What Can We Learn from Social Networking: Examples

Life is a rubber rope, hanging from a tall tree;
Life is a rubber window, staring back at me ...
--The Horseflies, "Life is a Rubber Rope" from Gravity Dance

A Historical Perspective

Sample Topics from the First GPACW Conference

Commonspace

Ethics on the Internet

Daedalus Integrated Writing Environment (DIWE)

Laptops at Grand Valley State University

Misuse of Internet Sources

MUDs and MOOs

Two Strands in Computers and Writing

1. The Postivist Approach to Computer Aided Instruction: Drill and Kill Meets Artificial Intelligence Meets Computer Grading of Essays

PLATO Learning

Machine Scoring of Student Essays by Patricia Ericsson and Richard Haswell

2. The Constructivist Approach: Network Theory, Distributed Intelligence, Collaborventions, Technorhetoricians

Computers and Community Edited by Carolyn Handa

@describe me as a technorhetorician

Lawrence Lessig's 2005 CCCC Presentation, <remix culture>

The good, the bad, and the ugly (Collin Brooke's "evening news phenomenon")

Pete Williams, "MySpace, Facebook Attract Online Predators"

Amy Hockert, "Employers Use Facebook and MySpace to Weed Out Applicants"

Cheryl MacPherson, "My Space Gone Wrong"

Molly Wood, "Five Reasons Social Networking Doesn't Work"

ABC News Video, "School Crackdown on MySpace"

Leslie Walker, "New Trends in Online Traffic"

Rob Capriccioso, "Facebook Face Off"

"Facebook Drama at SU" (Collin Brooke's blog discussion of the above)

How are faculty in higher education making social networking part of the curriculum?

Examples:

Spencer Schaffner, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Computers and Writing Online 2006 presentation:

"Facebook, Online Student Networking, and Strategically Designed Student Selves."

As those of us who teach about emerging media and composition know, it can sometimes be hard to keep up with our students' technological literate practices. ... All students in my courses use Facebook, and it is safe to say that almost all college- and high-school-level classes have students who "facebook" one another. Like Myspace, Livejournal, and other online social networking software, Facebook enables the strategic alphabetic and visual presentation of literate selves in networked relationship with other users. Facebook, however, is a particularly scholastic manifestation of social networking software.

Through discussions with my students at the University of Illinois, examination of current online discussions of Facebook, and examination of the forum as a faculty-user, I have compiled a set of working observations about this social networking technology as it is situated in practice. In this presentation I will align those observations with developing analysis from multiple theoretical frames. By evoking social network theory (as implemented by Lesley Milroy in her Belfast study), I plan to explore the ways Facebook profiles enact and celebrate the strategic representation of the academic "face" (as synecdochic self) while succumbing to auto- representation via a list of predetermined attributes. I also plan to analyze visual representations of the self to the extent that such uses of the visual reveal ways that auto-ethnographic representations now reposition the types of images found by Hawisher and Sullivan (1999). Though I will engage in textual analysis of facebook.com, no identities will be revealed and I will describe only the relationships between platform and conventionalized practice, thus not presenting research about human subjects per se.

Sarah Robbins, Ball State University

Last semester two teams in my class used social networking sites to conduct research.
One team's findings are presented here:

http://daklatt.iweb.bsu.edu/

And,

I see Second Life (SL)(and other virtual settings) as the direct offspring of MOOs and MUDs and I even draw on the MOO and MUD research to justify the use of SL in writing classes. Right now there are only two writing classes in SL (Dr Brien Carter from Central Missouri State is the other but his students aren't in SL full time) and there is certainly a media buzz about its use as a platform for education (see the media section of my wikipedia page for just a few of the latest stories http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellagirl).
SL adds a sense of physical presense that can be lacking in MOOs. Also, the ease with which students can build and create artifacts to share and communicate to the community and to their classmates makes SL more dynamic (and darned pretty to look at) compared to a typical MOO. If you'd like to see screenshots of the class check out this Flickr set http://www.flickr.com/photos/intellagirl/sets/72157594262587434/
Feel free to use any images you find helpful.

Gina Maranto, University of Miami

I have a student who did a research project on Facebook about college hygiene habits. Another student surveyed Webshots users about their awareness of privacy issues.

Note: many of the sites I originally collected are now gone, or have changed names, or cannot be linked because of privacy issues. What follows are comments about using social networking sites in academic settings.

Commentary from Technorhetoricians:

On how social networking is changing the Internet:

Charlie Lowe

Students are using it, they are making it their own while education is mostly a non-participant. Mostly what we hear so far is what's bad about MySpace and Facebook. Here's the important question: In what ways will MySpace et. al. change the Internet over the next ten years? It's going to. My first impulse is to think of the subtitle of Rebecca Mead's piece about Meg Hourihan and blogging: "How to put your business,your boyfriend, and your life on-line." Will most people that are regularly online have a social networking profile, a blog, and a circle of friends (managed by FOAF) in the next ten years, sharing much of their offline identity and lives online? It's definitely becoming the in thing to do for this younger generation.

