How my Professor Silenced Social Media

Technology has become an inseparable part of our everyday lives. Taking out our internet-connected devices and checking social media is a trend that will never fade away. It is one of the reasons why educators consider technologies as a students’ main distraction and try to control how tablets, smartphones, and laptops are used in schools and universities.

As a solution many educational institutions try to cut down the screen time during the school day and for that they use different apps and digital firewalls.

However we know that checking social media has become a reflex, so just blocking those sites or reducing screen time can not be a right solution: even though students will not enter their social media sites, they can not concentrate and engage in the teaching process.

Actually, classroom technologies such as smartphones, tablets, computers, and wireless internet access offer exciting opportunities to enhance and deepen the learning process.

One of my professors silenced social media meanwhile using our internet-connected devices and engaging us in the teaching process. Seems impossible? Let me open the secret of how he succeeded to do that.

Topic-related quizzes/surveys

Nowadays, there are many apps out there that will allow instructors to conduct polls and surveys and ask students to participate using their mobile devices. This will highly encourage classroom participation. This method can also help the teachers to collect some feedback on how the students are learning.

My professor who teaches Financial Management course tried the method using one of the user friendly platforms, Swift Polling, and replaced SM (social media) with SP (Swift Polling). That way he not only silenced FB, Twitter, and other social media sites, but also greatly enhanced our learning experience. How?

During the first 4–5 classes of the course he noticed that students got bored and distracted by their smartphones. He defined rules for his class such as:

• No smartphones are allowed when the teacher is conducting a lecture.

• Devices should be put on silent/airplane mode.

However, it was obvious that he couldn’t manage to increase students’ learning productivity if not decrease.

Then, something surprising happened to us: during the class, when my professor noticed that we were getting tired and losing our attention, he told us “take out your internet-connected devices”.

For sure, we knew that he was not going to tell us to enter social media and we felt that something not standard was going to happen.

He asked us to enter the given link (swiftpolling.com), type in the given event code and take the quiz. My professor had created topic-related polls to check how well we understood the topic. Voting was anonymous, which provided 100% participation rate.

Moreover, we saw how the results were updated in real time and it was so exciting.

Overall this method can be described as a win-win situation for both sides, because:

1. My professor managed to keep our attention allowing us to use our technologies without interrupting the teaching process.
2. We were able to use our technologies meanwhile participating in the teaching process.

This method enabled us to be engaged in the teaching process and understand the material better, because:

1. We felt challenged to be more attentive during the lecture and learnt the material in advance in order to get more correct answers.
2. As the results were updated in real time, our professor kicked off a discussion and addressed our responses explaining why the one option was correct and the others not. It helped us to understand the topic more deeply.
3. And last but not least, it helped us to prepare for the exam better, as the final exam results showed.

Digitized Q&A

It’s a common practice that students have questions regarding the topic and ask them during the lectures. Generally, educators conduct this part at the end of the class, when they finish the lecture.

My professor used this opportunity, too, to silence Social Media by replacing it with Swift Polling. He asked us so take out our internet-connected devices and send questions through web or sms (actually, internet not needed in this case) when if any comes to our mind.

It was an amazing solution to not only silence social media, but to conduct an effective Q&A, because:

1. We had an opportunity to use our technologies during the class without distracting our learning process and interrupting our professor.
2. We sent our questions when those came to our mind and the content was still fresh.
3. Even shy and introverted students participated, as the whole process was anonymous and nobody was afraid to seem stupid because of his/her question.

We also used the same platform to send anonymous feedback regarding the classes, which in future, my professor used to improve the course.

What we saw is that to make students stop entering social media during class time you shouldn’t forbid them to bring technologies in the classroom or block those websites. There are so many modern and fun methods (like the ones my professor applied) that can be used to the benefit of both sides.