Few would disagree that the vast majority of businesses who ignored social media have found themselves with a slight stigma for being unresponsive to consumer needs and behind the times and I am inclined to suggest that the choice of using social media was replaced with necessity. I am personally intrigued by groups of professionals, (such as doctors and even MP’s) who cannot obviously be categorised as walking businesses but do rely entirely upon their personal knowledge for their profession and are accountable to themselves. Do they now need to take a step online into the social media world to maintain their personal brands and reputation? I am not going to deny that many professionals such as doctors have indeed started their own blogs and engaged with their audience online, but there are certain groups that haven’t yet taken the bold step and professors are certainly one of them.
It does feel almost cliché that as a final year student (interning at RMM) I should choose to write about higher education professors, but this group of seemingly closed professionals are perfect for testing my hypothesis that a tipping point has been reached where the consequences of not entering into conversations are now too big not ignore. Have adopting new teaching methods, becoming more open and transparent whilst sharing more of their professional knowledge through social media channels suddenly become part of a professor’s job description? That’s what I am going to investigate over the next few blog posts.
It is quite common to see students wander into lectures with their netbooks, but what most professors perhaps don’t quite grasp is that they are browsing Facebook rather than annotating their power points with notes (Obviously this is classified information so don’t please go whispering outside of the RMM blog). One of the better informed professors (and one with his own blog), Dr Ringmar says “Students often have more of a presence online than they have in their class rooms”. He seems to have picked up on the trend of students communicating more and more through social media and absorbing less information from less regular sources such as books, so why don’t we find social media better integrated into teaching?
The need for professors to become better acquainted with social media does not stop at the classroom door, as the pressure seems to be mounting through online rating sites. www.ratemyprofessors.com now gives students the power (whether delighted or disgruntled) to rate their professor’s ability. I have been shocked by the level of personal remarks that have been made by students, such as basing their entire reviews of professors upon their personal appearance. I always had the sneaky feeling that my carefully ticked boxes at the end of the year which was meant to mark a professor’s ability were secretly squirreled into a cupboard for time to erode, so it seems that social media may have taken its bitter revenge. Similar to what happened to companies; professors are perhaps now finding that they are being discussed in very critical ways with or without their consent or involvement. Could this platform alone be enough to drive some professors into the social media realm?
My next two blog posts will try to uncover why professors have been seemingly resistant to adopt social media as both a classroom and research tool, but also focus around my hunch that their tipping point is quickly approaching and the consequences of not entering into conversations will be too great for them to ignore. Although I will be focusing just upon professors, it may give some inclination to where other professionals now stand between choice and necessity.
