Faculty shouldn't shun social networking tech
By IAN MacINNES
Guest Writer

If some of the comments I’ve heard from my colleagues are to be believed, a faculty member who creates a profile on Facebook might as well show up at a fraternity party and ask for a beer.

Albion faculty have often been ambivalent about technology, but nothing sparks as many pointed comments as so-called social networking software: things like blogs, Twitter, and of course Facebook. I believe such criticism is a mistake; social networking tools are not a danger to our academic community but a major opportunity and one we are in danger of missing.

Some faculty members object to online social software because they distrust the medium itself. Such activities, they suggest, draw students away from the authentic face-to-face contacts fostered by a residential college, and into a sad virtual world populated by dozens or even hundreds of superficial “friends.” Things like profile pages and blog entries appear to some as an exercise in shameless self-promotion. And the many different forms of short “status” messages, ranging from Instant Messenger to Twitter, look self-absorbed and narcissistic. These tools, I am often told, are all about “me.”

Others object to these tools because they are worried about maintaining an appropriate distance between faculty and students. There has always been a delicate etiquette in this area. As a faculty member, I want to be accessible, but I don’t want to intrude, nor do I want to discover things I’d rather not know. Some think social networking software threatens this etiquette by erasing the bounds of privacy on both sides. According to these objections, social networking is best left to students as a kind of private playground.

The problem with all of these objections is that they misunderstand the medium. Those who use social software tools the most are not pasty-faced loners permanently crouched over their keyboards; in fact they usually have the most active face-to-face social lives. The tools are an extension of rather than a replacement for an authentic community.

Status messages are a good example of this communal urge. People living together in a house have an implicit sense of the general activity of others within that dwelling. As I write this, I don’t need a status message to tell me that one of my daughters is working on her homework while the other is arguing with her brother. But a larger community can obscure that sense of immediacy. People create status messages not because they expect everyone to be deeply interested in their current activity but because such tiny messages recreate missing ties. 

Likewise, blogs and profile pages are simply a way of extending the normal conversations, arguments and self-assertions that have always been an important part of college life.

Here is an opportunity for faculty and students, not a risk. Social networking tools are a chance to develop a community that includes not just feeling and doing (the current staples of status messages), but thinking.  When we faculty dismiss social networking as a content-free playground, we are contributing to the notion that intellectual work should exist as if in a sealed Tupperware container, carefully guarded from contaminating students’ day-to-day lives. And as social networking continues to grow in importance, we can miss an important opportunity.

I am not suggesting that faculty or students should force themselves upon each other. The etiquette of social networking may be under construction, but it surely exists. I am suggesting that faculty and students must not allow social networking tools to become a thought-free zone.

Make a profile. Post thoughtful comments. Use “thinking” more often in your status messages.