You may have noticed a significant drop-off in posting here lately. Well, there are several big projects afoot and they rob me of writing time. While I can’t openly discuss some things I’m involved in, I can tell you about the Social Media course I’m teaching this semester.
I’m team-teaching the course with a colleague from the Business Department (@cvmuse) and it is cross-listed as a Business / Communications course. We’ve been planning the course for almost a year and it’s been great fun to teach so far (we’re two weeks in to it now). I will say that my day of teaching Calculus II, then Social Media, then Calculus II makes me feel like I have mental whiplash by the end of the day. You couldn’t find two topics that are more different to study or teach than these two.
The course consists of three units:
- Relate (looking at the human-aspect: psychology, identity, psychology, anthropology, relationships)
- Connect (how we create communities, share ideas and information, interact, and manage all these things)
- Protect (examining the legal and ethical issues surrounding social media, like privacy and copyright)
Social Media is an open course, which means all the materials, assignments, and class summaries are publicly available and you can participate by using the class hashtag on Twitter (#297SM). Just follow the RSS on the Studying Social Media site if you’d like to join us.
