Rapid-fire exchange
With a wry smile, Marlon Kuzmick, associate director of the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, kicked off a discussion dubbed the “Idea Exchange” with a simple prompt: “I would like to use social media to …” Hosted by the Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning, the event on March 26 gathered faculty, staff, and students to discuss social media at Harvard. While civil in tone, the exchange began with participants throwing Kuzmick’s softball question right back at him. For many, including David Cox, assistant professor of molecular and cellular biology and of computer science, social media from Twitter to Tumblr have become tools like any other — such as a pencil that is well-worn, familiar, and, sometimes, dull. Cox, who developed a custom learning platform for his HarvardX online course “MCB80x: Fundamentals of Neuroscience,” said that he has no fewer than six Twitter handles. Each serves a different purpose....