Should Social Media be a College Course?

by Samir Balwani on November 24, 2009 · View Comments

I’ve been talking to a few friends of mine that just recently graduated college and are now entering the Interactive Marketing field. Most of them wish that social media, SEO, and paid search were taught as a class or a major. It seems like academia, at least at the bachelors level, is a little behind.

I can see the reasoning. It would be useful to be taught experiences from other professors or professionals. It might also be useful to learn exactly how to create a Facebook page or Twitter account. But is it really feasible to make Internet Marketing a college major or course?

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The problem I see is that social media and online marketing changes so quickly. Is it worth actually teaching a class? It might happen that things would drastically change during the class. Also, do you need to be qualified in online marketing? Or would a statistics, communications, computer science, mathematics major be more useful?

So I decided to put this out to you. Do you think that social media and Interactive marketing should be taught in colleges? Is it feasible? Would it be a course or a major? What’s the curriculum? What do you think about the subject?

Leave a comment and let’s get a conversation about this. I’d like to know what you think about the subject. If you’ve taken a interactive marketing course at the college level, please tell us about your professor and what you thought about the class.

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Cara Keithley November 24, 2009 at 4:31 pm

I think it is more valuable to talk about social media in context of current majors and classes…how does social media impact crisis communication or pr or marketing or hr or even law?

Social media is another avenue for communication and engagement…but did we offer college courses or majors in “Emailing” or “Cell Phones”? No. We need to focus on what the tools are for…why was social media developed? What are the impacts on culture and business? And integrate the how into existing programs where it makes sense.

For example, my students are constructing blogs for a pop culture class. They are learning by doing.

Samir Balwani November 24, 2009 at 9:33 pm: That’s a great idea Cara, but I feel like interactive marketing could really be more than just an add-on to a course. It definitely has a place in the curriculum, but where?

Also, I wouldn’t mind an entire course on email marketing, I really think there’s enough on the topic for a course.

Szofia Jakobsson November 24, 2009 at 4:52 pm

I believe it would be a valuable subject to learn, but quite impossible to set up as a traditional course. But if the classes were actually planned from week to week, with an agile way of working with real and current cases, it could be very successful. Employers need and want staff with this kind of knowledge. If you are studying marketing it should compulsory, but I think we all know that this type of knowledge can win you many advantages in any field of business.

Samir Balwani November 24, 2009 at 9:34 pm: That’s my issue. That a traditional course would have a hard time teaching it. It would definitely have to be easily changed. What I think most classes fail to do is actually allow students to experience it. I think writing a blog is so important if you want to learn online marketing.

Barb Szabo November 24, 2009 at 5:43 pm

As I have heard so often, social media is here to stay. If that’s true then it would make sense to offer courses on it. Even if things are changing quickly, there are basics that everyone (who has an interest in it) should know. It would be nice to even offer it to high school students so that they can see that it goes beyond which movie they are seeing tonight or getting tagged in a picture. Cara above suggests that talking about it would be more relevant but how can you talk about it if you don’t have a clear understanding of what it is? And I don’t think comparing e-mail and cell phones to the social media giant is an apples to apples comparison.

Samir Balwani November 24, 2009 at 9:35 pm: So maybe we have to teach the fundamentals? instead of about tools? Like how customer service can be a strategy online?

Sheryl Victor Levy November 24, 2009 at 9:13 pm

Love your blog Samir.

Well, if you have a Digital Marketing course in college, Social Media should be a part of the curriculum. I have attending NYU’s Digital Marketing Certificate Program, and took a terrific primer for Social Media — that talks more about the concept of what’s social, and explores best practices case studies and some tactics. I think it is worth adding to a curriculum.

Sheryl Victor Levy
Marketing Maven
SavvyStrategy.com

Samir Balwani November 24, 2009 at 9:35 pm: Awesome Sheryl! Thanks for the comment. Would love to hear more about NYU’s program. Did you like it? Was it useful?

