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The snow is coming down here in West Virginia! Classes are canceled today so I will be catching up on research and some other things. But let’s talk classes and syllabi!
In addition to the applied Communication Research class I am teaching this semester (discussed in the previous post) I’m also teaching a few other classes. :) I want to quickly share some of my syllabi for the semester. I’ve uploaded syllabi for these classes to my Scribd account, which is where I host past syllabi and class assignments. Click the link below to see the syllabus. (You can also see all the below-described syllabi as well as past syllabi via the menu on the left, by mousing over “syllabi.”)
Comm 335: Writing Across Platforms – Changes from Fall 13 include: A lab day for greater access to press release examples and working with peers on the first press release assignment, I’ve re-organized and updated the related social media and blog writing assignments, and have shifted a few lectures around to more effectively deliver material. Other minor changes to make sure content is up to date. I’m also super excited that for our PitchEngine assignment this semester, all of our students will be temporarily upgraded from the free version of PitchEngine to the paid level thanks to the awesome people at PitchEngine! So, students will get experience with advanced functionality.
Hope you find these new syllabi helpful! If you share your syllabi online, please share in the comments below!
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Metrics, Metrics, Metrics! I hear it everywhere I turn. :) More than ever, we need to be teaching our students research skills.
This Spring 2014 semester I am really excited to be teaching an applied Communication Research class!
For two years at Utah Valley University, I taught communication research with an emphasis on academic research. You can see the syllabus for that class. In that class, student groups planned, wrote up, and executed a semester long academic research study. Though many professors don’t prefer to teach this class, research is one of my favorite classes to teach. I’ve had numerous undergraduate students present their research at undergraduate research conferences and earn travel grants to do so. This is a super valuable experience for those considering grad school. Though it is very time demanding, and some feel teaching others how to conduct research is tedious, I didn’t find it that way at all. Seeing students get that “aha” moment in research and seeing them succeed makes teaching the class very rewarding.
This semester, I’ll be focusing on the more practical uses of research with an emphasis on using research for strategic purposes. This class emphasizes research across new media, legacy media, and interpersonal and online environments. Students will learn both quantitative and qualitative methods.
This hands on class will emphasize the following research skill sets:
How to conduct content analysis using a coding sheet.
How to conduct a computer-assisted content analysis
How to conduct interviews and focus groups
How to conduct quantitative electronic surveys using iPads
Students will work in teams to conduct 3 applied projects. The first 2 projects are real-world problems I set up and the students have to solve, and in the 3rd project they have to identify a problem, write a proposal, and execute:
Media placement evaluation – Answering questions such as, placement, share of voice, and whether key messages are included in media coverage and to what extent. Done via content analysis of media clippings.
Sentiment analysis of social media content – What are people saying about your brand on social media, and what is sentiment towards it? Done via computer-assisted content analysis of Twitter posts.
Audience Research – Focuses on 1 of the 5 key PR variables discussed by Stacks (2011): Confidence, credibility, relationship, reputation (which may include awareness), or trust. Students will choose 2 of the following: interviews, focus groups, and surveys.
Students will be introduced to the following software:
Computer-assisted content analysis (Yoshikoder will be used as it is free and easy to learn)
Open Data Kit Collector – field data survey collection software (we will be using this with the XLS forms on the free FormHub.com online form tool).
SPSS – We won’t get too far into SPSS due the other demands on the students time, but students will learn data entry, descriptive statistics, and correlation analysis.
I’ll be posting the syllabus for the class soon! As the semester goes along, I hope to get up a number of blog posts expanding on the class, assignments, and so forth. So check back!
Have you taught research – what do you emphasize in your class? How can I improve my class? What key skill sets should we be teaching future practitioners?
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I hope everyone is staying warm! Here in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, we’ve got some terribly cold weather heading our way tonight!
I want to take a moment to share some news from the research side of my life in academia. :) As you know, I research social media and civic and political participation.
I’m very excited because this past Friday, my latest co-authored study was published online in the journal New Media and Society.
