Event Title

SSM07 - Queer Classroom Spaces: Using Social Media and Digital Tools to "Meet Students Where They Are"

Presenter Information

Kristin Lafollette

Location

CB1-308

Streaming Media

Start Date

4-11-2017 8:15 AM

Description

As a digital humanities scholar and instructor, I have always struggled with knowing what, if any, rules I should make in my classroom about electronics usage such as cell phones, tablets, etc. A computer-mediated writing class I took in my doctoral studies with digital humanities scholar, Dr. Kristine Blair, led me to reevaluate the policies I have in my syllabi and enact in my courses when it comes to student usage of electronics. During the course I took with Dr. Blair, we were required to complete a technology literacy narrative using a digital tool. I chose to use the social media outlet Instagram to complete this assignment, and in completing this project and seeing the final product, I saw and understood the immense value of social media outlets and how they can be integral to helping students complete multimodal assignments in writing courses and beyond. I often had difficulty getting my students to focus in class when they were constantly looking at their phones, surfing the Internet on their computers, and playing games on their tablets. When I began implementing assignments and in-class activities that utilized the tools that students were already familiar with, they became more engaged, learning outcomes and course concepts were more easily grasped, and assignments were more approachable. In addition, as I delved further into my study of women's, gender, and sexuality studies during my doctoral program, I saw the ways that queer theory provided a lens for which to understand this shift from the normative to the non-normative; instructors typically discourage students from using their phones and other electronics in class, but a queering of this norm and allowing students to harness the potential of these digital tools works toward helping students complete assignments that are more creative and rhetorically-aware. Drawing on work from multimodal and queer studies scholars like Claire Lutkewitte, Jonathan Alexander, and Jacqueline Rhodes, this roundtable starts with a discussion of my Instagram project and how I worked toward implementing social media outlets (like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, etc.) in my classroom spaces. This will lead into a group discussion and brainstorming of the ways instructors can utilize these tools in the classroom to create activities, develop assignments, and queer the classroom experience to involve more digital tools to "meet students where they are." Students already have knowledge of and an interest in these tools, so helping them understand that they are already composing using these methods can give them opportunities to create rich, multimodal work that takes some of the pressure away from completing academic work. This discussion will start with a discussion of writing studies but will be applicable to any discipline/classroom space.