Tag Archives: classes

Web Round Up: Social Media Education Videos, Google News Labs, and Link Building

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Summer is a great time for finding new resources to share with students in the classroom. And with that in mind, I want to share a few readings and resources you may find useful to use this fall in your classes, or just may want to stay on top of.

Continue reading Web Round Up: Social Media Education Videos, Google News Labs, and Link Building

Reflections on how My Strategic Campaigns class helped #StartCT

This past semester was the inaugural offering of Comm 470 Strategic Campaigns in the Department of Communication here at Shepherd. And with that, I’d like to offer a brief reflection on the experience. It was a great learning and growing experience for both me and the students!

Continue reading Reflections on how My Strategic Campaigns class helped #StartCT

My Fall 2014 Social Media Class Project In Review

shepherdcommunication-socialmedia
Typo! What happens when I Tweet from my phone while in a rush. 😛

In the last few posts, I’ve been writing about my Social Media class and the semester project we’ve been doing. To recap, students create a social media content strategy for our department’s social media (the details of the assignment are on the previous post). They then use this plan to create content for the department. They create content 3  times, each time they are creating content for a certain time period. The content is presented to the class and then goes through an editorial process (i.e.., I grade them and make any needed mods) if needed before being published.

With the semester winding down, I want to share some of the work the students have been doing!

Continue reading My Fall 2014 Social Media Class Project In Review

Teaching The Applied Communication Research Class

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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.

Our textbook is Paine’s “Measure what Matters: Online Tools for Understanding Customers, Social Media, Engagement, and Key Relationships.” I considered the Stacks book as well, but liked the emphasis on new media in Paine and felt her book may be more accessible to students, as students can be intimidated by a research class.

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)
  • Digital Survey programming with XLS Forms
  • 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?

-Cheers!

-Matt

– top photo CC by IntelFreePress

#TryThis! Using Google Drive for real-time in class team collaboration

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googledrive

Note: Due to the news with Google link schemes, I got a little off track with my #TryThis! themed blog posts. Here is 1 of the other 2 I had planned.

Here is another great tool I love for engaging students in teamwork in the classroom – using Google Drive Documents (formerly Google Docs) for real-time classroom collaborative activities. Here’s what I mean. (Not familiar with Google Drive? Check out video below).

If you teach in a classroom where students have access to computers, Google Docs is a great tool to use for having students work on a common document in real-time. That’s because with Google Docs many people can work on a document at the same time, in real-time.

Here is a scenario in which I would use this cool tool.

Each team (3-5 students) gets a separate Google Doc that I created ahead of time and shared publicly so anyone can edit it (I’ll explain how to do that below).

In my social media class, I might give students a set of problems (questions) to solve. For example, maybe I am trying to teach about gathering social data through Hootsuite. I don’t want to just lecture them about how to do it. I want them to learn by doing. To stimulate that, I want them to work in a team to gather the data, and paste it into Google Docs so they can analyze it and look for any trends.

So, as a simple example let’s say there are 4 questions, one of which might be:

What are 5 examples where XYZ Company did not respond to a Tweet sent to them?

Students would look through their stream for Tweets @XYZcompany, find the 5 they  need and paste them into the document. Since everyone can see in real time what others are posting, it is easy for them to work as a team to answer the question. Alternatively, some teams tend to break up the work to answer all the questions more quickly. I don’t mind this. It saves class time (which is precious) and lets us get more quickly to the analysis and discussion of whatever topic we’re covering.

This is a simple example with a simple question, but you get the idea. The tool can be used for more involved questions. I like to use it to “gather evidence” that leads to a question(s) that involves analysis and decision-making.

Discussion and teamwork are encouraged by the real-time Google Doc set up.

In our simple example, perhaps students need to consider course content and then create their own responses to these Tweets. Since everyone doesn’t have to crowd around 1 computer in drafting their responses, it isn’t a situation where 1 person is “in charge” and everyone else can tune out. Students can also type in comments and interact on the document, like they do in their everyday interactions with others online.

After they are done, I can easily pull up their documents onto the screen (because I have their URLs), show them to the class, and give students the opportunity to explain their answers and the reasoning behind it. I can use this to encourage discussion, particularly if I compare their answers to another team’s.

How To Set Up Real-Time Google Docs for Team Success:

Log into Google Drive or create an account.

1) Create the docs and make sure they are set up so EVERYONE can edit them. Here’s how:

After creating the document, click “share” (upper right – it is a blue icon). Next, click “Change” next to the field asking who can do what with the document….:

google-doc-1

Choose “Anyone with the link”. For Access, choose “Can Edit.” Click save.

google-drive-share-2

2) Sharing the Document with Students – The URL for Google Docs is annoyingly long, not good for sharing. So use your favorite URL shortener to create uniform links for the assignment. I like Bitly but any works.

For example, if there are 4 teams and I set up the documents, each will have a URL something like:

bit.ly/SMClass_Activity1_Team1

That way, each team just types in the short link into their browser. Just note that Bitly links are case sensitive. I usually project these links on the board.

Students seem to struggle with going to the URL. But I have found consistent labeling works and they pick up on it after 2 or 3 Google Doc exercises.

3) Test it – go into your computer lab and make sure it is working. If too many people are on a document at once, it can sometimes freeze up. So open up the file on multiple computers and hop around from 1 to the other typing. Even with more than 4-5 people on the document, if your computers or Internet are slow this may not work for you.  (For me, most days I have no problems. But once in a while I do). Also, decide what browser you want students to use if there are multiple available on the computer. I found last year during a class that Google Docs worked in some browsers but not others and this confused students.

4) Test Copy and Paste Feature – If you want them to copy screen shots and paste them in the Doc, test that too. Different browsers work better with pasting images into Google Docs. I found Google Chrome unsurprisingly to work best.

5) Hold students accountable – what is the end result you are looking for with the activity? Technology for the sake of technology is not effective in the classroom. What do you want them to learn, to solve? Also, how are you going to grade them? Is this a participation assignment, and you are going to load their URLs after class for participation points? Truthfully, some students are only motivated by a grade, not the experience and outcomes of learning. So there are some students who won’t participate if they aren’t being held accountable. To try and curb this, I make activities worth participation points that add up over the semester. Or, I will have an activity today that builds up for an activity next class, the combination of which is a participation assignment. I also float around the room, look over shoulders, and ask questions or see if they have questions for me.

6) Expect a few hiccups – with any technology that is inevitable! But power through them! 🙂

7) Stick with it – Sometimes students aren’t as excited as we are to try new things. But once they learn how it is done and why, and you have some experience, things will flow smoothly.

That’s it! If you try this technique, have ideas for improving it, or have done something similar, I’d love to hear your experiences, advice, and thoughts!

Cheers!

-Matt

Google Drive Logo is Copyright of Google

Update to Status of New Classes and Concentration

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Great news! Monday night, the Shepherd University Curriculum and Instruction committee approved the classes I have created and the Strategic Communication concentration I have been working on since my arrival in the Department of Communication at Shepherd University.

The new concentration will offer students an opportunity to learn to use social media, digital tools, and other forms of communication to plan and execute strategic campaigns.

I am very thankful to the committee and my department for their enthusiastic support!

While a lot of work has been done and this is a great accomplishment, there is more to be done before the concentration becomes part of the university curriculum.

Next stop? I must next present the concentration to the Board of Governors here at Shepherd. Stay tuned!

graphic CC by  Nitevision