Social Media and Mobiles really seeks to further investigate the seemingly important role of online political expression (such as posting political videos to YouTube, Tweeting about politics, or posting to Facebook, etc.) in political participation. Particularly, the study looks at what role online expression may play in moderating any effects of political media use on participation. Additionally, this study investigated political smart phone app use, something not investigated in the prior two studies.
Here is the abstract:
A web survey of college students was conducted to examine whether online political expression moderates the effects of political media use on political participation. Results showed that online political expression enhanced the effects of political mobile apps, traditional offline and online media, and social media on political participation. Implications are discussed for a mobilizing role of online media in the democratic process for young adults.
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Every December, my wife and I write down personal goals for the upcoming year. We sit down, discuss them, write them down, and then at the end of the year, we look at what we wrote down and honestly assess how we did. This year, I thought I should write down my 2014 goals as an educator.
By sharing them, I 1) hope to hold myself more accountable at the risk of facing some serious cognitive dissonance 2) hope it will inspire some people to write down their goals, and share them.
So here are is my list of goals as an educator for 2014:
1) Don’t Lose Sight of Why I got into Academia
If I think about it,I’ve been teaching at the university level for 7.5 academic years (including 4 years of autonomous teaching as a grad student TA). I love teaching. I feel very blessed to have found my calling. As I’ve gotten further along in my career, I’ve taken on new responsibilities that have taken time away from my ability to really focus on making my classes outstanding. I want to make sure that as I add more years of experience under my belt, I don’t lose sight of why I am in academia: the students. In 2014, I want to make a conscious effort to keep putting my students first as I take on new responsibilities outside of the classroom.
2) Stay Young at Heart
This is also related to my growing years of experience mentioned in #1. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed the differences between myself and my students are growing in terms of life experiences. For example, a few years ago students easily got cultural references I made to things from when I was growing up. Nowadays, I make movie references or mention musical artists and am greeted with blank stares. Anyone who has taken a class from me, knows that I love teaching and love learning, and seek to make the classroom environment fun and engaging. But, creating common ground on common experience is becoming more challenging. Of course, I could learn more about what students are watching, listening to, etc. – it isn’t too hard to chat with students and learn about what they’re into nowadays, that’s not what I’m getting at. I suppose I wonder in what other significant ways my getting older could create distance with my students. As time passes, am I having a harder time relating to the way young adults see the world, and what matters to them? When I started teaching, I was a grad student in his mid twenties – a fellow student living in college housing. My life is much different now. Since I started teaching, I’ve gotten married, bought a house, started planning for retirement, many of my friends have started families, etc., etc. While these things in and of themselves are great, with each year my day to day life and experiences are increasingly different from that of my students. So, in 2014 I want to make a conscious effort to be aware of that and to make a real effort to put myself in the shoes of my students. That includes, being sure to see things from their port of view, trying to reflect on how I thought, what concerns I had, what my priorities were, and how i felt when I was their age. In short, I want to make sure I stay young at heart and continue to be compassionate and mindful of the world of a college student.
3) Teaching Reflection
I am a bit of a perfectionist and a bit obsessive when it comes to my class. I want each class period to be perfect – right down to the order in which I present little bits of information. (I’ve found saying 1 thing before another can have a dramatic effect on how students react to information sometimes. I know. It is probably a bit over the top). When I started teaching, I would go to my office after each class and make notes on how the class went. If I felt a major change was needed, I would readjust a lesson. If something little needed to be done – say, we should have had a discussion about X, or I should have asked Y question, I’d make note of that. Then, I’d then update my binder so that the next time I taught the class, the improvement was made. However, as I’ve gotten busier, I’ve not kept up this routine. Instead, I’ve either 1) made a note to work on the fix over winter or summer break, or worse 2) forgotten about what I wanted to do to improve that particular class and hoped I’d remember the next time around. While #1) was better than nothing and sometimes gave me time to come up with new ideas that were great, sometimes because time had passed, I lost the advantage of having the problem fresh in my mind and thus my ability to create a real improvement to the class was diminished. Of course, #1 was better than #2. When i did #2, I often never remembered to make the change. Then I’d be teaching the class again and be kicking myself. While I’ve learned to be a bit more flexible, I do want to get back to taking the time to reflect on my classes and make more immediate adjustments after a class if I think something should be presented differently. So goal #3 is: Rather the putting it off, spend time after classes when needed to plan changes to things that didn’t go as I had hoped.
