I agree that social media has made it very hard for online instructors to communicate with students in a professional manner. I try to remind my students of the environment that they are in and to be adaptable. I often tell them that this is a classroom and thus your language should reflect our environment. Students have to learn how to treat situations differently and enhance their communication to fit their situation. It is a constant battle to remove the texting language from my classroom but I try to be aggressive when it does occur.
Kimberley,
For the first time, I am texting my students regarding important information. I has been interesting 140 characters just don't allow for many words.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
I do emails throughout the quarter reminding students of professionalism with their writing (what that entails) and provide examples based on other topics regarding similar course content that is not discussed during the quarter.
Jessica,
I think examples of good and bad communications are powerful. I agree I don't allow slang in any email.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
I agree that students are using texting as a major method of their day to day communications, and because they are writing on compact and small keyboards they invented some acronyms to get their ideas across with the least typing time possible. There is nothing wrong with this. However, I do not see a lot of this spilling over into writing for academic purposes. I read a research article once (and for the life of me I cannot locate it when I need it) that suggested that there was no correlation to texting and social media communication to academic writing. I once thought that if a student spelled "through" as "thru," that he/she was a victim of social media. However, thru is defined as an informal spelling of through, and it really has nothing to do with social media. Some periodicals use thru as a standard variant, regardless of context. Just my two cents!! :-)
Willie ,
I agree with you. I don't think social media is the culprit; the lack of attention to detail is.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
First, social media is a culprit. I find many researchers examining spelling errors, grammatical errors, and organization...this evades the issue. Students are beginning their academic careers as a college student do not spend time researching, citing sources, or developing coherent arguments. If an academic program is successful, all students will develop these academic skills; most papers that I read are constructed by students early in their college program.
The ideas, the concepts, and arguments are not developed. The students copy and paste... yes, copy and paste ideas... into an incoherent jigsaw of thoughts. The student who writea in their own words are usually students who do not use social media as their primary correspondence...Note I am referring to students who are in the early part of their college program. I do see a fundamental difference in writing skills between older online students and younger online students.
I use Bloom's taxonomy to remind students that a written response in economics is an application of a student's understanding and memory of related concepts...academic writing is not a simple list of ideas.... (cut and paste)
As far as research is concerned, my daughter's roommate has provided anecdotal evidence that social media text writing encourages the absence of subjects of the statement and the lack of adverbs. I find this more often in my traditional younger student population who over-use pronouns, do not use adverbs and do not use adjectives. That is, I will begin reading a paper on economics by a freshman and subsequently with certainty know that the student is either a communications major or a history major.
Albert,
I will agree with most of what you said. We must hold students accountable and see instructors talk a good game but allow students to communicate without regards to research and grammar and punctuation.
Dr. Kelly Wilkinson