Rikin November 24, 2009 at 9:57 pm

I believe our ultimate hope is that students are well rounded and prepared to face the digital world – which has effected everything. They at least have some concept of SEO/SEM, display advertising, social media, CRM, and even some foundational knowledge of web design.

In fact out of all these things I’d say social media is the least important to teach because students are immersed in it daily.

Kirkistan November 24, 2009 at 11:33 pm

I’m preparing a class aimed at English majors on a professional writing track called “Writing to Build Community using Social Media” (http://bit.ly/3p36ai). It’s not a major, but it is a course that builds on other professional writing classes the college offers. It’s important to help writing students know how to use their skills once they graduate.

Samir Balwani December 3, 2009 at 10:53 pm: Wow this is an amazing course idea. Would love to hear more about it!

kittu November 25, 2009 at 2:23 am

Instead of teaching theory, students should be asked to start their own blog and achieve certain targets by using SEO & Social Media. This will help them gain confidence while working on the clients projects. Also they can give certifications like “Google Adwords” to get an edge in the market.
It would help to have a course on – Blogging, Content Writing, E mail Marketing & as Sheryl mentioned, best practices & tactics for SEO / SEM / SMM.

Anna Green November 25, 2009 at 7:01 am

I don’t think it should be a whole course, it would become outdated far too quickly! The teachers would be out on touch within the first few months, perhaps it should be a module though, using guest teachers who are currently working in the industry.

Ashley Brown November 25, 2009 at 2:53 pm

I am currently working on my undergraduate thesis related to student social media use. In my opinion, there are two levels to this discussion. There is the applied use of social media for business practices such as marketing. PR. etc. and there is also a facet of communication skills that require discussion. For example, I foresee a program implemented during college freshman orientations that discusses the implications of unprofessional conduct on social networks. As a “netiquette” class of sorts, students would explore the importance of brand identity and management, privacy policies, and online conduct.

Samir Balwani November 25, 2009 at 3:39 pm: Hey Ashley, I’d love to hear more about your thesis. Would you be willing to share it with me? You can use the contact form to email me and I’ll send you my contact information.

Tamar Weinberg November 26, 2009 at 1:08 am

Yes, I do think this major would be beneficial, because if nothing at all (even “computer science” as a major gets outdated), the tenets still remain the same. Sure, you’ll have to learn new “tools,” but it’s basic understanding of human behaviors. A social media major should include courses in marketing, sociology, and psychology, in addition to internet technologies and the web.

Samir Balwani December 3, 2009 at 10:55 pm

Thanks Tamar for the comment. So would you say the course would need to span a number of majors? I would definitely add math and statistics into that list as well.

Tamar Weinberg December 5, 2009 at 5:51 pm: Not sure that’s the phraseology I’d use :) But yes, this discipline merges numerous types of courses in different backgrounds. You need to get a well-rounded background of these disciplines to get into social media marketing.

Jonathan Barnes November 27, 2009 at 4:50 am

Hi Samir,

Your blog is great and this is an interesting topic.

In fact, I was asking myself this same question the other day. I studied at Manchester Business School and my Marketing module only mentioned Social Media as a tool but explained in no depth what so ever the different ways of using it and the results it can generate.

For a world leading Business School with the slogan “Original Thinking Applied” to not mention Social Media, really frustrates me.

I believe it can definitely be taught, it needs to be structured into sections but rather than only following traditional methods, I think a Social Media Curriculum would be all about improving Soft Skills. These are closely linked and therefore and can imagine classes taking the shape of group discussions, presentations, online exercises… It’s not use only doing theory, in the case of Social Networking it needs to be put into practice I think…

Cheers for the great article!

Jon (@jonathanlbarnes)

Amit Klein December 1, 2009 at 5:02 am

Hi,
I’m actually in the process of teaching a online marketing, social media and analytics course at some business schools in India. The only way to get people to really understand these concept is to plan and execute a marketing plan on their own. A few people have mentioned getting the students to start a blog and drive traffic to it. What I’m doing with the students is have them partner with a local NGO to raise awareness/solicit donations for a cause. The course outline can be found here: http://amitklein.com/social-media-course-outline/, any feedback on ways to improve it would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Amit / @amitklein

Samir Balwani December 3, 2009 at 10:55 pm: Thanks for the comment Amit, I’ll definitely take a look at your course!