4) Assessment
This is less of a goal and more of a “somethin’ I gotta do.” But still, it is a new challenge and an area I want to really do well in. As you know, I created the Strategic Communication concentration in the Department of Communication at Shepherd. I’m going to be building an assessment plan for the program. Assessment is something I haven’t done before. So i am excited and nervous about it. I’ve created a plan for my Writing Across Platforms class. So I’ve got a start. But the planning and execution of assessment is a big project for 2014. So, creating a complete assessment plan for my concentration and beginning to assess it is a big goal for 2014!
5) Be Thankful
Lastly. I know we get stressed at our jobs and that this is a challenging time for academia. I love what I do. And I’m so thankful that I get to do it. But sometimes, we get so busy and so focused on what we need to get done, or stressed about a project or a deadline, we lose sight of how lucky we are. In 2014, I want to really make an effort to keep on the top of my mind how thankful I am to get to do what I love every day and to work with amazing students and professors.
Thanks so much for reading my blog in 2013. It has been a wonderful year. I’ve learned so much and had so many amazing experiences in my professional and personal life!
What are your goals for the upcoming years? Have you dealt with the items on my goal list – and if so, what suggestions and advice do you have?
Cheers! I wish you a peaceful and prosperous 2014!
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It is finals week! We’ve had a good amount of snow here, as Scout can attest, and I’ve been busy catching up on grading. With a few minutes of down time before the next batch of final projects are due, I thought I’d begin reflecting on this past semester.
Every semester that I’ve taught a Social Media course, I’ve done things a bit differently.
This proved to be a very involved project that many students found challenging. While there were some grumbles on account of how involved it was, it also provided a great opportunity for hands-on learning. We can talk about a lot of concepts, such as metrics, but to me there is a much greater learning impact when one sets their metric goals, tracks them while seeking to drive traffic to their site, and has an opportunity to reflect on whether they met their goals and why.
I enjoyed this project. There is a lot I liked about it. But there are a few things I wasn’t completely satisfied with. Here are a few general reactions / things I took away:
Tumblr was a bad choice – I wanted my students to use the industry standard Google Analytics to learn metrics. Most job postings discussing metrics, mention GA. I wanted my students to use a free blogging platform. WordPress unfortunately does not enable GA at the free level. So I went with Tumblr. But the Tumblr culture just didn’t fit our project. I think we’d have had more success if we’d used Blogger.
Learning metrics was challenging, and so was teaching it – More and more jobs are requiring interns and employees to understand and know how to track and report web and social metrics. While I’ve long been interested in analytics, and did my GA certification a few years ago, I hadn’t previously taught how to use metrics. I had discussed them, their importance, etc. But never had students actually tracking metrics. I modified a great spreadsheet from a fellow social media educator, Jeremy Floyd, and required students to use it to report, and thus track their metrics from Google Analytics. But, between all the other things we were doing in the class, and teaching students with no prior metrics experience how to interpret Google Analytics, how to choose appropriate metrics, and getting them to report an array of metrics on a consistent basis, It proved overwhelming. I simply made it too complicated. I should have simplified the spreadsheet, and focused on a better understanding of a few important concepts as opposed to spreading it too broad, and thus too thin. I think students would have gotten more out of it. So next time, I’ll simplify the spreadsheet and focus the students attention on a few metrics.
