Teachers: Get your students out of stuffy classrooms and onto the online web.

"The classroom can feel rather stuffy compared to online," said one of my peers, Eliza Wooley. Her statement is more true than many people realize. The online web is alive and well, and it is advancing at an alarming rate. In order for students to be successful in their future careers, knowledge of how to use online tools is essential. Teachers of literature can help students gain these skills by incorporating certain forms of online rhetoric into their curriculum. Online rhetoric includes knowing how to use online databases for research, finding credible sources through social media, and embracing new skills in technology such as multimedia such as YouTube.

I once had a teacher tell me that I had to use five printed sources for an essay. This required me to go to a library and check out some books. Students before me that did not have access to computers or the internet probably have a hard time feeling sorry for me. That is fine. I’d probably have a hard time feeling sorry for me too. However, I told this story to some peers today and they groaned and said how sorry they were for me. With databases thriving and new material being added to them constantly, what good reason was there for my teacher to limit me to books that were published within the last ten years, but that were still outdated by the web’s standards? Newer information was out there yet I was limited to old information. Some might argue that because the book had to go through a rigorous publication process, it is better quality. Sometimes that is the case, but that is not always true. Online databases allow students to access high-quality peer-reviewed articles, and sometimes even books. Sometimes copyright law gets in the way of these high-quality articles being online, but for the most part, many scholars have embraced the internet and allow their work to be published online. Knowing how to use online databases is important to quickly accessing quality information. Instead of research papers taking months to write, they can be written in weeks, and no quality is lost.

Social media is generally looked at as being fun, but not being of much use in academia. This statement is only true if students do not know how to use social media for academic purposes. Teachers ought to get online and learn how to use social media academically, and then teach what they learn to their students. Students are already adept at navigating social media sites. Now, they just need some direction in how to use them for academia. Twitter allows hashtags to be searched, allowing students to find experts in fields of study that interest them. Facebook allows people to create searchable events, that students can then find and go to in order to connect with experts. Social media is fun, but it can also be a great tool for academia.

Finally, studying literature can really be enhanced by embracing multimedia. The multimedia I am going to choose to focus on is YouTube, although there are many other good options out there. I was introduced to the idea of using multimedia in literature by this blog post from Dr. Gideon Burton. I have never liked poetry, but seeing poetry put in a multimedia format helped me to better understand it. If teachers can embrace multimedia as a new way of approaching literature and encourage students to show their understanding through multimedia instead of, say, traditional essays, students will become more enthusiastic and more involved in what they are learning.

Creativity is a natural part of being human. New forms of creativity are being introduced thanks to the online web. New skills are being introduced too, skills that are absolutely necessary to know for future success. Teachers ought to help their students develop those skills and taste that success now by encouraging them to learn these new tools, create, and then share what they have created. Sharing can be scary, and some encouragement is needed, but once a student shares and gets good feedback, they will likely be more willing to venture out and continue on with what they have learned in a course, rather than light a bonfire on their essays at the end of every semester.