Building Student Engagement Through Social Media

Abstract

Social media offers several opportunities in the classroom that include increased student engagement, building students’ professional and peer networks, and developing their social media skills. This article describes the use of two platforms, Twitter and Facebook, and the advantages or disadvantages of each in five undergraduate Political Science courses and three MPA graduate courses. The article first summarizes the pedagogical benefits of social media, drawing from an interdisciplinary literature. It then reflects on the challenges and successes of social media related to student engagement in and out of the classroom and student feedback on social media contributions to learning. Finally, it offers suggestions for future directions using social media.

Keywords:

• Social media
• student engagement
• pedagogy
• active learning

Notes

1 This observation comes from an informal conversation between the instructor and a guest speaker in Spring 2014 regarding what skills employers seek in entry-level college graduate employees or college-level interns.

2 Thank you to Reviewers 1 and 2 for their suggestions to improve this section, especially the recommendation to transform disadvantages into teachable moments such as a discussion about freedom of speech.

3 The author created group accounts on behalf of the class to facilitate the exercise and continuity across courses. This also served as an archive and example for future courses. Twitter limits the number of accounts that can be created using a single email address and how many accounts can be created during a certain period. Depending on how many accounts are needed for a course, it may be necessary to create the accounts over 1 to 2 weeks to avoid Twitter-imposed caps.

4 Thanks to panelists, especially Heather Carpenter, of “Innovate Methods for Teaching Nonprofit Management” at the 2014 Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) for sharing their lessons learned.

5 At the time of this course, tweets were limited to 140 characters. In 2017, Twitter increased the number of characters allowed in each tweet to 280 and added features to more easily thread tweets.

6 Louisiana State University transitioned from paper to online evaluations in Spring 2017. In subsequent semesters, evaluation response rates have been lower and there have been fewer comments.

7 The author utilizes the course number and department codes as hashtags, which have been unique enough for searches to produce only course content and easily remembered by instructor and students. For example, #PADM7925 and #CAS2033 are two recent examples in a graduate-level and undergraduate-level course, respectively.

8 Kristen Hernandez at the Louisiana State University Faculty Technology Center was an integral to developing the next steps to overcome the challenges encountered by the author and ways to integrate other social media technology in courses.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Meghann R. Dragseth

Meghann R. Dragseth is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Administration at Louisiana State University. Before joining LSU, she received her PhD in Political Science from the University of Oklahoma. She has taught courses on nonprofit management, comparative politics, and public policy. Her research interests include international nonprofit management and comparative public policy and administration.