INSTRUCTOR’S GUIDE TO SOCIAL MEDIA ASSIGNMENTS
Introduction
This guide is designed to help instructors integrate social media assignments across existing syllabi.
Why is Social Media a Useful Tool for Scholars?
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are an increasingly popular way for universities, museums, and individual scholars to engage a public audience on scholarly themes. In other words, the social internet can be a tool for public-facing scholarship.
Goal of the Assignment
This assignment aims to inspire students to engage with online communities relating to the humanities.
Many students engage intensively with platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, etc. This includes following accounts dedicated to academic content. Though it may not be intuitive for educators to use social media in the classroom, the internet’s ability to forge communities and promote knowledge-sharing regardless of physical distance is exactly what makes it such a powerful tool to equip students with.
What Kinds of Projects Can I Assign my Students?
Social media can be used to spread information in all sorts of ways. Language learners can look at accounts in their target language that post about culture, art, film, food, travel, and more. For literature enthusiasts, there are social media accounts dedicated to appreciating classic books and even roleplaying literary characters or historical figures. There are pages devoted to sharing interesting historical facts as well as pages meant to explain historical topics in more depth. Below are two examples of assignments you might give students to have them engage with digital communities relevant to your class.
There are an incredible range of academic digital communities out there.
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Facebook
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Twitter
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Instagram
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TikTok