Lauri Stevens December 3, 2009 at 7:13 pm

I definitely think it could be a college major/course. In the world of Interactive Media (my department at The New England Institute of Art) EVERYTHING is always changing. Social Media is no different. And here at NEiA, we are teachinig a social media networking course. We have other additions planned as well.

Jody Strauch December 3, 2009 at 7:27 pm

I too have developed a course called ‘Social Media Strategies’ and will be taught this spring trimester as a special offering (with plans to include it in the current Advertising and Interactive Digital Media majors in the near future). I never approached the development of this course from the standpoint of the tools, but in helping students understand how social media works, how communities form, influence theories, and how businesses can harness these online communities and influencers to maximize their marketing message. We will have real clients and I am quite excited.

Those who say teachers will be out of date the minute they start the course must be talking about teachers who don’t keep a finger on the pulse of current industry trends, and those kind of teachers aren’t good at teaching anything, be it social media or journalism or whatever.

Samir Balwani December 3, 2009 at 10:57 pm: “Those who say teachers will be out of date the minute they start the course must be talking about teachers who don’t keep a finger on the pulse of current industry trends, and those kind of teachers aren’t good at teaching anything, be it social media or journalism or whatever.”

I think that is a very important point. For social media, teachers NEED to be on top of industry trends.

Thanks for your comment Jody
Kirkistan March 5, 2010 at 11:40 am: I’m just finishing a two-credit course (Northwestern College, Saint Paul, MN) called “Writing to Build Community using Social Media.” It was very hands-on. In their final presentations the students talked about the communities they had formed. I could see Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody” was a terrific choice for a text because he brings discussion of how communities form nearly up to date. What made the class great was that the students were required to use the tools (blog, Twitter, Facebook) several times a week. It was truly learning out in the world. We developed rhetorical strategies that focused on forming communities and the tools were the channels for our focus.

Dylan Fedy December 4, 2009 at 2:20 pm

Great discussion here. There is huge interest in social media and tuns of people both trying to learn how to use the tools and nearly as many offering tips/lessons on how to use social media. I can see how there may be clever ways to share tips or strategies or even to teach the subject, what is harder for me to see is how, with any objectivity, you could build an assessment/exam/test that would distinguish between those that were proficient and those that had yet to learn it or “get it”. Is this possible?

David Reich December 4, 2009 at 5:40 pm

I don’t see why not. It’s certainly more relevant than plenty of other topics taught in business, PR and communications programs at colleges across the country.

I started following @billhandy a while back. He teaches a PR course at OK State that dives into social media, which you might be interested in.

Thanks!

David
@djreich
@SixEstate

Mellissa Nguyen December 7, 2009 at 12:33 pm

As part of a class project, one of the student teams were assigned to develop a social media marketing strategy for a firm. Essentially, we had learn as much as possible about social media, develop a strategy to recommend to the firm and how to implement it as a consulting practice for their clients.

Walter Bernuy December 8, 2009 at 1:16 pm

I agree with Samir that it would be difficult to create a SM course since it is forever evolving. But I also agree with Jody Strauch that a good professor must stay on top of industry trends.

Perhaps make the class more collaborative, have a great professor teach it, but also find key students in the class who are also on top of industry trends to help out.

When professors talk about the new media in our classes now, I sometimes have to point out that their facts are no longer true, because they have recently changed.

Chip Walton January 22, 2010 at 12:24 pm

I think it would be a good class – for the reason that it is ever-changing. The students could bring their current new media obsession’s to the teacher’s attention and everyone would benefit from the forum. There are major players in the new/social media game that are going to be in place for at least the duration of a class… and the new ones will just add to the thrill. I’m currently assisting two Technical Communication professors with a nationwide writing program review and find the (lack of) use of new media very surprising.