Teaching with Social Media

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

The rise of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to ubiquity, especially among our students, may portend a revolution not only in how we communicate, but also in the ways we teach. Still, it is not yet obvious to most of us which technologies are relevant to our classes, nor how best to employ them. This pedagogy roundtable will gather four scholars who are already using social media in their pedagogy to explore how these tools can be effectively integrated into Jewish Studies courses.

The roundtable will be moderated by Josh Lambert (UMass Amhest/Yiddish Book Center). The presenters, who come from a diverse range of fields and institutions, will each offer five-minute introductory remarks, drawing on their experiences. Francesco Spagnolo (UC Berkeley) will present case studies in which social media and collaborative platforms (Google docs, online pasteboards, wikis, etc.) have been used to implement user-generated discussion based on the "unconference" model in the classroom setting, including collaborative discussions and exams. Laura Leibman (Reed College) will offer examples from a recent research and methods class to explain how social media helps students work collaboratively, envision their work as part of a larger academic conversation, and foreground the role of audience in determining how to effectively depict their results. Janice Fernheimer (U of Kentucky) will reflect on her use of Twitter to help students stay abreast of current events during an upper division course focusing on reading graphic narratives about Israel/Palestine. Tamar Ron Marvin (Jewish Theological Seminary) will discuss her use of social media tools in a fully online “Jewish Great Books” graduate student survey covering the medieval through modern periods, and she will focus particularly on concerns of privacy, on the implications of using private-sector and for-profit media tools in an academic setting, and on the synchronous and asynchronous possibilities of social media pedagogy.

A significant amount of the session will be reserved for Q&A with the audience, and we expect the discussion will focus on nuts-and-bolts questions, aimed at assisting and encouraging social media users who are curious but unsure about the prospect of teaching using these technologies.

Sub Unit

• Pedagogy

Moderator

• Joshua Lambert, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Discussants

• Francesco Spagnolo, University of California, Berkeley

• Laura Leibman, Reed College

• Debra Caplan, Baruch College, CUNY

• Leah Hochman, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion