Written By: James Walker
Introduction
I specialise in digital literary heritage trails and was employed by Nottingham Trent University to create modules that would provide students with the skills and experience to embark on similar projects of their own upon graduation. Underpinning these projects is a simple ethos: If the 20th century was about knowledge, the 21st century is about experience (Walker, 2014). Social media, whether we like it or not, has taught audiences (and users) that their opinions are valued (Rosen, 2008). Therefore, successful digital projects need to find ways of bringing them into the conversation. These principles are more relevant now due to the disruption caused by the coronavirus lockdown that has seen us all experimenting with different tools and platforms as a means of keeping students engaged. We have become, to misquote Jay Rosen, The People Formerly Known as Tutors.
Technology is reorganising how we think, share, and learn in web 2.0 and so teaching needs to explore and experiment with the tools we use to communicate. Or as Stommel and Morris (2018) argue:
“If students live in a culture that digitizes and educates them through a screen, they require an education that empowers them in that sphere, teaches them that language, and offers new opportunities of human connectivity.”
Not only does this better prepare them for the workplace (Beatham, 2014) but it aligns with government goals of improving digital literacy. Such issues were debated in Make or Break; the UK’s Digital Future, which predicted that the ICT workforce would grow by 39% by 2030 (House of Lords, 2015: 1003). At the 2018 Digital Business World Congress, Thulium CEO Tamara McCleary made the fanciful prediction that 85% of jobs in 2030 haven’t been invented yet and therefore ‘our greatest asset is our ability to learn because we can't plan ahead by taking knowledge from the past and pasting it on to some future job that hasn't even been created yet’.
It is with these issues in mind that I created an alternative to the traditional dissertation that is available to joint honour English students. On this module, students help to conceptualise and design a digital ‘memory theatre’ that celebrates the work of the English author D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930). Rather than write a linear essay, they select artefacts that represent key themes in his work or capture the essence of his identity. A Memory Theatre or Cabinet of Curiosity was a precursor to the museum, a symbolic decorative system that provided a space for collectors to curate, organise and categorise artefacts.
“Their intention was not merely to define, discover and possess the rare and unique but also, and at the same time, to inscribe them within a special setting which would instil in them layers of meaning” (Mauriès, 2011: 25)
Instagram is a photo and video sharing social network owned by Facebook. In some respects it functions like a modern Cabinet of Curiosity. People curate their lives and inscribe their own layers of meaning in terms of how they represent themselves to the world. But whereas the cabinets of the 17th century were the preserve of the rich and wealthy, objects to be viewed by invite only, Instagram is public and accessible to all. This raises many well-known problems regarding privacy, marketing and surveillance (Han, Jung, Jang, and Lee, 2018; Bechmann and Vahlstrup, 2015) but for the purpose of this Think Piece, I want to focus on the potential of Instagram to act as a feedback loop to support student confidence as well as a platform that encourages creativity and community.
The following findings are based on research undertaken between August 2018 and January 2019 with five students aged between 20 – 23 on the alternative dissertation module. My initial motivation for using social media was to provide students with additional and contextual information regarding their module and to make myself more accessible. Like them, I regularly check my social media accounts sporadically throughout the day and so the aim of using this form of communication was to see whether:
Social media can improve students’ knowledge and confidence of the subject
Social media can foster agency and empower learners to develop critical consciousness
Social media can create meaningful relationships between learners
Social media can act as a form of immediate feedback
I should make a few disclaimers here. Firstly, students have enrolled on the module because they have an interest in digital technology and so are familiar with, and ready to embrace, social media. Secondly, it is a small cohort of students and so it is easier to get to know each other. Thirdly, I am happy for this module to be discussed publicly because it promotes a real digital heritage project we have put together collaboratively. Lastly, Instagram can be used as a curation and archiving tool, which aligned with the module outcomes of finding alternative ways of exploring literary heritage. These factors were all favourable to engagement. However, I hope the findings and suggestions may be applied to other subjects, irrespective of class size.
Rationale
I am interested in humanist principles and disruptive learning techniques that empower students and prepare them for life. I want to avoid what Illich describes as ‘teaching the need to be taught’ (1971:47). He argues that ‘most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting’ (ibid:39). To some extent his observations build upon Freire’s (1970) argument that the banking model of education has failed individuals by treating them as empty vessels waiting to be ‘filled’ with knowledge. Instead, he advocates co-authoring the learning experience. Experience is fundamental to this process as ‘no-one is born fully-formed: it is through self-experience in the world that we become what we are’. For Freire (1974), education is about empowering individuals with the ability to engage in dialogue. To provide Conscientizacao - ‘problem-posing education’ which helps develop critical consciousness which is firmly embedded in the lived reality of learners.
The point here is about creating learning environments that are spaces for cognition rather than information. A more interactive user-friendly digital landscape has enabled a younger generation to curate, edit, and publish their own views of culture. This generation also demands content in multiple forms and in varying lengths and formats. My module also includes a blogging site, YouTube Channel, and Twitter accounts. Instagram allows what Rheingold (2009) describes as ‘participant pedagogy’. It provides the opportunity to put ‘experience’ back in the hands of the learners and enable co-authorship of learning through their potential to facilitate dialogue.
Feedback
For students to feel positive and motivated, strategies need to be developed that support interaction and dialogue. Beaumont et al argue for ‘continuous dialogue within a cyclical assessment process’ (2011: 684). Notifications alerting users to comments means that Instagram allows for immediate and continuous feedback. It also means that students are instigating the conversation. In effect, they are determining what level of support they require and when. Feedback that functions as a one-way transmission of information from tutor to student removes any agency on the part of the student and can potentially be ‘ego-involving’ (Wiliam, 2016). Conversely, dialogic feedback ‘suggests an interactive exchange in which interpretations are shared, meanings negotiated, and expectations clarified’ (Carless et al. 2011: 397). For Hughes ‘dialogue about single pieces of work is valuable but the benefits might be lessened if there is little opportunity for dialogue to continue over a period of time’ (2011:360). Our Instagram account runs before, during and after term. It has allowed us to remain in contact with each other despite the cohort graduating last year.
Instagram allows a dialogic relationship and co-authorship of learning in a way that traditional forums and university learning rooms do not. Stommel and Morris (2018) argue that discussion forums:
‘do not encourage, or in some cases do not allow, students to meet, greet, challenge, question, and collaborate in the dynamic ways they do elsewhere on the web’ and ‘that building community is at the heart of learning’.
My experience is that using Instagram to communicate generates more responses than the virtual learning forums because social media is about community. These are environments that students are generally familiar and comfortable with, and consequently they will post comments because they want to, not because they have to. Similarly, social media allows information to be staggered in small chunks over a sustained period. It was this process of communication that I believed would help foster knowledge of a subject and develop their confidence to speak up in a class situation.
Instagram findings and suggestions
Figure 1: An example of a memorable post. Using this image led to a discussion about whether Lawrence was the ‘good’ one in relation to his time in New Mexico. Source: Instagram @DHLawrenceDigitalPilgrimage.
Each week during the research period I posted 3-5 times per week. The posts included a strong visual image with contextual information of around 100 – 200 words. The choice of image was important to a) initially grab attention and b) be memorable enough that Instagram would act as an archive that would enable them to retrieve information quickly.
Figure 2: An eco-critical post. Source: Instagram @DHLawrenceDigitalPilgrimage.
I witnessed this numerous times in class discussions when a student would typically say, ‘Where can I find stuff on Lawrence and eco-criticism’ and another student would respond, ‘remember that picture of him on a cabbage’. This also had a ‘disruptive’ effect in that it led to wider conversations about other public figures turned into vegetables (see comment in figure 2 about Graham Taylor) and then more aspirational questions, such as: What programme did you use? How long did it take? Can you show me how to do it? On discovering that it took a couple of hours and that I had experimented with free online software it was clear that the students felt valued and were aware that I wasn’t just regurgitating the same content each term.
Figure 3: A recent post that led to former students contacting me Source: Instagram @DHLawrenceDigitalPilgrimage.
Scaffolding learning environments is vital if you want to improve student engagement. There must be order within the randomness. The 3-5 posts published each week related to topics discussed that week. Every ninth post included a 60 second film. This created a sense of anticipation and led to informal conversations such as, ‘I think a relevant film to show this week would be…’ It also meant that they were looking for specific content. The purpose of publishing posts related to the weekly topic was to slowly feed information that would help them participate in our weekly seminar and avoid the dreaded silence. By chunking snippets of the reading, students less prepared were still able to join in. A typical comment I would hear after reading out an extract was, ‘I’ve heard that quote before’ and then somebody would point out, ‘it was on the ‘gram this week’. This was my initial purpose for using Instagram, to build student confidence, to provide them with the knowledge that would help them take part in discussions. This was most successful when a student brought in additional material to class and said, ‘I saw the post about eco-criticism and found this…’ This type of individual research, the bringing in of additional materials to seminars of their own volition, was exactly what I hoped to prove in my research and resulted in discussions that often overran our class time.
Figure 4: An example of a topical lockdown post. Source: Instagram @DHLawrenceDigitalPilgrimage
Unfortunately, Instagram did not lead to the kind of spontaneous engagement online I had hoped for. Some students were cautious of leaving comments because: ‘My Instagram is private/personal so it made it difficult to comment on posts academically or at all. To do this I would need to make a professional/academic Instagram’. This student also said she was worried that people would judge her if she said something ‘stupid’. Another student said they did not see the value of leaving comments on Instagram as it is a visual medium and so liked posts to show they had read them. What did work well is private messages. They were happy to share their thoughts with 1-1 messages and engage in longer debates.
Figure 5: Source: Instagram @DHLawrenceDigitalPilgrimage.
Education is more than just attendance and exams. It is about feeling connected to a subject. Including pictures of students on trips or when we invited in guest speakers was very important to them and helped create a sense of belonging (Figure 5). When I asked what account image they liked the most, one said, ‘The images that stand out to me are the ones with us in them, such as our visit to Eastwood. I think it makes the Instagram seem more personal’ whereas another student observed that being tagged in images, or directly asked a question on social media ‘made me feel much more connected to my lecturer, especially since in large groups some lecturers don't even know your name.’ Clearly this gives students a sense of worth. They especially enjoyed being turned into a cartoon (Figure 6).
Figure 6: End of module cartoon picture. Source: Instagram @DHLawrenceDigitalPilgrimage.
Finally, one student in the study did not demonstrate any engagement with the posts on Instagram. But in our semi-structured interview (I conducted these with all of the students after the research period had finished) explained that the posts were really useful and that he would show his housemates and they would often discuss them. His housemates were from different disciplines which he said helped him to perceive the subject from different perspectives.
Conclusion and suggestions
Social media has enabled me to connect with students in a way that simply is not possible in a formal setting, a situation coronavirus is forcing us all to embrace. It has helped develop confidence and engagement with a module by chunking content and using visual images as a prompt. But it could go a lot further if it is to achieve the goals of creating community, recreating a classroom environment. Here are some suggestions on how this medium could be pushed further as a disruptive tool.
Making the account private would reduce any sense of social embarrassment and possibly lead to better engagement.
Encourage students to set up a private account to avoid conflict between private and public personas. This might elicit more professional responses to comment streams.
Ask a student to manage the module account each week. Instruct them to publish a minimum amount of posts. Ask them to reflect on why they chose those posts in an online 1-1 or as a formative assessment at the end of the module.
Rotate ownership of the account so that everybody is a co-author. When a post picks up more traction and comments, discuss why this might be so. Get them to build on this experience next time.
Include live story feeds that they co-manage. My research found they preferred these. Get them to discuss the benefits of this approach over static images
Teachback – get students to explain in a 60 second film posted to the account an element of that week’s learning. You know then whether they have understood that week’s teaching. Allow other students to respond to the film with their own so that they teach each other.
One of the main challenges of moving learning online is delivering activities instead of content. Instagram allows for lots of types of learning methods. But perhaps a different medium works better for you. Talk to students in advance and find out how they prefer to communicate. The more familiar the environment, the more they are likely to engage.
It is important to state that I originally disliked Instagram because I thought it was a soporific visual medium. But I changed my mind when a student told me how much she loved Instagram and that I should try it out. She helped me set up the account and taught me how to use it. The point here is that feedback works both ways. Also, it is not what social media you are using that matters, but what it enables. Instagram can act as an archiving and curation tool, it can build community in the classroom, it provides multiple ways of disseminating information, and it allows co-authorship. But most importantly, it has the potential to grow student confidence.
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