Faculty Buy-In for Web 2.0 Learning

As I read Seechaliao’s (2014) article, I was excited to get to the end to read through the list of tips for integrating social media into the classroom. I was disappointed when I got to the end to see that no concrete tips were given. I usually think academic articles are too long, but in this case, I wish the author had elaborated on points as opposed to repeating two or three points. I don’t think that their research findings offered anything new to the field, however, they did provide further support for earlier findings from other scholars. I have met instructors that have both supported the use of social media in the classroom and those that have not. As the article said, even those that do support this integration often do not actually act upon it. I think that both groups share similar concerns of the amount of time it takes to think about the integration and then its initial integration. Seechaliao (2014) mentioned the instructors’ belief that Web 2.0 tools will save time and money, but this is often not the case up front due to the learning curve and as mentioned by the author, the issues that will only arise during implementation. So, though they may have opposing viewpoints, both groups share similar concerns. This article made me wonder what the instructors might have said the barriers are to implementation had they been interviewed/asked this question. I also think that lack of training is an issue as many instructors are not familiar with the tools or they have not considered some of the topics we have learned about in this class such as privacy and the understanding that personal use of a platform does not inherently transfer to educational use. Also, with the implementation of programs like Canvas, an article that considers Facebook use in the classroom must point out the differentiating benefit of collaboration with other students outside of the current course. I did appreciate the use of Facebook as a sort of testing tool for the creation of a Canvas-like program. Since this is a free tool that can be used, I believe that many countries can use Facebook to work out some of the issues and to get a handle on how they will implement the program without wasting valuable financial resources.