Communicating Digitally With Students

I came across two items of interest recently, both treating the ways inwhich we communicate with students. It looks like online officehours are catching on. Stanford now has professors holding office hourson Facebook:

"Stanford's transposes the concept of 'office hours' to Facebook. Beginning in March 2009, Stanford has brought a handful of high-profilescholars to the social networking site in an effort to 'make itsdiscoveries and knowledge easily and widely accessible online,'according to Ian Hsu, the University's director of Internet mediaoutreach."

Personally,I think this is a less than ideal site for office hours, but I laud theeffort to meet students where they congregate. As we all know, very fewstudents come to real office hours, preferring instead either to reachtheir professors via email (which, apparently, is incrediblyold-fashioned; more on that in a moment) or simply not to come at all.

Myproblem with using Facebook stems from the fact that I am an avid userof the site myself and like to keep some distance between myprofessional and personal lives. While I don't mind former studentsadding me as friends, I don't like current students doing so as I thenfeel the need to censor myself from time to time. I, like many others,often use Facebook as a place for sharing links to articles and causes(though I generally avoid the plague of quizzes). Since I don't want tomake any students inadvertently uncomfortable expressing views theyknow differ from my own, having current students as "friends" makes melikewise uncomfortable. Plus, I also like to make status updatescomplaining about grading. So, as I've detailed in previous posts, Iprefer a separate IM account that I use only for my online officehours, which has quickly become a permanent tool in my pedagogicalbox. Oddly enough, since I've begun holding office hours online, I'veseen my in-person visits during office hours increase, as well. Isuspect this increase results from my students understanding that I'mtrying to be accessible to them, so they feel more comfortable comingto see me.

Still, as I mentioned, I like that Stanford isreaching out to its students in this way. As Matthew Gabriele, an Asst.Professor of Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Virginia Tech writes,students don't communicate over email as much or as obsessively asolder users of technology do.Instead, Facebook, Twitter, text messages, IMs, and other microburstsof information are far more prevalent. While I oftenbemoan the addiction to cell phones and texting that I see all aroundme (why can't people just be where they physically are for a fewminutes?), Gabriele rightly notes:

"To a degree, we in academe are in the position we lamented of ourparents -- a day late and a dollar short, still using the VCR. HighSchool/ College students know and use email, perhaps they even blogthemselves. But they don't useemail in the ubiquitous way we do. They communicate in different ways,via txt, IM, tweet, or status update. This, of course, has long-termimplications because these are the technologies that they'll bring withthem to our courses and then outside of college. These new technologiesare the ones that will govern our ability to communicate with thembecause it's how they communicate with one another."

Istill send regular emails to my students and give the syllabus andassignments on a Drupal-powered website, but I think Gabriele's rightthat we can't rely solely on these already outdated technologies if wewant to communicate with our students effectively. I'm consideringstarting a second Twitter account (current one: mwidner) strictly forteaching purposes through which I could relay details like grading progress,office hour updates, assignment due date reminders, and points to keepin mind as studtheyents are writing or reading. Although I feel the mainstreammedia's obsessive love affair with Twitter overstates the usefulness ofthe service somewhat, my natural inclination is to employ as manydifferent technologies as possible to reach my students. Since Twitteris popular (and could itself serve as an interesting case study of howformal constraints influence content) and rapid, I'm more than willingto add it to my arsenal.

Has anyone found any these or any other methods of communicationeffective or ineffective so far? What sorts of issues do thesedifferent information streams raise as regards student learning? Are wefollowing the usage patterns of students because we've (or I have)internalized the student-as-consumer concept? Are we just contributing to information overload?