Social media mandatory for class

While many instructors ban social media during class, IU professor Anas Alahmed requires students to have Facebook open during his “New Media and the Arab Spring” course, taught out of the School of Journalism.

“Please go to your Facebook account,” Alahmed said to 12 students sitting at Apple computers. “Go to the page ‘We are all Khaled Said.’ You must like the page.”

The class uses social media to understand the impact of new media platforms during the Arab Spring revolution. All screens turned the familiar Facebook blue and white as students of Alahamed’s class scrolled though the page to find posts during the revolution.

“You can see how many people like the page and statuses,” Alahmed said. “You can see how many people shared it.”

According to the syllabus for the class, every student is required to have a Facebook and Twitter account in an effort to take social media from entertainment to professional purposes, Alahmed said.

Professor Mark Deuze, professor in the Department of Telecommunications,teaches T101 “Media Life,” said the decision to use social media in the classroom, if done correctly, builds upon what students are already naturally doing.    

“Any kind of education starts with communication,” he said. “Social media are communication tools, and can thusly be used in teaching contexts.”

The class has a twitter account, @t101medialife  used to communicate between Deuze, six AI’s and the 400 students in the class.

A Sept. 17 tweet said, “special announcement for #t101medialife: tomorrow, in lecture, we will reveal how many people at IU made love this week, and what they did.”

Students replied to the tweet with their opinions. One student linked a parody video about using the Internet for pornography.

“It’s definitely unique, at least from the other classes that I’m taking,” sophomore Harry Wagner said. “It’s cool that the students can interact with the instructor and AI’s through Twitter.”

Deuze said using social media allows him to capture the attention of  his students.

“Some professors maintain an illusion of total engagement on the part of students during their lectures,” he said. “I am more willing to accept that we are always processing multiple streams of information, never succeeding in focusing on any one thing for more than 10 to 20 minutes or so. I use social media, video and audio to bridge the gaps in between attention spans.”