This semes­ter I am teach­ing a class that is a lit­tle out of my nor­mal realm of work.  I’m teach­ing a lead­er­ship class in the Kine­si­ol­ogy Depart­ment here at the Uni­ver­sity of Ken­tucky.  Most of the stu­dents want to be col­lege coaches, rec coor­di­na­tors, ath­letic admin­is­tra­tors, or front office employ­ees in the sports world.  Although this class is a bit dif­fer­ent from much of my other cur­rent work, I was very excited to teach the course.  I’ve been very involved with ath­let­ics and sports orga­ni­za­tions in many dif­fer­ent roles through­out my life.  I also rec­og­nized that the meat and pota­toes of this course were cer­tainly lead­er­ship skills and sports were just the gravy that adds fla­vor to the conversation.

While “tweak­ing” the syl­labus of the for­mer instruc­tor, I care­fully con­sid­ered ways to enhance the course.  With that in mind, I decided to add a com­po­nent that focused on devel­op­ing per­sonal learn­ing net­works through the use of social media.  In our first class, stu­dents actu­ally cre­ated a “Low-Tech Social Net­work” by cre­at­ing avatars and tags on note cards.  They then had to make con­nec­tions with one another.  Unfor­tu­nately, my board was too small for the group that I had!

(Check out Gamestorm­ing for this activ­ity and many oth­ers that are great for work with groups.)

Last week our class dove more deeply into social media, and I was encour­aged to blog about my findings :)

Prior to class stu­dents read a series of arti­cles around the use of social media in sports orga­ni­za­tions.  They also par­tic­i­pated in a class dis­cus­sion board led by two mod­er­a­tors.  I was sur­prised by how much the dis­cus­sion threads focused on the student-athletes use of social media. Much of the con­ver­sa­tion focused on ways to edu­cate, fil­ter, mon­i­tor, or block stu­dents use of social media.  Although I found that con­ver­sa­tion fas­ci­nat­ing, I was more inter­ested in two other ways social media can be used in ath­let­ics.  I wanted them to become aware of ways that orga­ni­za­tions were using social media.  More impor­tantly, I wanted to help them rec­og­nize how they can use social media to stay con­nected and informed about their pro­fes­sion.  I think this is so impor­tant that one of their assign­ments for the semes­ter is to grow their social pres­ence.  My cri­te­ria are fairly lenient.  Some may choose to grow their net­work by con­nect­ing and inter­act­ing with oth­ers in their field.  Other stu­dents may just dip their toes in and use social media as a lis­ten­ing sta­tion where they can gain insight from insid­ers and oth­ers in their field.

Although there are sure to be indi­vid­u­als in this new infor­ma­tion rich inter­con­nected soci­ety who suc­ceed with­out such tools, they won’t be the norm.  Orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als who embrace social media will be able to con­nect in ways that are not pos­si­ble with­out the use of technology!

Nick Sauers