Bradley Bleck

I don't know about elswhere, but our IT folks track the most visited sites from campus computers. The most popular: myspace. Blocked duringpeak usage hours (10 a.m. to 1 p.m.): myspace. Argued against it; didn't matter.

On the process of designing an online identity:

Charlie Lowe

I think it's amazing that all of these students are becoming "web-writing novices" on their own. Now we will have a context for
talking about page design. Indeed, a cool assignment could be to have students look at Myspace user pages and point out what they do and don't like about them from a design perspective. Or better yet, perhaps even have them create a Myspace user page (or revise their existing one) by helping them to develop and achieve goals for a good Myspace page. That would be fun a project in an intro web writing course.

Kristin Arola

There are a lot of MySpace users who spend a good deal of time tweaking with templates to redesign their profiles. They want to stand out w/ their design and not be like everyone else, and sometimes these designs end up messy and sometimes they are lovely (by my standards). This is fueled, in part (someone already said this I think) by a lot of template generators out there (eg: www.myspace.com/contacttables).

On students' awareness of the public nature of their sites:

Mary Wright

I am researching different web discourses and set up a Facebook account, with the disclaimer that I am not interested in invading my students' private lives; however, as people "friend" me, I get gateways into their buddy lists and frankly, some of the pictures I saw one
afternoon made me feel like I was invasive.

Clearly, these students understand the public arena in which they are publishing pictures of themselves in innocent gatherings and party hardyenvirons, but I know some or most of them would be mortified to know I saw the evidence of their excesses.

Kenneth Wright

Our student newspaper recently reprinted an article about employers looking at applicants' Facebook sites at UCLA and using the information to help them make hiring decisions. My students were appalled. They claimed that their Facebook sites don't represent what kind of employees they'll make. When I asked, "So you're lying?" they ignored the question. For this apparent breach of their realm had to be dealt with, and, clever devils, they decided they would leave their Facebooks as they are through their junior years, changing them to professional-looking sites at the beginning of their senior years. They didn't get it when I asked, "So you're sticking to the man?" Good timing, though, because the next set of readings are on ethics. Ought to be fun.

On ethos and identity:

Marcy Baumann

I think it's true of the MySpace generation that they don't yet understand the consequences of their rhetorical choices, and that those choices can come back to bite them. This is the latest in a long series of similar issues - email names come to mind, and so do blogs. Yeah, buzz_lightbeer@somewhere.com might find a job, and not get fired because of his blog posts dissing his boss, but people in this generation come to understand the rhetorical environment because of negative consequences, I think. How else could it be? The technology is too new for those of us who have gained rhetorical savvy (read: old farts) to anticipate such things. We certainly couldn't have taught them to be wary.

Rich Holeton

Regarding MySpace users tweaking their profiles, I recommend Danah Boyd's (UC Berkeley) research on MySpace.

She talks about profiles as a form of identity production, and the importance of this "digital public" space as an uncontrolled space
for youth in support of their socialization.

In this light the design question might be reframed as one of rhetorical effectiveness with a peer audience, where feedback is swift and can be merciless. I would not underestimate the sophistication or subtlety of teens' rhetorical choices in their constant revision of these multimedia productions. And if we just take a step back for a moment, isn't it incredible that over 60 million (mostly young) people are writing-authoring in this asynchronous multimedia space, on their own, outside of school, actively experimenting with design?

Marc Pietrzykowski

One fascinating thing about myspace is the number of identities established by "fans"--everyone from Carole Lombard to Tristan Tzara to Derrida to Alexander Graham Bell has a myspace page. Part of establishing your credibility among different sub-cultures within myspace is putting the right "friends" on your page--for example, if you are a member of a group that reveres old movie stars, you could have George Raft, Lombard, and Fatty Arbuckle listed as friends, along with other, presumably "real" friends. It's a form of citation, really; I suppose this could lead to a discussion of ethos...

On the threat of coopting social networking spaces for academic uses:

Stacey Clanton

Just a guess: Probably the fastest way to diminish use of MySpace (or Facebook or others) is for faculty members to start using it regularly.

Elizabeth Wardle

I've had students immediately change their profiles and privacy settings as soon as we talked about Facebook. Of course, many
others did no such thing. :)

Emi Day

Trying to make facebook a tool for school would be tough because there are already too many distractions to try to concentrate on something for a grade. Its informal, thats why its nice to just SPILL, purge, dump (for me). I dont want someone critiquing things I
write in general, much less on FACEBOOK!!! I want them to be interested and open, intrigued. asking for more. Dont try to turn
facebook into something its not- it will lose the very thing that makes it so great-- the way Google has no ads on its first page.

