A friend of mine who was recently handed an online geology course to teach at a local community college mentioned something that I found interesting: he’s having quite a bit of trouble getting students to use the discussion boards and forums. He requires a minimum number of posts and responses for students to meet participation requirements, but found that fewer than ten percent were doing anything more. An informal survey showed that upwards of eighty percent had facebook or MySpace accounts that they updated regularly, and some even used these sites to talk with others in the class. Why aren’t they using the class’s site?

Despite the discussion boards being a kind of social networking, he found that his students see them as homework–not a tool to be used for benefit, but a chore. Concerns came up about asking ’stupid questions’ in front of the class, and it turned out that one of the students was acting as a sort of bully, which lead students to–rather than get into capital-letter shouting matches–avoid any extraneous posting. The bully has been chastised, but students still prefer to do all of their chatting on other sites, honing and polishing all posts to the class’s Web site, which doesn’t really lead to any genuine discussion.

Networking Isn’t Homework
A new study has come out showing an unfortunate correlation between social networking online and lower grades. This is obviously true of any distraction. If checkers became insanely popular across college campuses tomorrow, I’m sure we could find evidence that playing checkers rather than studying lowers a student’s GPA. The trouble with these social networking sites is that students feel like they’re being productive because they’re chatting about classes.

It’s like trying to write a paper sitting out on the most popular lawn on campus. Sure, you may have met a friend from class out there, but you’re surrounded by games of frisbee, other friends walking to other classes, et c. Students may have their papers open in a word processor, but the draw of taking quizzes, chatting with everyone else, and posting statues updates about hating homework is simply greater. It isn’t an uncommon practice to have a friend change your password during finals week, so that you can’t go online, post that you’re stressed, and ignore the tasks at hand.

The Online Education Challenge
If chatting about class on a social networking site is like trying to study in a bustling area of campus, then doing so on a class Web site is like having a study group in one of the basement rooms of the library: generally unappealing. I talked about a new group of online study sites that are changing the face of study groups in a recent post, perhaps these will meet the challenges faced by teachers of online courses. Whatever ends up happening, the fact is that only very rarely will anything that’s got a grade attached or a professor looking it over be seen as fun. Don’t despair, teachers, just relax and post your annoyance on your facebook page, maybe your students will post relevant comments there.