To Force or Not to Force

Dennen & Burner’s (2017) article supports our previous readings on context collapse. After reading the material in this class, one thing I have consistently found to be useful advice is that students should create a separate Facebook account for their class. Though I, myself, have not done this in the classes I have taken, it would eliminate my concerns of someone accidentally seeing something I do not want them to. Another takeaway from this article is the adjustment of privacy settings. If students do not want to create another account, they can adjust their settings to prevent people from their class from seeing their personal information. They may also want to consider changing their profile picture (assuming they have limited the access of other areas of their profile) as I have come across some pictures that might be appropriate for friends but not so much for the classroom setting. Though I do have Facebook, I do sympathize with the students that said they did not have Facebook for specific reasons and were not too keen on creating one for class. I know many people who have been victims of stalking, have been contacted by those they do not want to or who just simply want to avoid the time and energy loss that many Facebook users experience. I did tend to agree with the student comments about it not being necessary to use social media accounts to connect with classmates and professors. I do like to use social media in my courses, but more so my students are engaged and so they learn to better use tools that they will likely have to use in the workplace or so they have the knowledge and experience to use these tools to effectively and creatively present information. I do not see why Facebook would have to be used in the classroom for engagement between those in the class. This is what Canvas is for. I do think students can be asked to use Facebook as a place to gather information for an assignment. One of my concerns with implementing Snapchat in my class is that not everyone will have it and though I think it is a tool that may give them an advantage in the workplace, I do not like the idea of forcing them to sign up for an account. The only time I really see the necessity of this is in a class like EME 6414, where the intention and focus is on how to use social media tools because without using the tools, you will have limited knowledge about them. This is why I have decided to split the class into a user group and non-user group, giving them a choice as to which group they would like to be in. I think this will not only enhance my research for a paper I’m writing about social media use in sport management classrooms but will also avoid the complaints from student who do not want to participate.