Clare Foland

I asked students how they felt about their teacher looking at their pages and told them that I had entertained the notion, but I had decided it might not be okay. Well, they all started talking at once. They assured me that they had to accept people as friends before just anyone could view their pages, and that they would accept me as a friend. Then they said they wanted to get me started; one student asked if he could "make me one"--a site or home page, I guess. Another student asked if we could spend half of our next lab day having them all teach me how to use Facebook. I think they were excited to show me something. They all assured me it was easy, and so many people were talking excitedly that it was hard to distinguish individual pieces of advice among the comments. I asked how much time they put into these sites, and the replies were: "too much"... "six times a day"... and many similar responses. I dropped the idea of using Facebook in class because I wasn't sure whether that would be getting "too close" to the students.

On positive aspects on social networking:

Emi Day

>What do you think are some of the positive aspects of online social networking for students?

-learn information you wouldn't be able to gather from a normal conversation
-skip the small talk and go straight for the interesting people
-see what kind of a person they are outside the classroom setting

Cynthia "CeeJ" Jeney

Rich Rice asks:

>So, let me ask everyone this-what's the best thing you've seen this year that promotes technological literacy?

TIP OF THE HAT: I nominate Facebook. Students who don't care jack about computers, technology, or the internet are jumping online 2 and 3 times per day just to check their facebook pages, and connect up with friends. Along the way, they teach each other stuff about how to use other internet applications sitting on their computers.

On using social networking materials in electronic portfolios:

Cara Lane, University of Washington, I/NCEPR Cohort One Member

Based on some of our study data, I've started to view ePortfolios as a counter to Facebook and social network spaces. When students begin to understand ePortfolios more, understanding that they are a space for the presentation of academic accomplishments to an academic and/or professional audience, they tend to speak of them in terms that separate them from social Web spaces. Students that are just beginning to gain familiarity with ePortfolios tend to seem them as extentions of social Web spaces. Mainly the distinction I'm making involves how personal the spaces become. Advanced students use ePortfolios to present their academic achievements, as a step towards connection with an academic network. Even though that academic network is "social" it is not so in the same way as Facebook. Presenting yourself academically is different than presenting yourself socially. Students seem to understand this difference and negotiate various Web spaces differently. I'm not sure that the two spaces--Facebook and ePortfolios--should intersect, since I see them as serving two different purposes/audiences.

Bob Cummings, University of Georgia, I/NCEPR Cohort Two Member

Academics need not attempt to colonize these spaces, but rather provide ways for social networkers to identify and export content which might be useful for academic discussions. That would require a portal, or a method for transporting the content, and a destination, or an academic network to receive the content.

Kathleen Blake Yancey, Florida State University, I/NCEPR Leader, Former CCCC Chair, and Chair Elect of NCTE

(paraphrased from a presentation at the National Assessment Institute, October 31, 2006)

Students use all the different form of social networking -- phone, IM, email, Facebook, etc. -- for different purposes, and they can tell us what those purposes are. We could create a concept map those differences.

Working at interfaces bring about good opportunities for learning.We could approach the issue by working at the interface of what students are doing in social networks and what we want them to demonstrate in electronic portfolios. Exploring the relationships between these decidedly different rhetorical situations would give us a new opportunity to learn.

Perhaps we need to teach students more about how to use social networking sites, such as blogs, wikis, MySpace, and Facebook, in their research.

Inter/National Coalition on Electronic Portfolio Research findings:

Based on Identity, family and friend audiences; increases retention and graduation rates.
LaGuardia Community College

Discovery of new categories of student learning and campus experience. Also tied to retention and graduation rates.
Portland State University

Uses a metaphor of a familiar process in Hawaiian values: building and using a canoe.
Kapiolani Community College

Reflection and linking claims to evidence lead to a better understanding of the writing process.
Northern Illinois University

One last observation:

Calling attention to students' social networking sites in writing classes helps them identify and differentiate between rhetorical situations, academic, social, career, and civic. Writing teachers can help them pay attention to how they construct and maintain online identities, and to think about who might be watching them, and why.

Questions for discussion:

Main Question:

Would you integrate social networking sites into your classes, and if so, how?

Other questions for discussion:

A recent article claimed that FB and MS were dead. (see future links) What do you think? What will replace them as the latest great fad?

Some are also claiming that YouTube is taking over the FB energy. Should we consider using video sites in comp classes? If so, how?

Others claim that social networking centered on Instant Messaging will be the wave of the future. Should we, or how could we better integrate IM into our comp classes?

If students are willing to discuss the quality of their student and academic life, could colleges and universities use social networking sites to get needed feedback on how they are serving student needs? Could this be a meaningful form of institutional assessment?

Your questions and concerns?