“#WordUp!: Student Responses to Social Media in the Technical Writing Classroom”

In this chapter, the author argues that although integrating online social media networks into a traditional writing classroom seems timely, cutting edge, and apropos to students' current past-time activities, teachers have the opportunity to create more meaningful classroom activities with social media if they first: consider students' trepidation regarding such non-traditional classroom activities; and second: realize socially-networked students don't necessarily translate into career-ready students. By way of two in-class Q&A sessions, the author discovers that her Technical Writing students need less instruction on how to use social media academically, and more instruction on how to use social media to brand and market themselves professionally. In a chapter grounded in student response, readers receive her student feedback about the effects of integrating social media networks into their writing classroom in an effort to assist teachers more purposely integrate social media into their traditional classroom spaces.