School promotes Twitter and Facebook in class

Purdue University will no longer be throwing students out of class for being on Facebook or Twitter come September 2010. The school has recently introduced a new program that incorporates social media, called "Hot Seat" into two of their classes. Hot Seat allows users to interact with their professors, post questions and be more proactive in lectures through the use of Facebook and Twitter. The two classes have shown such positive results with the program, that the University has decided to incorporate it into all classrooms starting next september.

One of the professors of the test classes, Sugato Chakravarty has had only positive things to say about the program. He states that the heightened interactivity is a blessing, but may not appeal to all of his colleagues.

"The tool is called 'Hotseat,' and it does give students a lot of power," Chakravarty said. "In one class I mentioned the wrong president during the 1929 Depression and immediately about a dozen comments came in correcting me. I don't have a problem with students correcting me or challenging me; this shows the students are engaged. But not every professor may embrace this aspect."

Although this program allows for more interaction amongst students, I fear that it could severely delay classes. How do teachers get through all of their material with constant tweets and questions being posted? Furthermore, how do students pay attention to the material if their constantly checking out and voting for different things on the site? Perhaps one term, and two classes is not enough time to have tested the software? Only time will tell.

In the mean time, check out the video for the program here: