission-critical strategic project. It's all about the learning and the reading...and I don't know how to accomplish one without the other.

"Why has it taken so long?"

Yesterday, the five teams were working on assigned projects and I was drifting among them answering questions or providing clarification. (I do seem to have abundant opportunities for clarification, probably a function of my errant belief that I communicate clearly.) During this working time, I sat down with one of the teams and responded to a question about why I'd made a specific assignment.

My general approach to questions is to be as honest and transparent as possible, so I explained my thought process for designing the project the way I had. I braced for the expected refutation (why it was more work than necessary, for example) and was momentarily stunned to hear the follow-up question: "Why has it taken so long to figure out that this is the way we prefer to learn?"

If ambivalence is the simultaneous experience of both positive and negative feelings, my reaction would qualify. It's thrilling to hear at least one student say she feels heard and challenged in this way. It's disheartening to hear how unusual this seems to her.

Every professor I know genuinely wants to reach his or her students and devotes considerable time and energy to teaching. We seem to need more dialog between ourselves and our students, as we really do have the same goals, I think, of engaged, motivated, and well educated students.

The first week of class

The first two classes were a lot of fun, at least for me. I've been able to watch what happens when 31 really bright students explore the content, the technology, the classroom, and their team. Structuring the assignments and then getting out of the way seems to be working, just as Marc Prensky describes it:

"One reason that the pedagogy of students teaching themselves never caught on as the mainstream approach – although it has been advocated by many, certainly since Dewey and probably since Socrates – is that the available tools for learners to use just were not good enough....Today’s technology offers students all kinds of new, highly effective tools they can use to learn on their own – from the Internet with almost all the information, to search and research tools to sort out what is true and relevant, to analysis tools to help make sense of it, to creation tools to present one’s findings in a variety of media, to social tools to network and collaborate with people around the world. And while the teacher can and should be a guide, most of these tools are best used by students, not teachers."

We're contributing as we are able, from the instructor's experience (sprinkled with curiosity) to the students' enthusiasm and willingness to explore. What an adventure...and there's an entire semester to go.

The classroom debut

The Collaborative Classroom is ready and what a difference! The new tools are reasonably straightforward, so students should be able to engage in learning that extends as far as the technology. Teams, collaboration, and problem-solving (real time...during the class) designed to replicate as closely as possible the work for which we are preparing our students. It forces me to think about how to structure assignments to provide enough guidance to make sure we meet course objectives, without getting in the way of our very bright students.

A Capstone course--one intended to take content from multiple courses and synthesize a cohesive framework for understanding how businesses use strategy and planning--is an opportunity for students to produce a portfolio of work that reflects well upon them and upon their education. Student feedback will help determine whether we accomplish that goal.

The syllabus and course plan

The syllabus and the course plan for the entire semester are in final draft form. I have a plan for each 3-hour class from August 25 through December 10, knowing full well that the plan will have to be adjusted. But at least there is road map for where I plan to go and some milestones to mark progress. I suspect the students--and their interaction with the technology--will take some of my plans in an entirely unexpected direction. The learning objectives will serve as course corrections (pun unintended).

Our University is fortunate to have a Teaching and Faculty Support Center, sponsors of the annual Teaching Retreat designed to "facilitate and assist faculty with pedagogical issues." The 2009 retreat was the first week in August and provided me with ample (and timely) opportunity to review my course plans and syllabus for improvement opportunities, of which there were many.

Tomorrow is the first day of training on the new tech tools installed in the Collaborative Learning Classroom (the official name). I am, once again, reminded how our students feel when asked to walk into a new semester, new course, new instructor, new expectations--and it's not an altogether pleasant feeling.

The "no textbook" decision

Let me make it clear from the outset that I like textbooks. I've kept many of the texts I used during my graduate school days, along with a sizable number of more recent acquisitions. At their best, textbooks provide research, case studies, insights from business heavy hitters (remember, this is a business school), and visually enticing diagrams, photographs, and charts. How could anyone not love a well-written textbook?

Well, today's students, mostly. They not only prefer to read and write in shorter bursts (think text messages and tweets), they also want to be able to find the absolute latest information available. I've been surprised--pleasantly and on more than one occasion--how quickly students can and do investigate a casual reference I've made to some topic...often before the end of the day and quite frequently before the end of that class period.

Kansas State University's Digital Ethnography Project conducted a survey of 200 students and found:

• They complete 49% of the readings assigned to them.
• They buy textbooks that are never opened.
• The reading ratio of books to web pages is 8:2300.

And we (meaning academics) have inadvertently contributed to the decline in textbook appreciation. Many instructors cover the textbook material so thoroughly in lectures that reading the text is really unnecessary; therefore, the cost of the textbook is seen as wasted money. I prefer that reading occur before students come to class (quaint, I know) and have varying levels of success with reinforcing that behavior. Still, it's a slog, at best.

The other way we've contributed to the downfall of the textbook is by taking steps to minimize student cost. In this particular course, we worked with the publisher to develop a custom text of only the required chapters, supplemented by relevant articles. The unintended consequence is a black-and-white version of the text, which significantly decreases the visual appeal. In fact, I use the original textbook simply because it's more enjoyable to read.

So, what will replace the text? A combination of classic articles (such as Michael Porter's "What is Strategy?"), videos used in the current course, student-driven research (within broad guidelines), and a requirement that students be able to understand and explain what they find. And I am knee-deep in the nuts and bolts of the details required to guide this process toward the learning objectives for the course.