Finals are coming up and some students in one of my classes are tried to bargain with me. If they got 500 retweets of the following screen shot, then I was to forego giving out my final synthesis project for the semester.
First of all, I had no idea what was in it for me, and I made mention of this to the students. (In hindsight, it's kind of funny that they didn't mention to me that I'd have nothing to mark at the end of the semester!) So, they decided to sweeten the deal by adding two Canucks vs Sharks tickets to the pot. The deal became 500 retweets or a pair of tickets to a hockey game. They quickly broke down the math and figured they could all chip in a few bucks to get me a pair of tickets.
Secondly, they also had to figure that the time they would spend trying to get retweets versus working on the project was risky given that they had other exams to study for and other projects to work on. It seemed like a risk they were willing to take.
Of course to be sure, I was not going to let the students off by getting away with no final synthesis project for the semester as that would amount to a educational malpractice on my part, but I let them entertain the possibility. It's cruel, I know. And, I could very well pay for my own tickets to any game, but it was fun to keep the carrot going.
And, I was curious to see if they could actually get 500 retweets. It was an interesting experiment to validate our human desire to take the path of least resistance when available. It was also interesting to see if they could rally their friends around a particular social media initiative, even if it's something as lame as getting away with no final synthesis project.
So, did they get 500 retweets?
Looks like they did it. Anyway, we had a good chat as a class, and I acknowledged the power of social media, or rather, their power with social media. Somehow, I managed to convince them that doing the final synthesis project was essential to their learning.
How did the projects turn out? Well, here is an example of one such final synthesis project's essential question: "What drives the unconquerable soul?"
... Can you believe it? A sophomore Religious Studies class trying to answer a question that has confounded philosophers and theologians for ages. And, here they were trying to take a crack at it.
I'm proud of all of them. I'm glad they got the 500 retweets, but the true reward was the quality of the presentations. And, I promised the instigating student who drove the retweet campaign that we're going to put that social media prowess to good use the following semester.
