Hearing Students' Voices Through Twitter and Voicethread in Josh LePree's Sociology Courses
Josh LePree has a vision for teaching that transcends the classroom: "[I want] to create a seamless environment聽for class [so that] ... it seems like there's no break between [class and homework]," says LePree. 聽He is a Sociology PhD student at 91福利社 and has been teaching at the college level for four years now.聽 Students nominated LePree聽for an ASSETT Outstanding Teaching with Technology Award last year, and聽one聽student wrote: "Technology use was a large part of our classroom and homework discussions in [LePree]'s Race and Ethnicity class."
The Sociology Department awarded LePree for his vision聽with聽the Special Topics in Sociology GPTI Fellowship for the Spring 2014 semester. 聽LePree designed and taught the Spring 2014 Sociological Perspectives on Migration: Gender, Race and the State course (SOCY 2091). 聽He created a class Twitter page and instructed students to hashtag it聽in a new聽tweet each week. 聽Students needed to hashtag both the class and the week of class聽(see the screenshot from the class Twitter page, below) to get participation credit for that week. 聽That way, LePree聽could just go to the Twitter page #SOCY2091聽#WK2 to grade聽students' participation on the class Twitter page for the week! 聽If students were聽concerned about keeping personal and class Twitter Handles (aliases) separate, LePree encouraged them to create new handles just for class聽with their names and the course name--just like he did (@LePreeSOCY).
To make the out-of-class Twitter threads聽even more relevant to class discussion, LePree would regularly bring in聽students' tweets of articles and videos that related to class topics. 聽Consequently, one student wrote in her nomination of LePree聽for the ASSETT Teaching with Technology Award that posting original discussion questions on the class Twitter page for homework made her聽feel less anonymous in class:
Twitter was used for [LePree] and his students to share pertinent videos, ideas, and d