Having recently taken on some new undergraduate teaching, I've been thinking about my online behaviour with regard to students in comparison with my normal activity. I've decided, and feel free to argue with me, that I do not need to modify my behaviour - I aim to consistently act in a professional way. Whether networking with colleagues, students or complete strangers. I would always look up people I meet, and if they tweet, I follow them.
I'm going to talk about Twitter in this post - because the conversation about Facebook is more complex (it's a reciprocal relationship). Twitter is a public forum. If you tweet, anyone can read it. If I choose to follow you on twitter, that is my way of letting you know I am reading your tweets (but I could read them anyway by looking at your twitter page without you knowing if I wanted to). It's a one way thing.
The responses to my tweet were fairly consistent, here are a sample, they were also asked about responding to non-academic tweets from students:
Rachel on behalf of the British Library for Development Studies:
"We follow back if they follow us, but wouldn't follow them first generally. (And I don't follow any with my personal account.) Would always reply to genuine questions/comments I think, have never had any really irrelevant/personal ones! We do get to know some of our small student body quite well, but personal chats just don't happen through Twitter. So far."Derek Moore, a teacher at Wits University, South Africa:
"IMO On Twitter it's fine to follow students as it's a networked public. FB is a walled garden & the request should come from them. I'd be cautious about non-uni/course type tweets, but would not exclude replies to specific questions."Patrick Moore, teaching support at the University of Brighton, Hastings.
"I have a few that follow me, mostly used to ask tech questions. They found me, a couple of times it's been non uni stuff, but i try to keep it just for uni questions."In all these examples, the student initiates the follow. Does that really matter? If you have a public profile online, student or staff, you should expect to be googled, and expect people to read it. Shouldn't you?
Any students reading this, what do you think? Would you think it odd if a lecturer started following your tweets/blog etc. Or would you be flattered?
7 comments:
I am followed by a tutor and I follow him. It is kept professional but either one of us can unfollow each other at any time.
As you say, it is entirely public anyway regardless of the "following status".
I think that higher education maturity makes this acceptable; perhaps the issue is with education level, ie. secondary education.
Having recently had a similar discussion with our tutor about this very issue and considering the issues for myself your blog made intersting reading.
My opinion is very simple with regards to Twitter, it is a public forum if you post you need to be aware that anybody can read it. I also think that students have a valuable role to play in forming new methods and have interesting ideas of their own, if they are willing to share them and the tutor is interested I don't see any reason at all why both parties couldn't follow each other
Interesting questions. While I don't teach, I am responsible for providing services to students (IT), and as far as Twitter goes, I treat then like I do staff, colleagues, associates and total strangers: that is, I follow if I find their tweets interesting. For my part, I tweet about the things I say I like in my profile, which includes HE but is mostly about other stuff. I think it is precisely because I don't tend to tweet about HE or the university, that I have no qualms about following who I want to, including students.
Thanks for the comments - and Christian reminds me to say (which I hope was assumed from my post) that the reason I look up students and follow them is because I am interested in what they have to say about the course, the town, uni and student life.
I tend to agree with the sentiment of others here. Twitter is public so Tweeters, whoever they are, should expect to be followed. Having said that, I don't currently follow any of my students - there's always the danger you might read something you don't like.
the great thing about Twitter is that it allows you (& students) to practice/perform your professional identity. but for this to be meaningful you need to be part of a professional learning network. does you following your students enhance their network? and if so, does it then offer a greater opportunity for them to practice their professional selves?
Good point Peps - and something I'll discuss with them. If they are tweeting in order to enhance their practice then it makes sense, if they are tweeting about their pet cat (for example) then I wouldn't want to follow anyway.
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