There used to be a time where, during lectures, students were expected to give their full, undivided attention to the lecturer and the lecturer only. Chatting in class was deemed disrespectful, inconsiderate, and counterproductive to good learning. The advent of mobile computing and the internet has, however, allowed for a bending of these 'rules' as students can now SMS, chat and tweet without the lecturer even knowing. But unbeknownst to many of them, these technological developments - once instruments of classroom subversion - have slowly become an extension of their learning environment. And the same teachers and professors who once warned them to put away their gadgetry are now turning the old classroom rules on its head, fishing out devices of their own, turning once recreational objects and platforms into homework.

For Michael Netzley, an assistant professor of corporate communication at SMU's Lee Kong Chian School of Business(LKCSB), social media should, indisputably, be a part of learning insofar as they feature prominently in our everyday lives. A panellist at 'Social Media in the Classroom' - a discussion jointly organised by LKCSB and the Chronicle of Higher Education- Netzley argued that new-age workers will be required to know how to use and manage social media - and this, of course, goes beyond informal socialising. Students need practice, he said, in order to build up a good understanding of the medium, so that they may thrive as knowledge workers.

"Our graduates are not going to have the option of going into professional life, closing the shutters and saying: we're not going to communicate [via social media]. Their consumers, shareholders and government constituents simply will not accept that answer," said Netzley. And since such forms of communications are unlikely to go away in the future, students must be prepared and equipped to work competently with social media. Associate professor Ian Macduff, director of the university's Centre for Dispute Resolutionand panellist at the discussion, shared similar views. "There's been an enormous growth in online dispute resolution... [So] emerging lawyers need to be familiar with that technology, and one way of developing that familiarity is to use it in class".

Take eBay, an online auction company that traded some US$60 billion worth of goods in 2009 (at US$2,000 per second). The sheer volume of transactions that occurs within that digital world makes it a hotbed of commercial disputes - disputes that will require the professional services of lawyers, advisors and consultants. And so, Macduff believes it is essential for students to get comfortable with the new and emerging mediums: "There are instructional elements to it on three levels; one is to learn to use the technology in a simple but not simplistic way; next is to learn the use of that technology in communicating with the 'actors'; and the third level is that of 'digital democracy', in which you hope people will engage in wider dialogue."

New mediums, new challenges 

Macduff, who calls himself a "tech-junkie", believes that students in Singapore can afford to enhance their appreciation of technology further. He cited a recent International Telecommunications Union reportwhich ranked Singapore highly, in terms of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) 'access' and 'use' - 10^th and 5^th respectively, out of the 159 countries studied. However, the country was ranked 71^st on the 'skills' index, which measures effective ICT literacy and use. "So the technology is there, but the competence is not," he noted, adding that there have been instances where some of his students - young products of the digital age - would seem to know very little about working with present technologies, compared to him.

The lack of practical skills aside, teachers are also confronted with new grey areas, such as defining what counts as "appropriate" within the virtual space. For instance, should a student send a Facebook 'friend' request to a teacher? Conversely, if a teacher were to send a student a Facebook 'friend' request, how should the student respond? Could a 'wrong' response have a bearing on the teacher's impression of the student (or worse still, on matters of class ranking and grades)? And then there are cultural reservations that affect both students and teachers alike, for instance, the need to 'save face': If I post anything less than constructive or intelligent, will it affect my reputation in the longer term?

"We remind students not to put things that might embarrass them on Facebook, but if we start telling faculty members not to say anything that might embarrass them in the classroom, think about how sterile our classrooms are going to be," said Paul Gandel, a visiting professor at SMU's School of Information Systems. Gandel was alluding to what he views as the imminent contraction of the classroom 'safe space'. As more and more of what happens within academic settings get transferred and reproduced onto virtual spaces, teachers and students may well be looking at a future where they will be taken to task, by the external public, for classroom-speak.

"As technology becomes more pervasive and you have less control over 'what's said', 'what's repeated' and 'who repeats it'... it sets up interesting legal and policy issues. For instance, will the university protect me if someone else wants to sue me for libel because I happened to make a flippant comment about a politician, business mogul, lawyer, etc? Normally, we'd do that in the classroom; we make jokes, and that's one of the fun things about being in the classroom... but that's all going to change, and how's it's going to change will be interesting." But this is a worrying trend, he said, because the classroom is meant to be a safe place for the exchange of ideas, where controversial thought can be expressed and challenged.

