CTEC (Communication Technology division of AEJMC) Newsletter, AEJMC (The Association for Journalism and Mass Communication) – November 27, 2019
As I’ve planned our CTEC teaching newsletter, I thought it will be nice to make a conversation among us about own experience, struggles, tips and future forward. This conversation happened among current educators Dr. Matthew Kushin, a well-known social media educator, and Dr. YoungAh Lee, CTEC teaching chair, and Ball State University graduate student Becca Schriner.
YoungAh: Traditionally trained educators are not very well-exposed to new technology. Simply, we were trained to think in terms of theory and designing studies but not about integrating the most current technologies into a classroom. Did you ever have some struggle of updating your skillsets and turning that into teaching material?
Matt: Yes. It’s an ongoing struggle because everything changes so quickly. It feels to me that things are changing more quickly now than ever before.
I think earlier on, when I was younger, the tools were more part of a day-to-day life in the sense of interacting with friends and family. You become more native to those platforms because you’re using these as a way to get to know people or as a way to express yourself. Bringing it into teaching felt a lot more seamless, whereas—as I’ve gotten older—I don’t have the same time for a social life as I did before.
I am trying to remind myself that it is a marathon and there are parts of it that sometimes you have to pace yourself and say, “Okay, maybe I can’t jump on this right now. Let me see where that is going and let me observe what others are doing and then find a way in which I can fit this into my time and my skill set and my interests and my passions. Then maybe I can try to overcome some of these hills.”
YoungAh: I understand it looks like you are mostly self-teaching with some of these new tools. Where did you find the resources to self-teach those tools and then integrate them into your teaching?
Matt: I try to find information everywhere and anywhere that I can. I think educator communities like the Social Media Professors Facebook Group has been a marvelous resource. Through there, you can survey that space and see what people are talking about and see what they’re learning and see what they’re seeing coming up as trends—or what they’re struggling with. If I pick up on something that sparks my interest, I will dive into it and see where I can find more information about it. It could be articles. It could be YouTube videos. It could be conversations with people or sharing emails with people and asking them if they have any resources. I’m always keeping OneNote notebooks, repositories—a place to dump ideas and things that I want to be blog posts or things I want to learn about.
Becca: What is your best advice for educators, who are teaching social media and emerging technologies, to give their students? How would you encourage those educators to teach students a new perspective on something they already think they know?
Matt: I think the most important thing is for students to understand that they might be digital natives, they might know this stuff inside and out, […] but it’s a different world to take this and drive measurable results. At the end of the day, whoever is paying you—to put it in the most basic way—they’re interested in driving results. So, how do you show those results? How do you talk about what you’re able to accomplish?
As I’ve grown, I also try to think that I can’t teach a student everything. What I’m trying now more to do is teach them to have critical thinking skills, to be able to understand that they’ve learned how to analyze these three or four things. As they continue to learn and […] realize that they do need some kind of insights, [they will] use that to create some kind of content. If they understand the foundation of how to do that and you’re able to make that connection to them and they have the basic skills of that, then they can extrapolate and develop it.
We are teaching people who are the start of something. We are not teaching somebody who is 10, 20 years in and so I try to take the perspective that I’m teaching them a foundation of knowledge and skills and expertise that’s going to serve them for a career. I think we also have to be kind to ourselves as educators and understand that we’re there to help them grow.
YoungAh: Do you have any other advice or strategies that you want to share with educators?
Matt: The things that you are doing in the classroom, because this is an evolving space, create opportunities for doing pedagogical research. I know that AEJMC has the GIFT, Great Ideas for Teaching, and then the Teaching Scholarship panel—so there is definitely a market for that and definitely a need for that. The things that people are doing in the classroom creates a great opportunity to do some scholarship, and then present that scholarship or publish that scholarship and then go and inform and help other people with their teaching.
I would just add that tinkering with things, playing with things, experimenting in the classroom, and failing in the classroom is not a failure. That is what it’s all about. You are trying different things. You’re learning different things and taking something into the classroom and seeing how it goes or finding it and improving it and saying, “This doesn’t really work—let’s try something different.” I think sometimes people are hesitant to make that step because, as educators, our students look to us and say that this person has to have it all figured out when they get here. As long as you go in there with a game plan and you’re prepared, even if you’re trying something new and taking a risk, I think that’s something that we shouldn’t have a fear of.
Dr. Matthew Kushin is an award-winning educator and scholar, who has taught collegiate social media courses for over a decade. Matt is currently teaching and supporting students as the Concentration Coordinator of Strategic Communication at Shepherd University. In addition to being a professor, Matt is also the founder of the popular blog Social Media Syllabus—a social media education blog that examines trends, best practices, and teaching tips for social media educators (2019). Find his teaching resources at https://mattkushin.com/category/teaching-social-media/.
Dr. YoungAh Lee is the Director of Public Relations Graduate Studies and an Associate Professor of Journalism at Ball State University. She has served as CTEC teaching chair and is passionate about teaching, researching and sharing tips and thoughts on teaching communication technologies with fellow educators. Contact her at ylee4@bsu.edu.
Becca Schriner, who assists YoungAh with graduate student recruitment, is a first-year Public Relations masters student at Ball State University.
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