The Challenges of Social Media Education Can Be Overcome

Our weekly #SMCEDU Twitter chat proved once again to be an exciting forum, quick to address the challenges facing the Social Media Club Education Connection (aka SMCEDU) and consistent in providing a wide range of perspectives.

As I wrote in an earlier post, I’d like to focus on key challenges for social media education this year. One of the slippery questions we face is actually defining what a social media education encompasses. In a micro-text/minimum-contextual format such as Twitter, 140 characters just aren’t enough.

Despite that, we got great input from teachers, students, and professionals today.

I opened with a question that always gets different responses, and it deals with the challenges that face educators interested in social media.

I read this post recently regarding why social media marketing receives resistance, and I believe some of the same challenges are faced in the education world.

Anna West of VCU brought up this and this point, with the lack of a strategic approach being a complaint I’ve heard numerous times.

Ana Adi in Scotland brought up something that challenges many schools, deficiencies in infrastructure.

James Walker, an associate at APCO Worldwide and a student of social media, brought up the point that teaching social media may require a new educational paradigm. He cited his favorite professor as being someone who taught “off the cuff” and was able to adapt quickly to new changes.

Brett Petersel of Mashable and Susan Beebe of SMCEDU-Rochester, NY both mentioned the rapidly changing landscape of technology as hurdles in formalizing social media education.

At this point in the conversation, I became a bit flustered. You see, we HAVE the resources — the people, the technology — to overcome these obstacles. We CAN create a better social media education (which, in turn, can produce smarter people that understand the impact of sharing and spreading information).

Before I go on, let me tie in a few thoughts on one of the main objectives of smcedu: opening coursework development to all educators and creating a repository of social media curriculum.

This, I believe, is what needs to be done first in working toward that obective:

• From our collection of professors, define what they’re teaching as part of “Social Media Education.”
  • This includes an intro to what social media is, integration of social media into different disciplines, measurement of success, and any other touch points that are concerns
  • From there, create lessons on each

• From our collection of students, define what they want to learn as part of a “Social Media Education.”
  • Skills specific to different career paths
  • Lessons learned from those that have done it

• From our collection of business leaders, define what they want potential employees to know as part of a “Social Media Education.”

Despite the challenges of teaching social media, there are ways to integrate lessons into traditional programs.

I’ll work to gather this information from various professors, but would love to see a live collaboration between the educators that are currently teaching social media as a class or component. Any suggestions?

Thanks to all again for a great chat, please join us again next Monday at 12:30pm EST on Twitter…click on the button below for a reminder!