 First-year students are all about
communication, but usually on their own terms. E-mail is passé, but text
messages, social media interaction, and generally life online is their comfort
zone. In an attempt to engage these techno-savvy freshmen, we challenged our
students to interactively communicate in the classroom using the microblogging
platform Twitter combined with Paper.li, a content curation service.
The idea was to find the best way to foster
a sense of community in first-year students arriving at university from diverse
backgrounds. First-year experience (FYE) programs have become the norm in American
universities to help students promote good study habits and overall wellness,
but perhaps more importantly instill a sense of belonging and community which
is crucial to keep students motivated to finish their degrees and enhance their
overall academic and social experiences.
Increasingly, educators are turning to social media to help students make this transition
to college. Social media directly addresses feelings of influence and a shared
emotional connection by allowing students to create their own content and share
it with peers. Among the newer social media options
is Paper.li, launched in alpha mode April 2010. According to their website, Paper.li is a content curation service enabling
people to publish daily or weekly newspapers on topics of their choosing. The
editor of the virtual newspaper identifies what information should be included,
such as RSS feeds, Facebook content by keyword, and/or Twitter content by user,
keyword, or hashtag. Paper.li then collects any content matching the criteria,
organizing it into a virtual newspaper complete with headlines, sections
headings, and embedded images, video, and audio. Paper.li has caught the attention
of the technology community, being featured by PC World Magazine, EContent
Magazine, Information Today, Business Week, and The Futurist. The assignment described here employs Paper.li to
aggregate social media content in a simple manner with a professional-looking
and aesthetically pleasing layout. The concept of this assignment was
for students to either create or find existing web content to be fed into
Paper.li. The virtual newspapers would then serve as a basis for class
discussions about various topics covered in the course. The Paper.li settings
were adjusted to publish a weekly paper by automatically collecting all tweeted
links containing a specific hashtag identified for the course section, with the
topics for each weekly paper announced in advance. One version of the assignment
involved blogging about concepts from the book Class Matters. Weekly topics ranged from self-identifying their own social class based
on the criteria outlined in the book to analyzing the plight of immigrant
workers. Blogs, short for web logs, have previously been identified as a medium for enabling
interactions that might not happen in a traditional educational setting,
offering opportunities for student independence and deeper interaction with
peers.  Students tweeted links to their
completed blog entries resulting in an online newspaper populated with content
from each of the student “journalists” in the class. Sharing their views and
opinions with peers in the Paper.li compilation not only engages students and
holds them accountable for their writing, but it also exposes them to the
different views of others in the class.
Another version of the assignment
centered on the relationship of current events and the course’s topics of
discussion. Incorporating newspapers and current events into university
coursework has been shown to promote active learning by relating real-world events
important to students with the course material. This second version of the assignment
challenged students to find news articles, videos, images or other web content
relating to topics such as the cultural diversity, substance abuse, people
acting irrationally out of loyalty to a particular community, or religious
beliefs causing conflict in society. Again, students tweeted their content of
choice with a specific hashtag, and the results were compiled in Paper.li for
discussion during class. These discussions often stimulated dialogue and
community building as students talked about their contributions with the class.
Questions and open dialogue inevitably ensue as engaged students expand upon
topics. The results of each assignment
reflected a strong indication of community-building. For example, during the
first assignment, students were asked to share something of a personal interest
with the class. One student posted a video of a dancing child from Guyana. When
asked why she picked that particular link, she explained that she was from
Guyana and she wanted to let everyone know that Guyana is not in Africa, often
confused with Ghana. Guyana has a unique culture, reflected in their music and
dance. As she talked, the other students began to ask questions about her
culture. Then four more students announced they were from other countries
including Jordan, Korea, Turkey, and Germany, and began to discuss their cultural
differences. By the second week of class, the
students had bonded over common interests and cultural respect and all without
the use of formal ice-breakers. In another assignment, students were asked to
tweet a personal blog entry that identified their social class based on the
criteria used in the common reading Class Matters. That conversation provided more than
a class time’s worth of conversation as students debated actual vs. perceived
social status, the relation of money contributing to general happiness, and the
trauma associated with falling into a different social standing due to economic
crisis. Each assigned topic brings together the various perspectives from
students as they communicate through articles, images, and videos. At the onset of the semester, some
students were not familiar with Twitter and required assistance setting up an
account and correctly tweeting using the required hashtag. The most common
problem encountered was Paper.li missing tweets when the URL and hashtag were
not separated by a space. Verifying that students had attempted the assignment
in good faith despite such glitches was simple since Twitter records and
timestamps activity. Despite students’ unfamiliarity with the technology, the
 overwhelming majority found it easy to tweet their submissions to Paper.li. Overall, the students’ experiences
with these assignments were positive, with most recognizing the value of
relating their personal experiences and current events to the topics covered in
class. Paper.li provides an organized and convenient space to begin class
discussions, often on topics students find interesting and relevant. These assignments engage the students
by asking them to provide content for class discussions. A published class
newspaper holds students accountable for content, while simultaneously
validating their influence in the class. Creating an online newspaper together
with their peers emphasizes collaboration and exposes them to the equally
important points of view of others. The use of this assignment in an FYE course
helped build a sense of community among new students which in turn hopefully
eased their transition to college.
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