Gandel spoke of how, in the US, some classrooms have inadvertently become battlefields for political camps, with professors accused of being either too liberal or too conservative. Though there have been no such incidents thus far at SMU, Singaporeans might recall how classroom discussions on sex and sexuality education were debated publicly in 2009, where following an online posting of the instructor guidelines, concerned individuals and groups began weighing in on what teachers should be saying to students. Singapore's Minister for Education, Ng Eng Hen, then described to the media that schools, to his dismay, were being held as a "proxy arena for competing ideologies".

Not wanting to risk similar predicaments, teachers are learning to manage (and contain) touchy subjects. Jack Lee, an assistant professor at SMU's School of Law, first realised the need to do this when his colleague alerted him to something that he had found on the internet, via a Google search. It was a draft Wikipediaarticle that his students had written as an assignment, and it contained "sensitive statements" that were not well argued and referenced. "If you're not careful, you can trespass into areas like contempt of court and defamation," he said. The next time the project is run, he intends to take steps to ensure that student assignments are kept away from web crawlers operated by internet search engines - at least until he believes that the writings can hold up to public scrutiny.

Shouldering greater burdens and responsibility

Prudence may be a virtue, but risk-taking has its merits too. Some students in Netzley's communications class, for instance, were, at one time, challenged by netizens for content that they had published online, and this, he said, provided an important lesson in negotiating between differing viewpoints. "If you learn how to respond wisely, with somebody else's concerns in mind, and take a genuine effort to answer whatever the concern is, this can actually be an opportunity to build relationships with people. And then they see the benefits of these technologies."

Engaging with people on virtual platforms, however, can be quite time-consuming; especially if doing so becomes a requirement that piles atop heaps of traditional, offline engagements that are already expected of teachers and students. Furthermore, there are few established guidelines for assessing and grading students' social media inputs. Lee, who assigns a wiki-based project to students and also encourages them to post questions and comments on an internal discussion board, opined that awarding grades to online contributions is important. Students will, otherwise, be less likely to take these course components seriously. And to ensure an equitable workload, he has removed a written report that his students would otherwise have to do.

Still, online assignments seem to require more time and effort. "It used to be that at the end of class, I'd walk out and that's it. Now, I have to read what students put up [online], and sometimes, they'd ask questions, and you'd have to type the answers, checked and sourced correctly," Lee said, noting that, given the medium's ubiquity, great care always has to be exercised with words expressed on the internet. Not everyone appreciates the extra effort. Some students lament about how 'work' has crept into a personal leisure space that they (used to) enjoy; that they would rather keep 'work' and 'play' separate. Social media, for these students, offers a virtual escape from the bitter realities - where they can spy on friends, share photos and videos, play games, and indulge in frivolity.

Perhaps students have yet to consider the powerful potential of tapping onto social media in their day-to-day work, suggested Netzley. "Through my own experience, in watching other people in my profession, the advantages of mastering these channels... to crowd-source an answer; having 500 sets of eyes looking at a particular topic or question; learning how to integrate everything into your social bookmarks, so that when you sit down and write your paper, everything's already right there... the levels of efficiency and productivity, to me, can be amazing." So he stressed, once again, that students should learn to apply such technologies at schools because - whether they like it or not - they will be expected to do so in the future.

But looking beyond the framing of web-based assignments as vile, unappetizing 'work', it might be useful to remember that social media can improve learning experiences. It offers, for instance, opportunities for people to work collaboratively, independently, outside of class, argues Jason Woodard, an assistant professor of information systems. He uses social media to bridge gaps of time and space - to keep everyone thinking and talking about random, everyday ideas that pop up outside of the classroom. After all, inspiration and revelations can strike anytime, anyplace, and everyone benefits when those exhilarating moments are captured and shared. "We never have enough time in class, and the other problem is that stuff happens outside of class that's relevant to class. So there are always things happening that disappear into the ether that you wish you could capture and incorporate into people's daily lives... social media give us the possibility of doing that," he concluded.