Meeting Students Where They are Online, But Leading Them Somewhere More Interesting: Reflections on Teaching the Facebook Class

ABSTRACT

This article describes a unique interdisciplinary course on social media and the self developed and taught by the authors at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. The article describes challenges facing humanities faculty who wish to teach on topics with high societal currency and student interest. Current research into humanistic approaches to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter is summarized. The authors discuss their inquiry-driven pedagogy in the classroom, how the course was redesigned based on student feedback, and assignments designed to encourage critical thinking about students' use of social media. Finally, the article argues that humanities faculty should offer more classes that utilize a humanistic approach to social media and other new digital technologies.

Keywords:

• Facebook; interdisciplinary teaching; social media; pedagogy