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I recently participated in a college lecture that was both commonplace and radical. A professional theater critic and reporter, I often speak to theater, English, and composition students about the tools and role of criticism, so my invitation to address undergraduates at Davidson College in Charlotte, NC, was like any other. It was how I delivered the lecture that made the experience stand out.
I live in New York City, and the professor who invited me to her class at Davidson didn't have the travel budget to get me to North Carolina. She suggested that I call her class using Skype, an online program that allows users to see and hear each other over their computer screens.
And so I set up my laptop and Skyped with a roomful of undergraduates. After some technical difficulties, they were able to see and hear me on a large screen in their classroom, and I was able to see and hear them as well. They listened, took notes, asked questions, and engaged in discussion. Except for the fact that I never shared a physical space with them, my experience with the students was remarkably similar to the experience I've had with students in the actual world.
But as radical as it was for me personally, my Skype lecture was just part of the rapidly expanding universe of social media in higher education. Interactive, community-focused online tools - like Skype, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, wikis, and the educational software Blackboard - are becoming so dominant in the classroom that it's hard to imagine any professor or student making it through a week without them.
Consider a recent survey conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group in collaboration with New Marketing Labs and the education-consulting group Pearson Learning Solutions. Drawing from almost 1,000 college and university faculty nationwide, the survey revealed that more than 80% use social media in some capacity, and more than half use the tools as part of their teaching.
The survey notes that 30% use social networks to communicate with students (trading posts on blogs, for instance) while more than 52% use online videos, podcasts, blogs, and wikis (groupauthored websites) during class time.
What's more, the survey reveals that older faculty (those teaching for 20 years...