I’m still glad I taught them metrics – A number of students said that, prior to taking my class, they were not aware of metrics, their importance, and how to track and interpret them. And while I think the way I approached it made it difficult, I’m glad the students learned these things. They have basic knowledge of Google Analytics and experience with tracking, interpreting, and reporting metrics. And as I said above, this is an important skill set to be developing in college.
Students are incredibly creative – This isn’t something new I learned. But it was something I again was happily reminded of. Students came up with great blog topics, and created a ton of great posts!
“I got a lot out of the class” – a quote from a student during his final presentation – Call me biased, but I agree with this student and believe students got a lot out of this project, whether their blog was the “success” they hoped it would be or not. Students had to identify and study a specific niche, create a plan for meeting the needs and interest of the niche via a blog including objectives, audience persona, content calendar, and then go out into the community to gather the info they needed to create content, then deliver it throughout content throughout the semester for their audience. Meanwhile, they had to track blog traffic metrics and social media. That’s a lot to ask. For many, this was their first experience executing these concepts. And I’m proud of what they accomplished!
“Blogging is a lot more work than I thought it was going to be” – quote from a few students during their final blog presentations – This relates directly to the above. I’m glad students got the opportunity to realize this as a first-person experience. Because many of our students will go on to create content, lots of it – whether for blogs, social, or other means. And there is no better learning experience than to be responsible for planning, creating, and sustaining an entirely novel content plan – its like building a mini brand. If you can do it here, you will be able to do it for the company that hires you! When we don’t have first person experience with something, I think we often underestimate what all goes into it. Students were able to see how much planning and continuous effort went into creating and sustaining engaging social content.
With all these things said, it is my hope that all of the students feel a sense of accomplishment for what they did, and truly understand what all they learned. This was not the only assignment in the class by any means. Much else was asked of them. And I’m sure they’re relieved for the class to be done. I hope they all realize what they learned and accomplished.
As I often find myself doing, the niche blog wasn’t one assignment, but a series of related assignments. In the upcoming post, I’ll explain each assignment, and how the assignments built on one another.
In the meantime, here are their blogs!
BeYOUtiful – a live positively blog for young people. Lots of great advice and motivation!
The Beastern Panhandle – A great Going Out guide to our rural Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia.
LevelUp – An RPG video game fan blog, with lots of great analysis on the RPG game genre.
The Triple Play – College students talking sports, music, and movies!
The Reenactor – A blog for people in the reenacting community, focusing on men’s fashion from the early to mid 20th century.
The Starving Student – a video blog following one college student’s goal to start eating healthy while facing the poor food choices all around him.
DoItYourself Natural Products – A do it yourself personal care website, based on frugal, environmentally friendly personal care.
Baking It Simple – simple recipes for college students and young professionals on a budget.
What are some assignments and projects you taught in your social media classes this semester? I’d love to hear. I’m always looking for new ideas to try out!
Hope the end of your semester is not too stressful! – Cheers, Matt
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I always learn so much from our guest speakers! This week we were very fortunate to have the author of our class text, Born to Blog, Mark Schaefer (@markwschaefer) Skype with our class.
Here are some highlights from his presentation to this semester’s Comm 322 Social Media class.
Challenges and Opportunities in Social Media – Mark said that a major challenge today is information density. Today, we have so much information that people are reaching information paralysis. How do companies adapt and thrive in this space, with so much competing for our attention? Though not specifically about information density, the article “How the physics of social media could kill your marketing strategy” offers what I believe is a good look at the general issue.
Why do some businesses succeed on social media and others fail? Mark said it really boils down to corporate culture. Questions that come to mind after hearing Mark discuss this topic are: Does the company understand and embrace the social space? Are they agile and responsive? Do they want to adapt?
What Metrics Matter?: Since I’ve been seeking to teach my students basics of Google Analytics, the importance of, and how to track metrics, I ask guest bloggers what metrics matter to them. When asked what the key metrics he tracks are, Mark said there was one that matters: returning visitors. Are they coming back? If people come back, eventually they’ll bring their friends. Traffic doesn’t create business benefits. Returning visitors do.
