IT Professor Bridges Communication Gap with Students

As an associate professor in the University of Cincinnati's College of Education, Criminal Justice & Human Services, Mark Stockman found that students do not regularly check their email or announcements on Blackboard. So, he started a social media campaign to engage them with class announcements.

Stockman, who teaches information technology courses, created a Blogger account for class announcements and set it up so that the blog posts automatically go to Facebook and Twitter accounts for the class as well. This way, more students will get class notifications even if they do not check their email or Blackboard. 

This system is also beneficial because it creates documentation of course announcements that students can easily refer back to. Stockman said that if he just sends the class an email, it is harder to go back and reference the emails.

“Technology enables us to work between classes,” he said. “Faculty and students don’t have to wait for the next class to communicate or make a change.”

Stockman said technology also makes a course more efficient, as he only had to connect the Blogger, Twitter and Facebook accounts once in order to create the streamlined system. 

“The core of any technology is to make things more efficient,” he said.

Technology is also mean to engage students, who are met with many distractions every day. He said anything faculty can do to get students to pay more attention to learning is good.

“It is a constant focus of mine to find easy-to-implement solutions to assist in students’ learning or lessen the administrative burden often involved with teaching,” Stockman said. “Students most at academic risk who struggle or might be intimidated to approach their instructors will benefit most from inclusions of technologies.”