Everybody Phones Out

Description

Everybody Phones Out (EPO) was an experimental short course delivered at Central Saint Martins utilising Instagram as a means of community building and information delivery. This paper, presented as a case study, examines the opportunities for tutors to act within social media spaces.

EPO was partially born out of a frustration with inadequate digital educational spaces, e.g. Blackboard, Moodle, and Workflow. Veering away from these institutional spaces EPO sought to meet the students on their own grounds, connecting with their values, and being actively public.

Takeaway

Lessons drawn from the experimental e-education project, EPO, are intended to illustrate a number of factors, highlighting opportunities in higher education for the use of social media, including:

1. Engagement with students in the digital spaces they are familiar with.
2. Codes of conduct & examples of best practice when using social media in an academic environment.
3. The strategic use of tagging to facilitate discussion outside of the classroom.
4. The potential of memes to communicate complex theory.
5. Interaction with a wide range of social media users to broaden debate.

Abstract

This paper considers the short course / pedagogical prototype project, Everybody Phones Out (EPO), that took place between February - April 2016 at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. Conclusions drawn from this project indicate future potentials for e-learning via social media.

EPO was unique in its attempt to utilise a dedicated Instagram account, as a means to support the delivery of a series of traditional lectures to first year undergraduate students. Prior to each lesson, the account was used to deploy a series of meme-esque images that conveyed extracts from academic and artistic texts, image captions were employed as a referencing system. The account simultaneously acted as both bibliography and syllabus. Artists, galleries and arts organisations were tagged with the intention of facilitating conversation between students and industry professionals.

Taking EPO as a case study this paper assess the potential for IBMSNs (image-based-mobile-social-network) to be employed in, and beyond, the classroom for the delivery of content and engagement with students. This paper makes specific reference to EPO's co-option of the iconography of memes, the combination of textual and visual information and the image parlance of memeology to humorous, and virulent, affect.

Beyond the specifics of EPO this paper develops a number of potential options and opportunities for educators to engage students on their own grounds, social media sites. Looking at our own successes and failures, we detail a code of conduct and draw out best practice examples. How should students be engaged, what is and isn’t appropriate, what will encourage an online education community, and what will make it fail? How can we integrate learning into an everyday activity like Instagram? And how can we protect tutors from becoming a 24/7 resource for their students?

Evidence is drawn from a combination of qualitative and quantitative surveying of the EPO Instagram account, and backed up with comments from the student body.

Additionally this paper looks at the public / private debate. EPO’s Instagram account was, with the agreement of our students, set to public, as such our interactions and conversations were visible, and individuals outside the classroom could interact in the learning environment. What are the potential pitfalls of such publicness? What are the advantages?

EPO was a play upon the cliched classroom call “everybody pencils/pens out” and upon the standard assumption that electronic technologies distract students from the important matter of learning. This paper attempts to counter these assumptions, presenting a more positive interpretation of technologies place within, and without, the classroom.

For more information on EPO please visit: https://www.instagram.com/everybodyphonesout/