We’re All Students – the media landscape shifts so rapidly, it is difficult to be an expert. We all are students. And we should strive to keep learning and adapting. As a professor, I loved hearing this reminder. I am always looking to learn, change, grow, and adapt and it is great to hear someone with as much experience as Mark talking about the importance of being a lifelong learner!
Tips and Advice for Students
The Power of Blogging for Students – Mark echoed another class guest, Nate Bagley, when he encouraged students to blog, build an audience, and create meaningful content. He said that it was a valuable tool to show potential employers that you can build and sustain an audience. He said that often times he finds students or grad students are not blogging, and was glad to see students in our class were blogging as a semester long project. I was, of course, very happy to hear this. :) So students, if you’re reading this, keep blogging!
Know Stats – Mark said education in stats is important. Increasingly, data and numbers are driving online business. You don’t have to be an expert, but you need to be able to ask questions and the ability to think critically, and choose the statistical analysis needed to answer those questions. While many students were probably grumpy to hear this, I agree completely. Stats and research methods are more important than ever.
It is not often that students get to speak directly with the author of a class text, and it meant a lot to me for students to get this wonderful opportunity. So thank you so much to Mark for being so generous with his time and knowledge!
Leigh-Anne is the Social Media and Public Information Specialist in the Public Information & Government Relations Office at HCC. Among her many responsibilities, she is in charge of all the social media for HCC- namely, their Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
A few cool highlights from Leigh-Anne’s presentation:
Leigh-Anne has helped build a university-wide social media policy to ensure communication consistency and reduce confusion among the public – For anyone thinking about creating a social media policy, particularly for higher ed, check out HCC’s guidelines. HCC’s policy will do more than just help govern what is appropriate and how entities should communicate on social media. At many universities, social media is decentralized leading to communication inconsistency. There are too many accounts (many of which become ghost towns). This leaves students confused as to which accounts to follow and how to get important updates. Leigh-Anne takes a proactive role in preventing this problem by seeking to consolidate the voice of HCC on social media. This helps make things simple for HCC followers. She does this in part by reaching out to people who have created social media accounts at HCC and seeking to route their messages through the main account. Leigh-Anne told us that sometimes units within the university will create an account but the folks behind it may not be too certain as to what they want to communicate or how best to go about using the social media service. One thing she’ll do is monitor how active these HCC-related accounts are. For example, if, say, the dining services starts its own Twitter account and doesn’t use it very often, Leigh-Anne may ask dining services if they wouldn’t mind handing over to her the burden of getting dining services’ content out to the HCC community. Whenever the dining services wants to get a message out, they can send it to Leigh-Anne. She’ll post it on HCC Twitter and Facebook. That takes the pressure of having to maintain the account off dining services and helps meet Leigh-Anne’s mission.
Always On – Leigh-Anne told us how social media workers must be “always on.” There are no days where one can truly log off – workers must keep an eye on social media whether it is the weekend or a vacation day.
Social Media and School Closings – A quick anecdote for those who, like me, loved it when school was closed as a child and wait, wait, waited by the TV watching the ticker of schools that were closed and hoping to see their school’s name on the list. Today, people not only call into the school to complain when the school is or isn’t closed, they take to social media. Leigh-Anne told us she gets up at 4am when there is a storm, awaits the word on whether the school is closed, and spends the rest of her morning until she reports to work fielding questions and responding to complaints, including through social media. She may also find herself spending several hours continuing to answer questions after she gets to work.
Introverts can work in PR – I love this! Leigh-Anne explained that you don’t have to be outgoing to thrive in the field. Introverts thrive “behind the scenes” where their great writing, web, photography, organizational, and numerous other skills are highly valued.
Leigh-Anne was kind enough to share her slides, which I’ve embedded from her SlideShare account below.
Thanks again to Leigh-Anne for sharing her experience and her expertise with us! You can find her @writenowsoical or her website.
A Social Media Education Blog by Matthew J. Kushin, Ph.D.
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