I’ve published a curriculum for social media literacy at the college and graduate level.
This is based on my experience teaching the subject at the University of Miami School of Communication and on the presentations and workshops I’ve given. The coursework and some of the topics are also inspired by Howard Rheingold’s class on Virtual Worlds / Social Media:
In a few short years, the Web 2.0 has profoundly changed the communication landscape. With the advent of new social media tools, more and more people are participating and engaging in the conversation online. As former members of the audience become the creators of content, corporations and media organizations lose control of the message. After an overview of how and why we got here, this course will guide you through what works with social networks, blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, media sharing, lifestreams, tagging and other social media tools. Since these tools and services are so new and continually changing, students’ degree of knowledge about the internet is not relevant. For continued effective communication, using these tools is not optional, it’s required.
The course will explore the new media landscape in terms of online expression, social networking, identity management, community building, and citizen journalism. How is social media changing the way you work and live? What are the implications for you and for the organizations you will work with? What opportunities and challenges do individuals, news organizations, and businesses face regarding communication, identity/brand management, and community building? How do we understand, participate in, and leverage communities in our current age of many-to-many media?
This course is grounded in practice, and students will be required to participate in social networks, forums, blogs, wikis, micro-blogs, folksonomies, and virtual worlds. Class discussions, presentations by students, readings, and examples of emerging technologies and media will bring us greater understanding of the issues and practice of social media. We will also learn from case studies, invited speakers, and our own learning journals, new effective strategies and applications of these platforms.
The class is highly participatory both offline and online. Between the weekly scheduled class meetings, this course’s discussion continues in a variety of online and virtual environments. Those who complete this course will know how to use blogs, tags, wikis, social networks, Twitter, and Flickr productively, and have a framework for understanding and evaluating new social media tools and platforms.
The full syllabus including the course topics and coursework is on the wiki. This syllabus is distributed under a Creative Commons license.
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