In preparation for Armstrong State University's initiative to offer more online degree programs, our instructional design team was tasked with updating the online course template that Armstrong professors would use when developing their courses. As we were reviewing this course template with an online professor, the discussion of guidelines to support her online pedagogy of using social media to promote active learning among her students transpired. We talked about what impact, if any, the use of social media would have on the students' "digital footprints". We became concerned about the impact of this pedagogy on the students' privacy. We decided to investigate if our university had already adopted social media guidelines for online instructors to consider when developing their courses. We discovered that Armstrong's existing social media guidelines were designed for its online communications with students and for marketing purposes. We decided to continue our research to create a set of social media guidelines for our online professors to consider when developing their courses. This research eventually led not only to the development of social media guidelines, but also to the development of professional development workshops for faculty to learn more about engaging students in social media in order to promote active learning, as well as informing them of the privacy and ethical concerns about implementing this online pedagogy.
We are going to share our research results, social media guidelines, and plans to continue our research to gather data related to this topic.