I’ve been reading widely on the ways trainers have been integrating social media into online and off-line courses, and my feeling is that trainers who use it are:
- Already using social media themselves in their out-of-hours lives
- Are teaching subjects where trainees are likely to believe they can research the topic themselves
- Work with trainees/students for whom literacy is not an issue
- Train groups who can easily afford and access online technology
And before anyone jumps in and points out that it is the rare young person who does not own a cell phone, let me illustrate my point. I was involved in designing face-to-face training for a group of trainees who:
- Live in rural New Zealand
- Come from families with limited resources apart from telly, DVD players and cell phones
- Are sometimes challenged with literacy
We designed an experiential activity in a pilot where a member of a small group had to phone an expert on a cell phone to elicit information to help them write a report (basically notes that they would speak to). What we failed to realise was that no one in the group felt comfortable actually phoning someone on a cell phone. They texted in txt language even during the course, but never used the phone to actually speak into. That cell phone was passed like a hot potato around the room until one of them finally agreed to try. It was an amazing success for the young man with the courage, but certainly challenged our assumptions about cell phone confidence.
Social media probably can be and is used as a research tool in more formal courses, but there is a still, I believe, a rather large gap between the social media learning opportunities within formal courses and those that can be used with less resourced groups.
Heather Sylvawood
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